Okay, honest question: what did they call it then, if anything?
Because it's not like they planned on counting down to the future "messiah's" birthday.
You have to look at non-Christian calendars.
It was 2275 in Korea.
It was 265 of the 33rd dynasty in Egypt.
It was 2 of the 180th Olympiad in Greece.
More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59_BC
Damn, so Korea went back in time? Or what are they on now? Did they hit 40K yet? Do they count in dog years? Do they inflate their numbers so it sounds cooler? Have the halfed it, when they split the country in half? I demand answers Korea!
The Romans named their years after who was elected Consul that year. There were two Consuls, so you'd say "in the consulship of Jones and Smith". 59BC was Julius Caesar and some other guy. The other guy was so unimportant that Romans joked by calling it the consulship of "Julius and Caesar".
"Three men, a greek, a roman and a celt each get an island.
The greek writes a book about flora and fauna of his island.
The roman, realising that the island does not need to be conquered, builds a house, a road to the shore and a statue to himself.
The celt starts a fight."
In more official settings they would also use the year "ab Urbe condita", meaning "since the City's founding" (city being Rome).
59BC should be around 694 aUc if my numbers are right.
Depends on where in the world, but most dating systems were reginal, that is what year of what monarch/pharaoh/emperor's reign.
Same.. took me a moment. Then I realized in 59 B.C. it was like year 700 to them at that time (not literally 700.. just throwing a random number).
A universal calendar hasn't been established yet so it would depend on where you are.
For example today in 59 BC under the Athenian calendar would be 17 of Thargelion, Ol.180.1
Consulship of Caesar and Bibulus - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59_BC lists some options of how it would be called in various places
59 BC is actually pretty close to coptic I'd bet for spoken language (though officially it wouldn't be called coptic with consistent Greek script until the third century). At least in the sense that vulgar Latin was close to Italian.
In the Roman empire it was also common to identify years by the names of the two consuls, because the consuls served one year terms.
Consuls continued to be elected through most of the empire period.
Except that person is a time traveler, so they would be speaking modern English regardless
"Before" implies something hasn't happened yet, therefore if they know it's before "something" they must be a time traveller from some after C, whatever the C might be.
Or else, you didn't travel anywhere (anywhen?) and the first guy you bumped into is a wise-ass.
Yeah, I'm not too familiar with the intricacies of that. I just did anthropology as an elective.
North Korea counts years since the birth of Kim il Sung (their first leader/the revolutionary who stood up against Japanese occupation)