教材

【6】The ideas of Time

A. counting Years

When we study history, we need to know when things happened.

Christian countries use a calendar (日曆)to count time. Most other countries use this calendar,too.

It starts from the birth of Jesus Christ. T

he years before the birth of Christ are called BC or‘Before Christ’(公元前).

Remember, when the date is BC, the bigger the number, the earlier something happened.

We call the years after Christ was born AD or ‘Anno Domini’(公元).

These are two Latin (拉丁文)words. They mean “In the year of our Lord”

	BC (Before Christ)
	AD (Anno Domini)

4000	3000	2000	1000	BC	1 AD	1000	2000
Ａｎｃｉｅｎｔ　Ｔｉｍｅｓ　　　　　　　 Medieval Times

　

The word century (世紀) is often used to

count years, too. A century is 100 years or

10 decades (十年). The year AD 1992 is not

in the 19th century. Why not? Because AD

1992 is in the twentieth set of 100 years after

the birth of Christ. The diagram below helps

you see why.

□BC

□AD

BC 199-100	BC 99-1	AD 1-99	AD100-1899	AD1900-1999
2nd century BC	1st century BC	1st century AD	2nd-19th centuries AD	20th century AD

Exercises:

1. Fill in the blanks:

a. The __________________ is used by many countries to count time.

b. In this calender, th eyear before the birth of _______________

are called B.C. which means________________________.

c. The years after his birth are called A.D._________________________

meaning “______________________________”.

2. True or False:

wpe1B.jpg (8525 bytes)

Are the following sentences TRUE or FALSE？Correct the wrong ones.

1. 1991 B.C. was abiut a hundred years ago. ( )

2. A.D.1was nearly two thousand years ago. ( )

3. A.D. 1200 was after A.D. 1000 ( )

4. 800B.C. was before 600 B.C. ( )

5. 350 B.C. was after 550 B.C. ( )

3. Time-line questions：

Use the time-line above to answer these questions:

(A) was born in 60 B.C.and lived 50 years. He died in _____________

(B) was born in 30 B.C. and lived 70 years. He died in _____________

(D) died in A.D. 50, Aged 75. He was born in ______________

(E) died in A.D. 88, aged 69. He was born in ______________

(F) died in 25 B.C., aged 25. He was born in ______________

(G) was born in 65 B.C., he died in 36 B.C. He was____________ years old when he died.

(H) was born in 44 B.C., he died in A.D. 17. He was ___________ years old when he died.

(I) was born in A.D. 15, he died in A.D. 105. He was ____________ years old when he died.

B. When did History begin ?

History probably began about 6000 years ago when man left written records.

We call the period since writing was discovered (發現)historic times(信史時期).

Historians divide this period into ancient(古代), medieval(中古)and modern(近代) times.

We call the period before writing was discovered prehistoric times (史前時期).

It lasted from about 2,500,000BC to 4000BC.

Historians divide prehistoric times into the Old Stone Age (舊石器時代),

the Middle Stone Age (中石器時代) and the New Stone Age (新石器時代).

We can learn about the history of this period from the bones and tools left behind

by prehistoric people .

2,500,000BC --15,000BC

15,000BC--10,000BC

1,0000BC-- 4000BC

OLD STONE AGE

MIDDLE STONE

AGE

NEW STONE AGE