RE: [escepticos] RV: fin de siglo y milenio

[Santiago Arteaga <arteaga@...>]

> Respecto al miedo de las personas ante lo que viene recuerden que el 31 de
> diciembre del año 999 no hubo miedo ni alarma, ¿ Para qué temer al fin del
> mundo si el hambre, la guerra, la peste y la muerte -los cuatro jinetes de
> Apocalipsis- eran parte de la vida diaria ?

	Bueno, esto fue un poco mas complicado. En el an~o 1000 todavia
no existia la tradicion de fechar los an~os desde el nacimiento de
Jesucristo. No se si vivirian en el an~o 1700 de Roma o algo por el
estilo, seguro que alguien que sepa de historia me corrige. De hecho,
es posible que hubiesen demasiados calendarios diferentes, supuestamente 
esta fue una de las razones por las que se decidio imponer el sistema
nuestro de datar todos igual. El numerar los an~os como hacemos nosotros
empezo a ponerse de moda al final de la edad media, no se si el siglo XIV
o XVI o algo asi. 

	De modo que no hubo una fiebre como la que tenemos nosotros ahora
porque la mayoria de la gente ni se entero de que habian pasado los 1000
an~os.

	A pesar de todo, si que hubo unas cuantas sectas que al observar
que se iban a cumplir los 1000 an~os dijeron tonterias. Solo que no
consiguieron ponerse en acuerdo sobre exactamente cuando nacio Jesucristo.
Vamos, igual que nosotros, solo que nosotros tenemos un calendario ya
tradicional que nos dice que Jesucristo nacio hace 1999 an~os; todo el
mundo que hoy en dia escriba una fecha se da cuenta de que hay muchos
nueves.

	Una rapida busqueda en
http://www.geocities.com:80/Athens/Oracle/9941/index.html proporciona las
siguientes historias, que no puedo traducri por falta de tiempo.

	Santi



 Friday, March 25, 970 CE - A group of Lotharingian numbers
 crunchers, who really should have found themselves another hobby,
 came upon the astounding discovery that this exact date marked not
 only the coinciding of the Annunciation and the Crucifixion, but also
 the day when Adam was created, Isaac was offered for sacrifice and
 the Red Sea was crossed! And as if that weren't enough to fit on their
 day-planners, these boys decided that it would also be the perfect
 moment for the big Archangel Michael vs. Satan Fight For The World
 Championship. For our Lotharingian nerds, April Fools came a week
 early that year. 


999 CE - As anyone who is anyone knows, this particular date was a
 grand doozy of apocalyptic wankership, complete with people running
 about like idiots giving away all their worldly possessions, clogging up
 the cathedrals and collapsing into fits of Divinely-inspired hysteria
 with the same disconcerting regularity as politicians running for
 re-election. Peasants let their fields go fallow, flagellants flogged
 themselves more fiercely and penitents knocked their knees raw
 crawling over hill, dale and open sewer on pilgrimages to holy tourist
 traps. And on the magical date of December 31, frenzied Dark Agers
 fought for elbow room in Europe's churches and held their collective
 breath at the stroke of midnight. 

   Which just goes to show you that you shouldn't believe just anyone.
 The trouble with the above scenario is that it simply didn't happen.
 Besides the fact that not everybody saw January 1 as the first day of
 the new year, the vast majority of people back then spent their entire
 lives in complete (dare I say, even blissful ?) ignorance of "official"
 dates. There were no cute theme calendars on any peasant's walls,
 no watches on their wrists and no clocks on any medieval bank
 buildings. Marking time meant being able to say something like, "Oh,
 aye! Young Enoch, the dung-scraper's son was whelped back 'afore
 the oxen took with the dropsy an just after ol' mother Meg was burned
 for witchcraft some two an' twenty seasons past! Ah, kids today... they
 know not such merry 'tides." 

   It is likely that the better ecclesiats were all adither about the
date,
 seeing as how they could actually read and would, therefor, be in a
 position to know something about the biblical Apocrypha that placed
 the year 1000 as The Big Day. Even so, it was anyone's guess back
 then just when Jesus' birthdate really was. So, everyone had a
 different idea about just when the year 1000 might fall. Not to mention
 conflicting opinions over whether the date should be calculated from
 his birth (hence AD 1000) or his crucifixion (AD 1033). In short, it's
 most likely that any real craziness that took place around the dawn of
 the first millennium happened between irate priests duking it out over
 who had really done the math. 

 1033 CE - Second verse, same as the first. A little bit later, but the
 world is no worse.