How long century

See Answer. Best Answer. A century is years. Study guides. More answers. Q: How long is a century? Write your answer Related questions.

How long is century? How long ago was the 15th century? How long ago was the 11th century? How long is a century in years? How long is a half century? How long did the Aztecs dominate Mexico? How long did the northern renaissance last? How long is a centry? How long did vikings last?

How long did vikings survive? How long did the samurai period last? How long did the viking era go for? How long is a century from now? How long did the viking age last? How long wer vikings around for? Of course, you could go down even further than days if you wanted to. Measuring a century in hours would be done by multiplying the 24 hours in a day by days in a year and then by There is no question that a century takes a long time.

But how did they decide to designate years as a century? Well, to fully understand it, you have to hearken back to some of the earliest civilizations and study their timekeeping methods. For example, the ancient Egyptians were among the first civilizations to devise the concept of a year. They also coincided this time-keeping method with the yearly flooding of the Nile.

This would have been all well and good, but the Egyptians had some miscalculations in their calendar which led to it being a bit off. It can be hard to remember this, especially when you go back a few hundred years, which is why we sometimes see people use, say, 16th century which should refer to years that begin with 15 when they really mean s , which clearly refers to years that begin with We also sometimes see people confuse the "hundreds" form with the "century" one, referring to a date like as occurring in the "s.

The thing to remember is that the number in the name of the century the 16th century, for example is always one higher than the number that starts the century's years: the years of the 16th century start with There's logic behind it, of course. The first century of the current era aka the 1st century CE or AD didn't start with ; it started with 1 more on the implications of that below. It wasn't until the second century, aka the 2nd century, that the years had a digit in the hundreds column: the year was a century and a half into the new era, putting it smack-dab in the middle of the 2nd century.

AD also styled A. AD is contrasted with BC also styled B. It depends on who you ask. Some people think the 22nd century will start January 1, and end December 31, , with the 23rd century beginning on January 1, But there is a long history of people insisting that this is flat-out wrong for mathematical reasons: a century is by definition years in length, and the first century started on January 1, 1, which means that when December 31, 99 rolled around only 99 years had passed; therefore, the first century of the current millennium didn't actually end until December 31, , and the second century didn't begin until January 1, This topic has proven to be vexatious especially at the turns of centuries, starting at the end of the 17th one, according to a Library of Congress article by Ruth S.

Freitag called "Battle of the Centuries. We have uniformly rejected all letters, and declined all discussion upon the question of when the present century ends? The present century will not terminate till January 1, , unless it can be made out that 99 are