In East Asia, reckoning by era names chosen by ruling monarchs ceased in the 20th century except for Japan, where they are still used.
Assyrian scribes compiled limmu lists, including an unbroken sequence of almost 250 eponyms from the early 1st millennium BC.
This is an invaluable chronological aid, because a solar eclipse was recorded as having taken place in the limmu of Bur-Sagale, governor of Guzana.
Among the ancient Greek historians and scholars, a common method of indicating the passage of years was based on the Olympic Games, first held in 776 BC.
The era is computed from the epoch 312 BC: in August of that year Seleucus I Nicator captured Babylon and began his reign over the Asian portions of Alexander the Great's empire.
This became the official chronology of the empire by at least the time of Claudius, who held Secular Games in AD 47 to celebrate the city's 800th anniversary.
During the early Middle Ages, some church officials like Boniface IV employed AUC and AD dating together.
TRP), carefully observing the fiction that his powers came from these offices granted to him, rather than from his own person or the many legions under his control.
His successors followed his practice until the memory of the Roman Republic faded (about AD 200), when they began to use their regnal year openly.
Either way the date traditionally marks the establishment of Roman rule in Spain and was used in official documents by the Suebian and Visigothic kingdoms and later in Portugal, Aragon, Valencia, Castile, and southern France.
This system of calibrating years fell to disuse in the Early Modern Age and was replaced by today's Anno Domini.
Most of the traditional calendar eras in use today were introduced at the time of transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, roughly between the 6th and 10th centuries.
The distinction between the Incarnation occurring with the conception or the Nativity of Jesus was not drawn until the late ninth century.