X. Answer the questions on the text:

1. What is chronology?

2. What kinds of chronology are there?

3. What do the terms "calendar" and "era" concern?

4. When was the AUC systematically used for the first time?

5. Did astronomers propose to replace our era with their astronomical one?

6. Name other subjects familiar to chronology.

7. Who was the first to recognize the connection between the AD and AUC?

8. What does the Dionysius Exiguous' Anno Domini era contain?

9. What did the late 19th century archaeologists find?

10. What helped to revise and refine the chronologies developed for specific cultural areas?

11. What does the study of the means of placing pottery and other cultural artefacts into some kind of order proceed in?

XI. Give the summary of the text.

XII. Render the text close to its original variant.

XIII. Make a written translation of the text. Entitle and retell it. Put all types of questions covering the plot of the text.

An era is a long period of time with different technical and colloquial meanings, and usages in language. It begins with some beginning event known as an epoch, epochal date, epochal event or epochal moment. When era is extended to a calendar system, it is known as a calendar era. In chronology, an era is the highest level for the organization of the measurement of time. A calendar era indicates a span of many years which are numbered beginning at a specific reference date (epoch), which often marks the origin of a political state, dynasty, ruler, the birth of a leader, or another significant historical or mythological event; it is generally called after its focus accordingly as in Victorian era.

A calendar is a system of organizing days for a socially, religious, commercially, or administratively useful purpose. This organization is done by giving names to periods of time - typically days, weeks, months and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Many civilizations and societies have devised a calendar, usually derived from other calendars on which they model their systems, suited to their particular needs.

The Julian calendar was a reform of the Roman calendar which was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC and came into force in 45 BC. It has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12 months, and a leap day is added to February every four years. The Julian calendar remained in use into the 20th century in some countries as a national calendar, but it has generally been replaced by the modern Gregorian calendar. It is still used by the Berber people of North Africa and by many national Orthodox churches. Orthodox Churches no longer using the Julian calendar typically use the Revised Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar. The notation "Old Style" (OS) is sometimes used to indicate a date in the Julian calendar, as opposed to "New Style" (NS), which either represents the Julian date with the start of the year as 1 January or a full mapping onto the Gregorian calendar.

The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world today. It was decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, for whom it was named, on 24 February 1582. Years in the reformed calendar continue the numbering system of the Julian calendar, which are numbered from the traditional Incarnation year of Jesus, which has been labeled the "Anno Domini" (AD) era, and is sometimes labeled the "common era" (CE), otherwise known as "Christian Era". The changes made by Gregory also corrected the drift in the civil calendar which arose because the mean Julian calendar year was slightly too long, causing the vernal equinox, and consequently the date on which Easter was being celebrated, to slowly drift forward in relation to the civil calendar and the seasons.

• Additional task

a) Some sentences have been extracted from the text and given below. Decide where they suit the best. There is also an extra one.