How did people living before the Common Era count time? I understand the "Jewish calendar" (that's how I know of it at least) counts 57XX (I can't remember the current year), but did people living before the switch to BCE/CE count years on that calendar or was their some other count of years passed?
Hi, it would be helpful to specify which "people" you're asking about, but to get you started, there are a few examples here
I can give you an idea what it was like by using an example for the 3000+ year old Somali solar calander.
At least for the Somali solar calandar, significant and deadly droughts and other notable events such as a deadly battle, a plague, or an invasion were always used as a bench mark and as reference years, and people would say things like, "I was born 3 years after the great drought", or "6 years have passed since the Majeerteen kingdoms civil war, which happened 2 years after the great drought and a year before the battle of Tug Argan". However, things get muddy after a long time lapses since these events came to pass, but they are still generally accurate enough after a couple hundred years to reconstruct the century that certian events took place by comparing the benchmark events to the historical record and making a chronology of the events in successive ordering.
So although using the same technique as BC/AD with a benchmark event, the main difference is that unlike the modern Georgian calandar in the Somali calandar these benchmarks are temporary and fade away from usefullness - and some gradually into lore - as new events come to be used as benchmark events which are contemporary or near-contemporary to the people of the period to use as a point of reference.