What did europeans use to describe age, before they refered to "years" ?

by Uncle_Price

In pop culture, I see a lot of medieval characters refering to age as (for example) "She is 7 winters old."

Is this just a made up thing, or people actually refered to age in "winter" count?

If that is true, when did they talk like that? And after people started refering to age in "years", did people still use winters as well, or did that stop?

Thank you in advance.

Savings_Elephant_381

A winter count from what I was taught is what some Native American tribes, Plains Indians mostly, used it kind of like a yearly census. They drew pictures of individuals that told the story of the past year starting from the last winter count. There is so much you can find out from a winter count.