Holocene calendar

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"H.E." redirects here. For other uses of H.E., see He (disambiguation).
"Holocene era" redirects here. For the geological epoch, see Holocene Epoch.

The Holocene calendar, popular term for the Holocene Era or Human Era, is a year numbering system similar to astronomical year numbering but adds 10,000, placing its first year at the start of the Human Era (HE, the beginning of human civilization) the approximation of the Holocene Epoch (HE, post Ice Age) for easier geological, archaeological, dendrochronological and historical dating. The current Gregorian year can be transformed by simply placing a 1 before it (e.g., 2010 becomes 12010 HE). The Human Era was first proposed by Cesare Emiliani in 1993 (11993 HE).[1][2][3]

Contents

[edit] Motivation

Cesare Emiliani's proposal for a calendar reform sought to solve a number of problems with the current Anno Domini era, which number the years of the commonly accepted world calendar. The issues include:

  • The Anno Domini era (or Common Era) begins at the presumed year of the birth of Jesus Christ. This Christian aspect (especially the use of Before Christ and Anno Domini) can be offensive to non-Christians.[4]
  • Biblical scholarship is virtually unanimous that the birth of Jesus Christ would actually have been a few years prior to AD 1[citation needed]. This makes the calendar inaccurate insofar as Christian dates are concerned.
  • There is no year zero as 1 BC is followed immediately by AD 1.
  • BC years are counted down when moving from past to future, thus 44 BC is after 250 BC. This makes calculating date ranges in the Holocene era across the BC/AD boundary more complicated than in the HE.

Instead, HE places its epoch or year one of the current era to 10,000 BC. This is a rough approximation of the start of the current geologic epoch, the Holocene (the name means entirely recent). The motivation for this is that human civilization (e.g., the first settlements, agriculture, etc.) is believed to have arisen entirely within this time. All key dates in human history can then be listed using a simple increasing date scale with smaller dates always occurring before larger dates.

[edit] Conversion

Conversion to the Holocene Era from Julian or Gregorian AD years can be achieved by adding 10,000. BC years are converted by subtracting the BC year from 10,001.

A useful validity check is that the last digit of BC and HE equivalents must add up to 1 or 11.

Events Julian or
Gregorian years		 Holocene Era
Human Era
End of the Paleolithic Period,
All continents (except Antarctica) inhabited,
Agriculture and the domestication of animals begins.		 c. 10000 BC c. 1 HE
Earliest walled city (Jericho) c. 9000 BC c. 1001 HE
Initial Jōmon period begins c. 7500 BC c. 2501 HE
First copper found in Middle East - beginning of Copper Age c. 6000 BC c. 4001 HE
Begining of the 1st Baktun, in the Maya Long Count August 11 or 13, 3114 BC 6887 HE
Narmer or Menes, first Pharaoh of the unified Egypt c. 3100 BC c. 6901 HE
Beginning of Indus Valley Civilization c. 3000 BC c. 7001 HE
Probable date of the completion of the first Egyptian pyramid 2611 BC 7390 HE
Beginning of Xia Dynasty in China c. 2100 BC c. 7901 HE
Moses leads the Hebrews out of Egypt c. 1255 BC c. 8748 HE
Foundation of Rome 753 BC 9248 HE
Cyrus II, king of Anshan and Persia 559 BC 9442 HE
Death of Alexander; Ptolemy I Soter becomes Pharaoh of Egypt 323 BC 9678 HE
Empire of Asoka 273 BC 9728 HE
Imperial China, Qin dynasty 221 BC 9780 HE
Destruction of Carthage and annexation of the Macedonian Kingdom by the Romans 146 BC 9855 HE
Battle_of_Actium, defeat of Mark Anthony, Cleopatra's suicide, end of the Ptolemaic Egypt. September 2, 30 BC 9971 HE
Augustus becomes the first Emperor of Rome January 16, 27 BC 9974 HE
Birth of Jesus Chirst 5 BC 9996 HE
Death of Herod_the_Great Late March or Early April, 4 BC 9997 HE
Last year of BC era 1 BC 10000 HE
First year of Anno Domini era AD 1 10001 HE
Possible year of Jesus' crucifixion AD 30 10030 HE
Migration Period begins, leading to the Fall of Rome AD 300/476 10300/10476 HE
Constantine converts to Christianism; defeats Maxentius AD 312 10312 HE
Edict of Milan: freedom of cult for the Christians. AD 313 10313 HE
Turkic migrations begin c. AD 500 c. 10500 HE
Muslim conquests begin AD 632 10632 HE
The Muslins, under the Umayyad Caliphate, reach the Iberian Peninsula. AD 711 10711 HE
Great Zimbabwe built c. AD 1000 c. 11000 HE
Hindu-Arabic numerals introduced to Europe AD 1202 11202 HE
Osman I becomes Sultan of the Ghazi state of Söğüt and establishes the Ottoman_Dynasty; AD 1299 11299 HE
Black Death decimates Asia and Europe AD 1340s 11340s HE
European expansion and colonization begins AD 1419 11419 HE
Mehmet II, Sultan of the Ottomans, conquers Constantinople. AD 1453 11453 HE
European discovery of the New World AD 1492 11492 HE
Vasco da Gama reachs India, by sea, through circumnavigating the Africa AD 1498 11498 HE
Brazil is officially discovered and reclaimed by the Portuguese April 22, AD 1500 11500 HE
Fall of the Inca Empire AD 1572 11572 HE
America declares independence from Britain AD 1776 11776 HE
French Revolution July 14, AD 1789 11789 HE
Independence of Brazil and the Hispanic-American countries AD 1811 / AD 1830 11811 HE / 11830 HE
Second Industrial Revolution c. AD 1850 c. 11850 HE
End of the Belle Époque; First World War AD 1914-1918 11914-11918 HE
Second World War and nuclear fission AD 1939-1945 11939-11945 HE
First artificial satellite (Sputnik I) AD 1957 11957 HE
Yuri Gagarin becomes The first human in space AD 1961 11961 HE
First human landing on the Moon AD 1969 11969 HE
Barack Hussein Obama becomes the first African-American President of the USA January 20, AD 2009 12009 HE
Current year AD 2010 12010 HE
End of the 13th Baktun, in the Maya Long Count December 21, AD 2012 12012 HE

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Cesare Emiliani, "Calendar Reform", Nature 366 (1993) 716.
  2. ^ The Holocene Calendar at Meerkat Meade
  3. ^ The Human Era Calendar by Harry and Svetlana Weseman
  4. ^ Controversy over the use of "CE/BCE" or "AD/BC" dating notation at Religious Tolerance.org
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