Holocene calendar

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"Holocene era" redirects here. For the geological epoch, see Holocene.

The Holocene calendar, also known as the Holocene Era or Human Era (HE), is a year numbering system that adds exactly 10,000 years to the currently dominant AD (or CE) numbering scheme, placing its first year near the beginning of the Holocene geological epoch and the Neolithic Revolution, when humans transitioned from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture and fixed settlements. The current year in the Holocene calendar is 12,024 HE. The HE scheme was first proposed by scientist Cesare Emiliani in 1993.[1]

Motivation

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

  • The Anno Domini era is based on an erroneous estimation of the birth year of Jesus. The era places Jesus's birth year in AD 1, but modern scholars have determined that he was likely born in or before 4 BC. Emiliani argues that replacing it with the approximate beginning of the Holocene makes sense.
  • The reported birth of Jesus is a less universally relevant epoch event than the approximate beginning of the Holocene.
  • The years BC are counted down when moving from past to future, making calculation of time spans difficult.
  • The Anno Domini era has no year zero, with 1 BC followed immediately by AD 1, complicating the calculation of timespans further.

Instead, HE uses the "beginning of human era" as its epoch, arbitrarily defined as 10,000 BC denoted year 1 HE, so that AD 1 matches 10,001 HE.[1] 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 within this time.

Shifts in estimation of onset

Scientists have improved their understanding of and can now more accurately date the beginning of the Holocene. A consensus viewpoint has solidified and was formally adopted by the IUGS in 2013. Current estimates place its start at 11.7 thousand years before AD 2000.[2]

This conflicts with the dating proposed for HE and means that it is not clear how it would be altered from the 1993 proposal in Nature. In the twenty-odd years after 1993 it has mostly been a curiosity and has not gained widespread use even within the geological, palaeontological or archaeological scientific communities.[citation needed]

Benefits

Human Era proponents claim that it makes for easier geological, archaeological, dendrochronological and historical dating, as well as that it bases its epoch on an event more universally relevant than the birth of Jesus. All key dates in human history can then be listed using a simple increasing date scale with smaller dates always occurring before larger dates. Another gain is that the Holocene Era starts before the other calendar eras. So it could be useful for the comparison and conversion of dates from different calendars.

Conversion

Conversion from Julian or Gregorian AD years to the Human Era can be achieved by adding 10,000 to the AD year. The current year of AD 2024 can be transformed into a Holocene year by adding the digit "1" before it, making it 12,024 HE. BC years are converted by subtracting the BC year from 10,001. A useful validity check is that the last single digits of BC and HE equivalent pairs must add up to 1 or 11.

Comparison of some historic dates in the Gregorian and the Holocene calendar
Gregorian year ISO 8601 Holocene year Event
10001 BC −10000 0 HE Beginning of the Holocene Era
10000 BC −9999 1 HE
9700 BC −9699 301 HE End of the Pleistocene and beginning of the Holocene epoch[3]
4714 BC −4713 5287 HE Epoch of the proleptic Julian calendar: Julian day 0 starts at Greenwich noon on January 1, 4713 BC of the proleptic Julian calendar, which is November 24, 4714 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar
3761 BC −3760 6240 HE Beginning of the Anno Mundi era in the Hebrew calendar
2698 BC −2697 7303 HE Reign of the mythical Yellow Emperor, epoch of the traditional Chinese calendar
2560 BC −2559 7441 HE Estimated completion of Great Pyramid of Giza
1000 BC −0999 9001 HE
753 BC −0752 9248 HE Legendary Founding of Rome, starting the ab urbe condita era
544 BC −0543 9457 HE Legendary death of Siddhartha Gautama, epoch of the Buddhist calendar
45 BC −0044 9956 HE Introduction of the Julian calendar
1 BC +0000 10000 HE Year zero at ISO 8601
AD 1 +0001 10001 HE Beginning of the Common Era (Anno Domini), from an incorrect estimate of the birth of Jesus
AD 622 +0622 10622 HE Migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina (Hegira), starting the Islamic calendar
AD 1066 +1066 11066 HE Battle of Hastings
AD 1582 +1582 11582 HE Introduction of the Gregorian calendar
AD 1912 +1912 11912 HE Xinhai Revolution in China, starting the Minguo calendar.
AD 1950 +1950 11950 HE Epoch of the Before Present dating scheme
AD 1993 +1993 11993 HE Publication of the Holocene calendar
AD 2024 +2024 12024 HE Current year
AD 10000 +10000 20000 HE

See also

  • Anno Lucis – Calendar system that adds 4000 years to the Common Era.

References

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  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Further reading

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External links

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