Holocene calendar

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/BC or CE/BCE) 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 by the Gregorian calendar, AD 2020, is 12020 HE in the Holocene calendar. The HE scheme was first proposed by Cesare Emiliani in 1993 (11993 HE).^[1]

Overview

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 the 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 argued that replacing it with the approximate beginning of the Holocene makes more sense.
• The birth date of Jesus is a less universally relevant epoch event than the approximate beginning of the Holocene.
• The years BC/BCE 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. This is equally true of the Common Era, its non-religious equivalent.

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. Emiliani would later propose that the start of the Holocene be fixed at the same date as the beginning of his proposed era.^[2]

Benefits

Human Era proponents claim that it makes for easier geological, archaeological, dendrochronological, anthropological 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.

Accuracy

When Emiliani discussed the calendar in a follow-up article in 1994, he mentioned that there was no agreement on the date of the start of the Holocene epoch, with estimates at the time ranging between 12,700 and 10,970 years BP.^[2] Since then, scientists have improved their understanding of the Holocene on the evidence of ice cores and can now more accurately date its beginning. A consensus view was formally adopted by the IUGS in 2013, placing its start at 11,700 years before 2000 (9701 BC), about 300 years more recent than the epoch of the Holocene calendar.^[3]

Conversion

Conversion from Julian or Gregorian calendar years to the Human Era can be achieved by adding 10,000 to the AD/CE year. The present year, 2020, can be transformed into a Holocene year by adding the digit "1" before it, making it 12,020 HE. Years BC/BCE are converted by subtracting the BC/BCE year number from 10,001.

See also

• After the Development of Agriculture – calendar system that adds 8000 years to the Common Era.
• Anno Lucis – calendar system that adds 4000 years to the Common Era.
• Before Present, the notation most widely used today in scientific literature for dates in prehistory.
• Calendar reform

References

Further reading

• David Ewing Duncan (1999). The Calendar. pp. 331–332. ISBN 978-1-85702-979-6.
• Duncan Steel (2000). Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar. John Wiley and Sons. pp. 149–151. ISBN 978-0-471-29827-4.
• Günther A. Wagner (1998). Age Determination of Young Rocks and Artifacts: Physical and Chemical Clocks in Quaternary Geology and Archeology. Springer. p. 48. ISBN 978-3-540-63436-2.

Videos

• A New History for Humanity – The Human Era on YouTube, video explaining the Holocene Calendar by Kurzgesagt
• Human Era Complete on YouTube by Aquarius Risen, video explaining the benefits of the Holocene calendar and how to convert Gregorian to Holocene years
• Holocene Epoch - Holocene Calendar on YouTube, Overview of historical dates with holocene years

External links

• "News and comment", Geology Today, 20/3 (2004) 89–96.
• Timeline of World History
• Geologic TimeScale Foundation: GSSP Table, engineering.purdue.edu