sense of time: Anthrograph calendar
It's all about making sense of the world. This whole schtick with reading and pondering and writing. Normally I'd skip the writing, but I haven't quite finished my year-long experiment on that part. Anyway, as I've mentioned before, I want a new year-system that's less complicated. I don't mind so much the month/day system that we have, but the year-system does annoy me.
1) Currently, there is no year zero... and that leaves the computer programmer in me just aghast. 2) Then there's the problem of notation that's changed over the years to make the system more palatable to non-Catholics. Anno domini gave way to CE, which itself could mean Christian Era, Common Era, or Current Era. 3) Then there's the additional notational problem of prefix/postfix notation. For instance, it is currently year "AD 2008" but also "2008 CE". 4) Add the backwards-but-positive numbering for "BCE" years into the scheme, and the whole thing just annoys me to no end.
I earlier proposed an "RHH" (Recorded Human History) method instead. Upon googling, however, I discovered that a similar method has already been proposed, the Holocene calendar. I understand the desire to fix the calendar against a geologic scale, but it still seems rather arbitrary to me. I mean, the planet is changing very quickly these days, so is it about time to change the zero date and renumber the whole thing again? I'd rather have a single point of history, a mark which will not be repeated later, as the origin. I still prefer my idea of using human writing as the origin. Time-keeping is for humans, and it seems like the time system should mark human interests rather than geologic interests.
Granted, we don't know an exact date for this first event of writing, so there's some significant "fudge factor" involved. It's always possible that archeology will eventually find an older sample, so the first instance of known recorded communication might shift earlier into the timeline. But I'm willing to accept that risk in favor of a year-system that makes much better sense in terms of human development.
So, I hereby propose the Anthrograph calendar (from Greek words meaning 'human writing'... I think). This calendar does have a zero year, and it is placed (somewhat arbitrarily) 4001 years prior to the Gregorian year 1. Previous years are numbered with a negative sign, so proto-writing and cave paintings could both be accounted for in "negative years" from this proposed point of origin. All "positive years" would occur in a time of human history when true writing was happening.
I'm still pondering monthly calendar reforms, but I don't know that I'll ever settle on a solution to propose for that problem. It is much more complex than just the years. Wikipedia has a good summary of the troubles with reform of that kind of calendar.
So, for now...
Hello to everyone, this fine August 17 Sunday morning of the year 6008.
:)
p.s. I notice that "anthrograph calendar" returns zero entries at google, so apparently I really have created something new. (Or, at minimum, a new name.) Yay!
p.p.s. I recommend pronouncing the R.H.H. as "ree". As in "the year 6008 /ree/". That's short for "re"corded, with not just one but two silent Hs afterwards. *laugh*
1) Currently, there is no year zero... and that leaves the computer programmer in me just aghast. 2) Then there's the problem of notation that's changed over the years to make the system more palatable to non-Catholics. Anno domini gave way to CE, which itself could mean Christian Era, Common Era, or Current Era. 3) Then there's the additional notational problem of prefix/postfix notation. For instance, it is currently year "AD 2008" but also "2008 CE". 4) Add the backwards-but-positive numbering for "BCE" years into the scheme, and the whole thing just annoys me to no end.
I earlier proposed an "RHH" (Recorded Human History) method instead. Upon googling, however, I discovered that a similar method has already been proposed, the Holocene calendar. I understand the desire to fix the calendar against a geologic scale, but it still seems rather arbitrary to me. I mean, the planet is changing very quickly these days, so is it about time to change the zero date and renumber the whole thing again? I'd rather have a single point of history, a mark which will not be repeated later, as the origin. I still prefer my idea of using human writing as the origin. Time-keeping is for humans, and it seems like the time system should mark human interests rather than geologic interests.
Granted, we don't know an exact date for this first event of writing, so there's some significant "fudge factor" involved. It's always possible that archeology will eventually find an older sample, so the first instance of known recorded communication might shift earlier into the timeline. But I'm willing to accept that risk in favor of a year-system that makes much better sense in terms of human development.
So, I hereby propose the Anthrograph calendar (from Greek words meaning 'human writing'... I think). This calendar does have a zero year, and it is placed (somewhat arbitrarily) 4001 years prior to the Gregorian year 1. Previous years are numbered with a negative sign, so proto-writing and cave paintings could both be accounted for in "negative years" from this proposed point of origin. All "positive years" would occur in a time of human history when true writing was happening.
I'm still pondering monthly calendar reforms, but I don't know that I'll ever settle on a solution to propose for that problem. It is much more complex than just the years. Wikipedia has a good summary of the troubles with reform of that kind of calendar.
So, for now...
Hello to everyone, this fine August 17 Sunday morning of the year 6008.
:)
p.s. I notice that "anthrograph calendar" returns zero entries at google, so apparently I really have created something new. (Or, at minimum, a new name.) Yay!
p.p.s. I recommend pronouncing the R.H.H. as "ree". As in "the year 6008 /ree/". That's short for "re"corded, with not just one but two silent Hs afterwards. *laugh*