Alternative approaches to calendars

[nontacitare]

Merlin Stone issued an intriguing proposition. Our current dating system is based on the Christian religion (B.C./A.D.). This shapes the way we view history. For me, everything that happened B.C. is a sort of timeless jumble, and it's difficult to wrap my head around the chronology. Conversely, I tend to see A.D. as the start of the modern era

Comments

[chronarchy]

It's interesting, but how closely can we fix the development of agriculture? Is it as "close" as the +/-6 years we have for the birth of some guy in the Middle East?

I'm not really sure it matters, especially since we've never had strong dates (though I like ab urbe condita, personally, which actually covers most of known history pretty comprehensively; it's older than history itself as a discipline, at least) :) But I see the point that things "BC" appear to muddle. Heck, I can't always remember all the dates because they're freakin' backwards.

[nontacitare]

Dates here are approximate. It's currently believed that agriculture is roughly 10,000 years old, and for the sake of simplicity, I set Jesus' birth 2,013 years ago, even though we don't have a precise date for that either. For that matter, the BC/AD calendar in use today only dates back to the sixth century A.D.

Mostly this was just a fun mental exercise for me. I doubt that we'll be changing calendars any time soon. But creating this timeline really helped me change my perspective on history, and on the time elapsed between events.

Personally, I don't think a calendar based on the founding of Rome (ab urbe condita) would be much different for me than B.C./A.D. The agricultural calendar helped show me just how old (roughly) human civilization really is.