Recently Richard Dawkins (the well known evolutionary biologist and critic of Creationism and Intelligent Design) suggested that it is time to update the dates in calendars and to introduce a new way of numbering years. He suggested that the first year in the calendar should not be based on the birth of Jesus Christ (as it is at the moment), but should be based on the start of the current geological era. The current geological era is the Holocene era and started about 12,000 years ago.
In fact, this is not a new idea. Cesare Emiliani first proposed in the 1990's that the Holocene calendar could solve a number of problems associated with the existing Gregorian Calendar's method of numbering the years.
The Gregorian Calendar
The Gregorian Calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 to remedy a problem with the older Julian calender. It did not reflect the fact that the Earth takes 365.25 days to orbit the Sun and not 365. Pope Gregory did not specifically set the start of the calendar to be the year known as "1 AD". That was done by Abbot Dionysius Exiguss in 565 AD (after a request by Pope John I). And that's the way it has stood since that time.
The Problems with the Gregorian Calendar
The Gregorian Calendar works well as a method of synchronising the position of the Earth in its journey around the Sun with the day-to-day calendar. It can be summarized in an old rhyme: 30 days have September, April, June and November; All the rest have 31 except February which has 28 and 29 each leap year.
The problems start occurring when one considers that starting point - 1 AD. Emiliani raises a number of objections to using 1 AD as the first year in the calendar:
- 1 AD (or 1 Anno Domini) is a religious term rather than a scientific one and is an abbreviation of "anni Domini nostri Jesu Christi" coined by Abbot Dionysius Exiguss and is translated as "In the year of our Lord Jesus Christ". However, there are a few billion people who are not Christian and may find the term offensive;
- There is no year zero. The current era starts in 1 AD and the previous one starts in 1 BC (or "Before Christ"). This may be because the start of the calendar was fixed in 565 AD but zero was not used in Europe for another 1,000 years;
- The numbering system can be confusing because both era count upwards. For example, 50 AD comes before 100 AD but 100 BC comes before 50 BC;
- The actual birth date of Jesus Christ is unknown (it is currently thought to be somewhere between 4 and 12 AD).
Emiliani suggested that these problems could be overcome by using the Holocene Calendar
The Holocene Calendar
The Holocene era began about 12,000 years ago and marks:
- The end if the last Ice Age;
- The start of Human Civilization;
- The introduction of agriculture.
Fortunately, the conversion from AD to HE (Holocene Era) is very simple:
For example:
The birth of Jesus Christ then occurs in the year 10001 HE.
Incorporating the Holocene Calendar into a Web Page
The ease in which anyone can convert AD dates into HE makes programming with HE dates very simple. For example the web site developer can easily add a Holocene date to a web page:
This script takes the current date and adds 10,000 years to it. And so, rather than displaying the date with reference to the birth of any individual, it displays the date with reference to the birth of civilization.
Mark Alexander Bain - Mark Alexander Bain is a writer, Mo Bro and consultant for all aspects of software development at dsquared. He has also written regularly ...
