For the Jews, the years are counted from the year of the creation of the world, so this year is 5775.
Muslims would say Year 1 is the year Mohammed emigrated from Mecca to Medina, so we are in year 1436 of the Muslim calendar.
The Mayans began their calendar in our year 3114 BC, which makes it year 5129 according to their calendar; or year 3 of the "new" cycle.
The Chinese calendar, legend has it, was created in the year 2637 BCE (according to the Gregorian Calendar) which makes this year 4713 of the Chinese calendar.
Prior to the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, the Western world used the Julian Calendar to mark the passage of time, with year 1 being the year of the founding of Rome.
In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull decreeing that, because errors of the Julian Calendar had crept in, 11 days should be dropped from the calendar, he (or his peeps) shall realignd the calendar with the equinoxes and solstices, and then did some bible generation-counting mumbo-jumbo and decreed that Year 1 would be the year Christ was born, with BC and AD delineating before and after this moment.
(Nowadays, the scholarly community has been moving away from the AD/BC delineation to BCE and CE (Before Common Era and Common Era), but you may as well keep the AD/BC markers because Year 1 hasn't moved. #petpeeve)
We are clearly in a different era than that of our ancestors, medieval or ancient. This is an age of modernism, of science, and of technology. I can see, in the future, restarting the calendar again when we get to the point where space travel is common, an era of interplanetary space flight, of terraforming, of colonization of other planets. I can conceive of Year 1 of the space flight era being the launch of the first manmade satellite to orbit the Earth (year 1 would be our current year 1957), or even the year we first put a human on the moon (1969). Perhaps the next era will be the era of AI, with year 1 being the year humans created the first "thinking" machine, or the year humans built the first self-replicating artificial life form, however future humans define that.
So my question is:
If YOU were put in charge of "restarting" the calendar for this era, what year would you choose as your Year 1 and why?
Muslims would say Year 1 is the year Mohammed emigrated from Mecca to Medina, so we are in year 1436 of the Muslim calendar.
The Mayans began their calendar in our year 3114 BC, which makes it year 5129 according to their calendar; or year 3 of the "new" cycle.
The Chinese calendar, legend has it, was created in the year 2637 BCE (according to the Gregorian Calendar) which makes this year 4713 of the Chinese calendar.
Prior to the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, the Western world used the Julian Calendar to mark the passage of time, with year 1 being the year of the founding of Rome.
In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull decreeing that, because errors of the Julian Calendar had crept in, 11 days should be dropped from the calendar, he (or his peeps) shall realignd the calendar with the equinoxes and solstices, and then did some bible generation-counting mumbo-jumbo and decreed that Year 1 would be the year Christ was born, with BC and AD delineating before and after this moment.
(Nowadays, the scholarly community has been moving away from the AD/BC delineation to BCE and CE (Before Common Era and Common Era), but you may as well keep the AD/BC markers because Year 1 hasn't moved. #petpeeve)
We are clearly in a different era than that of our ancestors, medieval or ancient. This is an age of modernism, of science, and of technology. I can see, in the future, restarting the calendar again when we get to the point where space travel is common, an era of interplanetary space flight, of terraforming, of colonization of other planets. I can conceive of Year 1 of the space flight era being the launch of the first manmade satellite to orbit the Earth (year 1 would be our current year 1957), or even the year we first put a human on the moon (1969). Perhaps the next era will be the era of AI, with year 1 being the year humans created the first "thinking" machine, or the year humans built the first self-replicating artificial life form, however future humans define that.
So my question is:
If YOU were put in charge of "restarting" the calendar for this era, what year would you choose as your Year 1 and why?
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
