Information about Holocene calendar

"H.E." redirects here. For other uses of H.E., see He (disambiguation).

"Holocene era" redirects here. For the geological epoch, see Holocene Epoch.

The Holocene calendar, popular term for the Holocene Era count or Human Era count, uses a dating system similar to astronomical year numbering but adds 10,000, placing a zero at the start of the Human Era (HE, the beginning of human civilization) the approximation of the Holocene Epoch (HE, post Ice Age) for easier geological, archaeological, dendrochronological and historical dating. The current Gregorian year can be transformed by simply placing a 1 before it (ie: 0). The Human Era proposal was first made by Cesare Emiliani in 11993 HE. [1] [2]

Western motivation

Cesare Emiliani's proposal for a calendar reform sought to solve a number of problems with the current Gregorian Calendar, which currently serves as the commonly accepted world calendar. The issues include:

The Gregorian Calendar starts at the presumed year of the birth of Jesus Christ. This Christian aspect of the Gregorian calendar (especially the use of Before Christ and Anno Domini) can be irritating, or even offensive, to non-Christian people. http://www.religioustolerance.org/ce.htm
Biblical scholarship is virtually unanimous that the birth of Jesus Christ would actually have been a few years prior to AD 1. This makes the calendar inaccurate insofar as Christian dates are concerned.
There is no year zero as 1 BC is followed immediately by AD 1.
BC years count down when moving from past to future, thus 44 BC is after 250 BC. This makes calculating date ranges in the Holocene era across the BC/AD boundary more complicated than in the HE.

Instead, HE sets the start, the epoch, of the current era to 10,000 BC. This is a first approximation of the start of the current geologic epoch, not coincidentally called 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 around this time. All key dates in human history can then be listed using a simple increasing date scale with smaller dates always occurring before larger dates.

Gregorian conversion

Conversion to Holocene from Gregorian AD dates can be achieved by adding 10,000. BC dates are converted by subtracting the BC year from 10,001.

Events	Gregorian years	Holocene Era Human Era
Neanderthals become extinct	c. 22000 BC	c. -12000 HE or c. 12000 BHE
End of the Paleolithic Period, All continents (apart from Antarctica) inhabited, Agriculture and the domestication of animals begins, Alteration in the Earth's magnetic field occurs, Possible extinction of last close human relatives	c. 10001 BC	c. 0 HE
Earliest walled city (Jericho)	c. 8001 BC	c. 2000 HE
Possible creation of the Egyptian calendar	4242 BC	5759 HE
Probable date of the completion of the first Egyptian pyramid	2611 BC	7390 HE
Foundation of Athens	1235 BC	8764 HE
Foundation of Rome	753 BC	9248 HE
Trial of Socrates	399 BC	9602 HE
First year of anno Domini era	AD 1	10001 HE
Fall of Rome	AD 476	10476 HE
Hindu-Arabic numerals introduced to Europe	AD 1202	11202 HE
Current year	AD	0 HE
Last year of the current millennium	AD 3000	13000 HE

References

David Ewing Duncan (1999). The Calendar, 331–332. ISBN 1-85702-979-8.
Cesare Emiliani (1993). Calendar reform. Nature, 366:716.
Duncan Steel (2000). Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, pp.149-151.
Günther A. Wagner (1998). Age Determination of Young Rocks and Artifacts: Physical and Chemical Clocks in Quaternary Geology and Archeology. Springer, p48.
Timeline of World History

Astronomical year numbering is based on AD/CE year numbering, but follows normal decimal integer numbering more strictly. Thus, it has a year 0 and the years before that are designated with a minus sign '−'. The era designations AD/CE are dropped.
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Civilization (British English also civilisation) is a kind of human society or culture; specifically, a civilization is usually understood to be a complex society characterized by the practice of agriculture and settlement in cities.
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ice age is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of Earth's climate, resulting in an expansion of the continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers.
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Oceanic crust 0-20 Ma
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Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating is the method of scientific dating based on the analysis of tree-ring growth patterns. This technique was invented and developed during the 20th century originally by A. E.
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History is the study of the past, focused on human activity and leading up to the present day.^[1] More precisely, history is the continuous, systematic narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race ^[1]
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Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world. A modification of the Julian calendar, it was first proposed by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius, and was decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, for whom it was named, on 24 February 1582 via the papal bull
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Cesare Emiliani (8 December 1922 - 20 July 1995) was an Italian-American scientist, considered one of the greatest geologists and micropaleontologists of the 20th century and the founder of paleoceanography.
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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1960s 1970s 1980s - 1990s - 2000s 2010s 2020s
1990 1991 1992 - 1993 - 1994 1995 1996

Year 1993 (MCMXCIII
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A calendar reform is any significant revision of a calendar system. The term is sometimes also used for mere proposals of new calendars and changeovers from one calendar system to another.
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Jesus (8–2 BC/BCE to 29–36 AD/CE),^[2] also known as Jesus of Nazareth, is the central figure of Christianity, and is also an important figure in several other religions.
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Anno Domini (Latin: (In)The year of (Our) Lord^[1]), abbreviated as AD or A.D., defines an epoch based on the traditionally reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
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year zero does not exist in the predominant Western Gregorian calendar nor its predecessor, the Julian calendar. However, it does exist in ISO 8601:2004 and astronomical year numbering (where it is equal to the Gregorian year 1 BC) as well as in all Buddhist and Hindu calendars.
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In chronology, an epoch (or epochal date, or epochal event) means an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular era. The epoch serves as a reference point from which time is measured.
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Era may refer to:

Era, a long period of history
ERA Real Estate, also known as Electronic Realty Associates Inc.
Era (musical project), founded by Eric Levi
Era (telecommunications), the brand name of Poland's mobile phone network operator, PTC

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The geological time scale is used by geologists and other scientists to describe the timing and relationships between events that have occurred during the history of Earth.
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H. neanderthalensis

Binomial name
†Homo neanderthalensis
King, 1864

Synonyms
Palaeoanthropus neanderthalensis
H. s.
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extinction is the cessation of existence of a species or group of taxa, reducing biodiversity. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species (although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point).
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Paleolithic is a prehistoric era distinguished by the development of stone tools. It covers virtually all of humanity's time on Earth, extending from 2.5 million years ago, with the introduction of stone tools by hominids such as Homo habilis
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Earth's magnetic field (and the surface magnetic field) is approximately a magnetic dipole, with one pole near the north pole (see Magnetic North Pole) and the other near the geographic south pole (see Magnetic South Pole).
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H. floresiensis

Binomial name
†Homo floresiensis
P. Brown et al., 2004

Homo floresiensis ("Man of Flores", nicknamed Hobbit
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Holocene Calendar

Western motivation

Gregorian conversion

References

See also