BC and AD, being Latin in origin, doubtless strike some as being slightly archaic. Their religious origins--Ante Christum and Anno Domini, respectively--also tend to put some on edge. What is the answer to this thorny dilemma that nobody cares about?

The alternative is frequently to use the same general dating scheme, but to label the terms as "Before the Common Era" and "Common Era" instead. This has the advantage of retaining the letter-pair "BC" while also seeming marginally more civilised. Regardless of its origins, the BCE/CE pair has come to symbolise a more secular, tolerant, politically correct system of dating--the Jews, for instance, do not believe that Jesus was "our lord" and do not feel they should recognise him thusly.

Fair enough, but really, how does this solve anything? Ok, you've changed the name, but you're still insinuating that the "common era" is inherently tied to the birth of a single individual, or that things became radically different with said individual's birth. This is not true, of course; life +/- 100 years around the birth of Jesus was pretty much the same, and for many people--Asians, for instance; Africans, Americans--whatever changes that did occur didn't have anything to do with the Levant.

I know this tends to go well--like the silly French Revolutionary calendar--but I think it's time we had a new dating system. I would not propose replacing months and days, but I think we could change the baseline of our years. Perhaps we could have ages or epochs, for instance--AD 1066 could be Year 1 of the Norman Age, or somesuch. If this is the case, what divisions do we use? Certainly, some of them will be arbitrary--but then, so is the current system. Nothing wrong with a bit of tweaking.

A new baseline ought, I think, to be dated from an event of global importance or significance. I have four ideas--and hereby solicit your suggestions for others.


What else should I be considering? MAKE YOUR CASES, PEOPLE.

/a

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Vulpecula 26.05.2009 - 4h23

January 1, 4713 BC (noon GMT to be very specific) Much like 1/1/70 it has the benefit of being a dating system that is already in use, even if few people think about it or use it directly.

Galluskek 26.05.2009 - 5h04

All of those options are silly. If you want to base the zero on a point that makes sense, you must make it something universal. Basing it on a human achievement, action, or technology will make it incomprehensible to the archeologists of the future. Something that happened "recently" (today +/-3000 years), is visible from a scientific analysis of the earth, the solar system, or the galaxy at large, and will persist as a reference point for the for the next ten thousand years or more. To this end I contribute a totally arbitrary solution to this issue, the planetary alignment scenario of March 21, 1894 23:00 GMT should be defined as the first second of the first year. Knowing that the year 0 was then, and the positions of mercury, saturn and venus at the time, you could theoretically extrapolate the date with reasonable fidelity. You'd need a computer and a telescope... but if you manage to wind up 5000 years into the future, you probably have them handy. Yes it is arbitrary, but it allows for time travel plots to develop in situations where you cannot ask for the current year, cause they've all switched to my system, and if you're not using it at the time, you'll get left behind! You have no choice! Bend to my whim! Alright, sorry. I'll get serious. Why would you want to change the calender? Only a very sensitive person would object with the current system of year tracking. We picked a point, and we went from there. If people have a problem with it, they had better come up with a better argument than "'cause I'm jewish", because it is a good enough reason to break both reality and computer systems world wide. But if you must humor these touchy, touchy people: suggest something based on universal science, not "universal" human events.

Galluskek 26.05.2009 - 5h05

..because it is NOT a good enough.. Bah.

Comrade Alex 28.05.2009 - 5h46

I don't see why you need to be so pragmatic and factual about the whole deal :D There aren't really any good reasons to change the calendar, except that if something is going to be based on a completely arbitrary point in time I think it ought to be an arbitrary point of relevance to us today as opposed to the peoples of a few millenia ago. You do, however, raise a good point. Future archaeologists are not going to care about our dating system, as long as they can figure it out--witness the Maya. What this means, however, is that we should create some kind of cyclical dating system with a definite ending point, ideally coupled to an arcane and somewhat esoteric system for generating the years. For example, we have ten fingers and we really like the number six. So, the world can have 60-year epochs, which I'm sure you can find some generational sort of justification for. Perhaps it can have 60 of them. Then, we start the dating system by making 1945 or 1894 or whatever Year 3600, with 1946 being year 3599 and so on. This does not matter to archaeologists. It will, however, allow people in the future (New^2 Agers) to conclude that we knew when the world was going to end. Bonus points if the new calendar comes with prophecies. +ca

Galluskek 28.05.2009 - 6h24

Heh, prophecies. I like that quite a bit, we ought to figure out what sort of runes should go on this totally arbitrary calender which will inevitably draw worshipers and tithers. "A wise man will come from the east and bring new light" or "The most demure make the best terrorists" or even "The disease ravaged north can be saved without the strength of man" Sixty year epochs are a bit short though, don't you think?

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