Talk:Holocene calendar/Archive 1

Let's convert the oldest Americans
The Clovis Barrier dated as 13,500 years Before Present. Such date is clearly before (i.e., older than) the origin of Cesare's time scale. Then, the Clovis Barrier converts to 1549 years before the Holocene calendar's beginning. So it's been proposed to express such a before date as 1549 BC where now BC means Before Cesare. And the oldest American site, in Chile, would then date to some 2,500 BC. And so will many other pre Clovis-Barrier sites. Jclerman 16:09, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * We shouldn't confuse historical dating (1066, Battle of Hastings) with geological or paleontological dating (65 MYA, Cretaceous-boundary event). The latter is conventionally represented in "years ago" or "years before present" since it is tedious to add and subtract the 2006 year offset and, in any case, leads to false accuracy (dating the Clovis Barrier to 1549 BHE implies it can be dated +/- 1 year which is obviously not the case. Using 13,500 YA, implies an accuracy of around a century which is much more reasonable).


 * Or just use PE (Pleistocene Era.) Problem solved. Zazaban 05:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * There's an apocryphal tale that a curator at the Museum of Natural History in London used to go around telling visitors that a particular dinosaur skeleton was 75 million and six years old. When asked how he could be so precise, he replied that when he started at the museum, he was told it was 75 million years old. And since he'd been working there for six years...--Oscar Bravo 12:13, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The offset is not 2006. See definition of Before Present as used in dating.
 * Dates are given with a stated +/-. Their precision is not left to interpretation of the number of significant figures, for a good reason.
 * That story might be apocryphal, but I witnessed many similar oral and written interpretations when handing out lab results to archaeo- and paleo-experts.
 * Jclerman 03:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

removed AfD
i have removed AfD for this article because the Holocene Calendar has been struck from the list for discussion on the deletion talk page. this article was lumped in with a slew of other reform calendars and the consensus is now to focus on the symmetry454 reform instead.Some thing 19:32, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

No Sense
"Holocene Calendar" is stil a Cristian-based Calendar. Why bother?
 * Sadly, because Cesare couldn't calculate time intervals across the AD/BC divide. He show it in a blunder he made in an article in Nature. Jclerman 20:58, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

astronomical year numbering has a year 0, see it in the wikipedia, emiliani's system has no year 0
and you don't add 1 Jclerman 22:50, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

== The Holocene calendar or Jōmon calendar (Japan) uses a dating system almost identical to astronomical year numbering but adds 10,000, placing year zero at the beginning of the Holocene Epoch (HE) or J ==

Incorrect statement about year zero. Jclerman 22:56, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Years of today are transformed by simply adding 1 before the year (ie: 12007).

 * 1. Such operation is not an addition.


 * 2. It makes no sense for years AD 1 to AD 999.


 * Jclerman 22:59, 26 May 2007 (UTC)


 * it seems from what youre saying that you have not read the full article which i will quote "There is no year zero as 1 BC is followed immediately by AD 1." is listed in the 'problems of the Gregorian calendar' section that ceasar's calendar corrects. also if you look at examples of the calendar it does have a 'year zero'. and the line "Years of today are transformed by simply adding 1 before" is not a mathmatical formula it is writers trick for "years of today" not 2000 years ago. honestly i am wondering if this is an issue of mistranslation.Some thing 23:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The "year zero" is, calendrically speaking, the one that is not intercalated between AD 1 and 1 BC. "A year zero" as you intend is a problem of mistranslation between number theory (origin of counting sets) and colloquial usage. And there are many historical dates between AD 1 and AD 999 which colloquially adding 1 transforms them in 11 HE and 1999 HE. Jclerman 23:33, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
 * ok for sake of negotiation instead of using term 'the year Zero' i will use 'a year 0'. however i would like to note that the article 'astronomical year counting' says that it does have 'year 0' and links to the article 'year zero'. as for the issue of year 6 becoming year 16, please carefully read the sentance. the year 6 is NOT considered a "year of today". the point of that sentance is to show the convenience that ceasar saught. shall we say "the current year" instead of "years today" i think that remove confusion yes? Some thing 23:38, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

almost identical to astronomical year numbering
is an imprecise statement, while based on the Gregorian calendar is an exact one. Jclerman 23:17, 26 May 2007 (UTC)


 * With all do respect, the Gregorian years have NO year Zero. The Holocene Years DO Have a Zero. The Gregorian statement IS more Exact but none the less, completely WRONG.
 * Deja vu. Read above sections 1.1, 1.2, 2, and 5 to 8. In 8 notice the difference between "the year zero" and "a year zero". Jclerman 23:43, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
 * ok, sorry about all this miscommunication. i hope the last changes i've made were satisfactory. Some thing 01:40, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Homo floresiensis
if, at some point, Homo floresiensis is proven to be a homo-sapien then "Aprox. time last relatives of Humans go extinct" should probably be replaced with "aprox. beginning of the holocene epoch." or end of ice age, the 'Vela supernova' or any number of proximal events. Some thing 23:29, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

citation for 'Japanese motivation' section
Please provide a source as per WP:SOURCE for the Japanese motivation section. Thank you. Mumun 無文 20:00, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I was about to ask the same thing. I had never heard of this concerning Japan before stumbling on this page, so you really have me curious there Aria28 10:35, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
 * i have done some research into the wiki origins of the jomon info, which i added to this article from a japanese era names section. user:kurtan created both the 'jomon era' addition to the japanese era names and the holocene calendar article at around the same time. they unfortunately did not provide citations for the 'jomon era'. though their bio states that they have a master of science from tokyo, so i'm not doubting it. but kurtan hasnt edited since 4 July 2007, to clarify my request for a source. also whisper phone has had some effect on that info since their original post. i'm going to make the appropriate changes to fix the misinformation which i helped propagate.Some thing 16:29, 8 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much for your detailed explanation. I've visited the japanese era names article and they do precise that this Jomon count has not been officially recognized and is only used in academia so far, which would explain why I couldn't even find trace of this in Japanese sources on the Jomon period (I suppose they wouldn't use that count in publications meant also for the general public). I imagine that means we'll have to trust user:kurtan on this Aria28 10:28, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The Jōmon count section in Japanese era name was created by an anonymous editor 13 January 2006 (according to its history). It was tagged "citation needed" on 6 July 2007 and deleted 24 August 2007. It originally stated that it based on "scholar's notes", hence it was unpublished. By definition this is original research which is not allowed on Wikipedia. Since adequate notice has been given, I am removing it for that reason. — Joe Kress 06:05, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Negative numbers and zero vs Before Holocene Era
Are we assuming that years prior to 1 HE are numbered using a system similar to the Gregorian calendar's CE and BCE (or AD and BC) system, so that the year before 1 HE is 1 BHE and (before 1 HE) the year number decreases when going forwards in time?:

3 BHE; 2 BHE; 1 BHE; 1 HE; 2 HE

Or are they numbered using a zero and negative numbers (like how everything else in the world is generally numbered nowadays)?:

-2 HE; -1 HE; 0 HE; 1 HE; 2 HE

The Gregorian calendar's lack of zero and backwards counting for years prior to “1” are probably the greatest cause of confusion when using it, so if the calendar system is to be reformed, those contrivances seem like good candidates for removal.

Remember that these contrivances were invented in Europe before negative numbers had become commonplace there. Note also that the Holocene Era's definition of zero is intended to produce positive numbers in the vast majority of useful cases; that the Fahrenheit temperature scale's definition of zero was chosen similarly, so that everything Fahrenheit could practically measure would produce a positive number; and that temperatures on the Fahrenheit scale colder than 0 °F are always represented by negative numbers. --Greg K Nicholson 09:48, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * What before 0 HE would one need to date with a definite year? -Acjelen 15:13, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
 * the Clovis Barrier converts to 1549 years before the Holocene calendar's beginning. So it's been proposed to express such a before date as 1549 BC where now BC means Before Cesare. And the oldest American site, in Chile, would then date to some 2,500 BC. And so will many other pre Clovis-Barrier sites. Jclerman 16:28, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you have a cite for that? The name is silly, by the way, if that's what it stands for, since that makes no sense (hint: note how long ago that is). mike4ty4 00:40, 16 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Citation:
 * No sense name: pre Clovis-Barrier?
 * Jclerman 14:47, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you mean "Before Julius Caesar", Jclerman? That is an interesting alternative to "Before Christ", though an entire century early.   I still can't picture any event before 0 HE that would require a specific year designation. --- Acjelen (talk) 19:53, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Western-centric events
The "Events" table is horribly western-centric. I know this could be a minefield – has it been already? – but any objections if I replace a bunch of the Greek-Roman entries with milestones from other parts of the world, along the lines of the events picked out in the History of the world article. Something like this, additions bolded. WikiJedits (talk) 15:34, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * End of the Paleolithic Period (text as is)
 * First known farming activity, in Sumer c. 500 HE
 * Earliest walled city (Jericho)
 * First copper found in Middle East - beginning of Copper Age
 * Possible creation of the Egyptian calendar
 * Beginning of Indus Valley Civilization c. 7001 HE
 * Probable date of the completion of the first Egyptian pyramid
 * Beginning of Xia Dynasty in China
 * Foundation of Athens
 * Foundation of Rome
 * First Central American writing systems c. 400b BC 9601 HE
 * Empire of Asoka 273 BC 9728 HE
 * Imperial China (Qin dynasty) begins 221 BC  9780 HE
 * Last year of BC era
 * First year of anno Domini era
 * Fall of Rome
 * Great Zimbabwe built c. 1001  10100 HE
 * Muslim conquests begin AD 632 10632 HE
 * Hindu-Arabic numerals introduced to Europe
 * Black Death decimates Asia and Europe AD 1340s 11340s HE
 * Fall of the Inca Empire AD 1572  11572 HE
 * Second Industrial Revolution c. AD 1850  c. 11850 HE
 * First World War
 * Second World War
 * First human in space AD 1961   11961 HE
 * Current year
 * Last year of the current millennium


 * Right, no comments over a few weeks so have gone and made the changes. CheersWikiJedits (talk) 15:00, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

BC/AD to HE Conversion Chart
I propose we try to set some parameters to keep this chart from getting out of control. First the chart is too long. Its purpose is simply to give a broad example of how BC/AD dates would convert to HE. the majority of dates displayed are within the past 1000 years though the years go back 12000. I think people get the idea of how to convert to an 11000's H.E. date with just one example. A variety of global events should be included, but lets try to keep it down to 20 with the great majority of events occurring before 1BC/10000HE, considering BC negativity was one of the major reasons for the Human Era Count's creation. the first origin date is needed and the last two dates for this year and a future year should be kept. exact dates would be preferred, but as they go back in time not needed.Some thing (talk) 20:20, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

The Chart doesn't agree with the Definition.
The definition (or Conversion Factor), as pointed out by others was very poorly expressed, but we probably agree that to convert from Gregorian to Holocene we would need to add 10000 to the Gregorian; for example, we add 2008AD(Gregorian) to 10000 to get 12008 (Holocene) or, in the case of BC, we realize that 44BC is really -44AD, add that to 10000 and get 9956 (Holocene). If this is the case, then 10000BC is defined as the beginning of the Holocene Era (HE). However, the chart shows that 8000BC is the beginning of the Holocene Era. Am I missing something?Bayowolf (talk) 22:10, 16 November 2008 (UTC)Bayowolf

The chart is wrong by 2000 years for every time listed. Holocene calendar starts in 10000BC Gregorian, not 8000BC as indicated. Therefore, we are in 12008HE and not 10008HE as it suggests. Mingmasterz (talk) 01:11, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Also the years before 1AD that are whole, like 400BC are not subtracted from 10001, they are subtracted from 10000. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.196.106.95 (talk) 05:09, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Who besides originator supports HE & BHE?
Who besides originator supports this? While it would be very inconvenient to change the date in every existing published work, conversion for AD dates is fairly simple, and it could be done. Conversion for BC dates requires a considerable arithmetical operation that could be done erroneously if not done by computer. Further, what happens if we find humans were around in 978 BHE (Before Human Era) - do we change every published work again? By merely approximating the year that "humans" began, isn't this just a way of disguising the Jesus-centric era? (Btw, which definition of human is being used?) Who besides its originator supports HE & BHE?--JimWae (talk) 03:05, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

80 hits for  17 for <"holocene calendar" HC -wiki -wikipedia> 5 hits for <"holocene era" BHE -wiki -wikipedia>--JimWae (talk) 03:22, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Offense caused?
The statement non-Christian's can be offended by the use of BC/AD in calendar years was not supported by the link. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.147.143.235 (talk) 23:17, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Emiliani's letter to Nature in 1993
The References section lists this citation: "Cesare Emiliani, "Calendar Reform", Nature 366 (1993) 716." I actually got a copy of Nature (WITH MY BARE HANDS!), 1993, page 716, and it is a tidily short letter. I scanned it and have it at http://interglacial.com/temp/Emiliani_Nature_1993_letter.png. Here is the letter in its entirety, modulo my superhuman ability to make typoes...

"Calendar Reform

SIR - Jews reckon time from the biblical creation of the world (set at 3761 BC); the Romans from the founding of Rome; and the Moslems since the Hegira (AD 622). In AD 526, the Emperor Justinian introduced the current system of reckoning time from the Birth of Christ, set at 752 AUC (ad urbe condita, "since the founding of Rome") by the monk Dionysius Exiguus.

In the BC/AD system that Justinan introduced, the numbering of years is ordinal, not cardinal; there is no year zero; and the numbers increase in opposite directions (whereas time flows in the saem direction). As a result, time intervals across the BC/AD boundary cannot be calculated algebraically -- the time interval between 1.5 BC and AD 1.5 is one year, not three years. As well as being inconvenient to those who deal with history and ancient human events, the BC/AD way of reckoning years singles out an event -- the birth of Christ -- that has no significance to many civilizations.

I propose that the beginning of calendrical time could be set at the beginning of the current Julian cycle (12.00 noon Greenwich mean time, 4715 BC), established in 1582 by Joseph Scalinger and still used by astronomers. A constant -- 4,713 years -- would then have to be added to the AD dates and the BC dates would have to be subtracted from 4714 (the Scalinder equivalent to AD 1). (To simplify the arithmetic, a round unit such as 10,000 years could be added to the AD dates instead.)

Setting the birth of Christ at 25 December of the year 10,000 from the beginning of what could be appropriately called the "human era" would make the year AD 1 into the year 10,001 and the year 1 BC into the year 10,000. All BC dates would thus be subtracted from 10,001.

Setting the begining of the human era at 10,000 BC would date the first year of Scalinder's Julian period at the year 5288; the beginning of the Egyptian calendar (4241 BC) at the year 5760; the founding of Rome at 9248, the birth of Christ at 10,000, the fall of the Roman Empire at 10,476, the French Revolution at 11,789, and the present year (1993) at 11,993. I suggest that the new calendar is adopted in the year 2000 (new year 12,000).

Cesare Emiliani Department of Geological Sciences, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida 33124, USA"

But I assume he explained it in somewhat greater/grander detail elsewhere, so I'm asking around right now, with his former colleagues. I'm hoping they will have further leads about his system, from what he himself must have said elsewhere. Questions I have in my mind are: how we would notate yeras before 0 HE; complete verification that he has a 0 HE; and how he would notate (and ordinate!) that we're in the Xth century, or the Yth millennium. The man was a sly boots, he'd have thought of these within about ten minutes of deciding he liked "holocene era" instead of "cisglacial aeon" or something, Like I say, I'm asking people who would have probably gotten an earful about the HE from Dr E. -- Sean M. Burke (talk) 11:49, 30 April 2011 (UTC)


 * it could be that periods before HE were intended to use "before present" or another gelologic time scaleSome thing (talk) 20:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Table entries boldly removed
Actually, List of archaeological periods is more useful. --Pawyilee (talk) 12:48, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm NOT the one who removed the table of events as it appeared when the page was last modified on 21 October 2010 at 13:56. Good thing I saved it, as the present table is useless to me. --Pawyilee (talk) 07:08, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I've revisited this article from the one of rice and Oryza sativa where the history sections, jump back and forth between BP and BCE making it hard for my aging brain to track. If anybody knows Nick D'Aloisio personally, ask him to write an app. —Pawyilee (talk) 14:17, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Usage
How widespread is the usage of the BHE/HE system? I don't read a lot about these time periods, but most of what I have seen seems to use either some variation on years ago (million years ago-MYA, thousand years ago-TYA) and/or the Anno Domini or Common Era systems. I don't think I've ever seen BHE or HE until I saw it in the See Also section of one of the above.97.124.67.50 (talk) 21:07, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

True or False?
The article claims:

The calendar was shifted by 10 days in the 1500s to account for a discrepancy in the earlier Julian Calendar. This makes dating of events around the period of the shift tricky.
 * The shift is true. That Cesare's calendar corrects for the 10 days shift is false. Explain why it would be less tricky or the statement will be deleted. Jclerman 16:37, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This was a mistake - the HE calendar obviously contains the same shift as the Julian/Gregorian calendar. I have removed the comment.--Oscar Bravo 12:50, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I would dispute the claim that the calendar contains a ten day shift. The non-proleptic Gregorian calendar only begins in 1582, and thus contains no shift; the proleptic Gregorian calendar continues back arbitrarily and contains no shift either. Nor does the Julian calendar (proleptic or not). So it seems that no commonplace calendar contains a shift. What really happened in 1582 was not a 10 day shift in a calendar, but a shift to a different calendar. (Now, one could define a "civil" calendar, which is proleptic Julian up to 1582, and non-proleptic Gregorian thereafter, or in some jurisdictions the year is different, and indeed such a calendar has a 10 day or more shift -- but why say we are using such a beast, when we can simply say that we use a different calendar system [Julian/Gregorian] for different dates instead?) But in any case, HE is a system of chronology, not a calendar system -- it defines the numbering of years, but not the precise boundaries between the years nor the subdivisions within them. i.e. 12008 HE does not uniquely identify a region of time, without also specifying which calendar (Julian? Gregorian?), which timezone (UTC? New York local time?), which time standard (UTC, TAI?), or even which relativistic frame of reference.... although the result of any of these choices is irrelevant within a certain margin of error --SJK (talk) 10:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

There is no year zero. 1 BC is followed immediately by AD 1. This makes calculations complicated.
 * True there is no year zero. That calculations are complicated is wrong, unless the user can not add 1 when computing accross the boundary BC/AD. Explain where does the compexity reside, or the statement will be deleted Jclerman 16:42, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Combined with statement below and edited (see note below).--Oscar Bravo 12:50, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

BC years count down when moving from past to future thus 44 BC is after 250 BC. This makes counting in pre-Christian era dates difficult
 * True, the after and before stuff. Explain why it is not false that it is difficult and why it would be less difficult to deal with a transition Before Holocene Era to Holocene Era, or the statement will be deleted. Jclerman 16:50, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Is this a question? There are not as many dates before holocene era in history. Even using ab urbe condita dating would help a lot. Anyway, before holocene era we could use the Pleistocene Era and have later years with higher numbers again. The reason why Holocene Era is more useful than Neogene Era: less digits in the current year (26012006 "Neogene Era" ;-). --Hokanomono ✉ 05:36, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Replaced difficult and complicated in statements above with "more complicated than HE". To expand a little: Obviously it is possible to calculated date ranges across the BC/AD divide but it is more complicated than in the HE calendar. For example, if you were asked the question "how many years did the Han Dynasty endure?", which calculation is the easier: (1) 206 BC–AD 220 (2) 9795-10220 HE?
 * I find easier (1) than (2). In (1) I perform 206+220-1, which I can do mentally. In (2) I am confronted with the operation you quote: 9795-10220, which (a) gives a negative number as result, and (b) I can't do mentally. Jclerman 17:33, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

As regards the difficulty of Before/After Holocene; I'd go further than Hokanomono and state that there are no historical events before the commencement of the HE so there are no dates to worry about.--Oscar Bravo 12:50, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * '''I find this whole article and its comments an affront. If you are a serious scientist it is simple.  You have two choices one do not involve your scientific measure of era time with the passage of days, weeks, months.  A calendar is a calculation using astrological units of measure.  Time is calculated using the decay rate of an cesium atom in an atomic clock. For those that are not from European decent either you can continue to live in and accept this system or return to your country and if they wish to use a different system then so be it. This article is posted by a non-scientist that is not concerned with the HE but wants to force a change from A.D. and B.C. for their own bias.  The scientific  community measures heat using Kelvins.  They do not measure temperature using Kelvins for that they use Celsius or Fahrenheit.  What this article talks about is an archeological measure of an era beyond historic measure as there is no writing to specify what took place, by whom, and when.  Therefore, it is a guess at best. This makes the whole argument moot. Second, either rewrite the article with proper citation and frame of reference or delete the article.  Otherwise I will start writing what ever I want too.       comment added by Only 1 Birdman (talk • contribs) 01:53, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * IMHO I wouldn't dare making such absolute statements without the support of solid sources, or a dose of IMHO prefixes ;-) Jclerman 17:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * IMHO I wouldn't dare making such absolute statements without the support of solid sources, or a dose of IMHO prefixes ;-) Jclerman 17:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * IMHO I wouldn't dare making such absolute statements without the support of solid sources, or a dose of IMHO prefixes ;-) Jclerman 17:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

More T or F ?
<> says the article.

As an exercise apply this rule to the dates AD 5, AD 15, AD 25. They are separated by equal intervals, equal to 10.

Conversion using the rule gives 15 HE, 115 HE, 125 HE. They are separated by unequal intervals, which are 100 and 110.

Jclerman 17:27, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Ha ha ha! Good point. I've fixed it ;-)--Oscar Bravo 12:20, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, this could be easily solved in the following manner
 * 2006 AD = 12006 HE = 1-2006 HE (written in this manner to make things easier)
 * 1776 AD = 11776 HE = 1-1776 HE
 * 476 AD = 10476 HE = 1-0476 HE (AD 1 would be 1-0001)
 * 753 BC = 9248 HE =   9248 HE
 * 20,000 BC = 9999 BHE?
 * This system would minimize the transition and the prefix could even be dropped in common usage, although officially the year would stil be 12006. Also perhaps the religous people could accept the "1" prefix as keeping religous signifigance - "1" years being "years of our Lord". Wishful thinking perhaps. --Uthar Wynn v2.0 02:16, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Epoch
This edit claims "HE places its epoch to 10,001 BC"; the article previously indicated 10,000 BC. The change was reverted and then reinstated. The reason for reversion was "10,000 BC is an order of magnitude; there is no point arguing about +/- 1 year out of 10,000" and the reason for reinstatement was " As an epoch, the 10,001 BC is very not an order of magnitude."

I partially agree with the reason for the reinstatement; although 10,000 BC is only an order of magnitude estimate for the beginning of the Holocene geological epoch, there is a precise correspondence between HE years and AD/CE/BCE/BC years. What is imprecise is what the word epoch in the edit means. Does it mean the count begins 00:00 hours January 1, 0 HE (= 10,001 BC)? Does it mean the count begins 00:00 hours March 25, 0 HE? Or maybe it's 00:00 hours January 1, 1 HE (= 10,000 BC). Without access to the original paper that defines the Holocene calendar, I don't know. Maybe Cesare Emiliani left it vague, just like Dionysius Exiguus did (people still aren't sure what he meant by Incarnation, or whether he thought it occurred in 2 BC, 1 BC, or AD 1). Jc3s5h (talk) 21:58, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That's what I meant when reverting: we don't know whether 0 HE or 1 HE is considered this calendar's epoch year. Reading Emiliani's letter above, he wrote: Setting the beginning of the human era at 10,000 BC, which considers 1 HE (10,000 BC), not 0 HE (10,001 BC), as the HE epoch. Perhaps we should clarify the text… I would suggest: Instead, HE uses the "beginning of human era" as its epoch, arbitrarily defined as 10,000 BC denoted year 1 HE, so that AD 1 matches 10,001 HE. — JFG talk 23:05, 8 December 2016 (UTC)


 * ✅ – Applied proposed text to the article. — JFG talk 06:26, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Religious basis
Isn't this just as much based on Christianity as the traditional BC/AD or BCE/CE calendar? Nothing particularly noteworthy happened, that we know of at least, in the year 1 HE. It's still based on the traditional (inaccurate) date of Jesus' birth, with just an arbitrary 10,000 years added Nik42 04:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Don't argue with rationality here. The reason people want to change the system is not that the current system is biased but that it's not following THEIR bias. I'm a Discordian and for me the current year is 3173 YOLD, but I have no problem with calling it 2007 AD or p.Chr.n. or n.Chr. or whatever.
 * That there is no year zero doesn't really make a difference. Bump up all years by one and call 1 AD "0 AD" and you have the problem fixed. Most pre-modern history is chronologically doubtful anyway, so you might as well insert a year and pretend it had always been there.
 * Of course 44 BC is after 450 BC, but that problem can not be solved. Just pretend BC means "negative AD" and work from there. The only fixed point in time we could use as reference that will never require counting backwards for earlier events is the Big Bang and the jury's still out on when the hell that one was.
 * The reason 10,000 BC is considered a non-biased alternative point of reference is that it's the approximate first occurence of anything resembling modern human civilisation -- it's rather easy to see how such a tentative fact (archeology is not an accurate science, though I agree that it is unlikely we'll find any evidence for past civilisations if we haven't found it yet) is a bit risky, but at least it's not religiously biased. If you want to make it less biased (it is after all based on a biased system), add some noise and make 1 HE correspond to, say, 9,873 BC -- this is arbitrary enough to be mostly unrelated to any real or assumed historical event (though you might find one if you look hard enough).
 * Alternatively, use the present year (2007), substract an even number from it so you reach a place somewhat close to the point of reference (2007 AD - 12000 years is somewhere around 9,993 BC) and take that year as 1 HE. If nothing religious happened the present year, you got yourself an unbiased point of reference there. &mdash; Ashmodai (talk &middot; contribs) 16:21, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I know 10000 years before 1 AD is arbitrary, and that there must be a more accurate "start of the holocene" date than that, and I'd be happy to switch if we get it down to a single year. It does just reinforce the Xian system this way. JoshNarins (talk) 22:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * When it's before recorded history, we're kinda outta luck. Zazaban (talk) 23:56, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * There is a pretty large number of non-Christian/non-Western calendars and what are their starting points? That should give you an approximate date to work with. --41.151.167.139 (talk) 17:07, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Not only is the date of Jesus's birth "inaccurate", it's debatable he even lived at all. Where is the evidence (other than in the Bible) that he existed? Normally, history isn't based on a few chapters (the composition is another subject) of one religious and obviously biased book. Thus, the term "modern scholars have determined" should be changed to "some people believe". There's no reason to give them special standing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nehmo (talk • contribs) 01:10, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * By that token, there are no proofs of Julius Caesar's existence except for writings (and sculptures, etc) made by his followers and historians. Mentions by Cicero and other optimates could have been spuriously inserted by Augustus and the Julio-Claudian Emperors, for example. Further, we should also mark as opinon that the reported birth of Jesus is "less relevant" than the "start of the Holocene", since we can date no event to 1st January 10 000 BC. --Wtrmute (talk) 18:27, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Conversion table
asked to raise this issue on this talk page when reverting my removal of the table in the conversion section. I don't really agree that this is a "drastic" change. It's a lot of bytes, sure, but doesn't really make much of a difference to the article. But I'm happy to oblige.

The reason I think it ought to be removed is straightforward. It's a very large table that dominates the article. Ostensibly it's there to illustrate the conversion between AD/BC and HE, but we don't need 76 examples of adding 10,000 to a number (or 10,001 for BC dates). Two or three examples in the text would suffice.

The other problem is that the dates in the table are completely arbitrarily chosen and rather Eurocentric – which is odd in article on a calendar that's supposed to be culturally universally. They're also uncited and riddled with errors. There's really no reason to go to the effort of producing a proper sourced timeline like this in this article, and it's just asking to become stale whenever e.g. the date of the Copper Age is revised. Better to just get rid of it and go with a more sensible illustration of the conversion. Joe Roe (talk) 00:30, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I would agree that this litany of dates looks silly and drives away focus on the appropriate conversions. I would reduce it to a dozen entries, giving the reader a feel for date ranges in this calendar compared to the usual AD/CE years. Removing it entirely would probably motivate somebody to create something similar again, which would be unproductive. — JFG talk 09:21, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ — JFG talk 10:31, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that, I think that's a good solution. When I looked through the history of the page I noticed that what you mention is exactly what has happened before – I removed a similar table in 2011 (I'd completely forgotten!) and it was slowly recreated in the intervening years. If you don't mind I'll trim a few more entries that are based on inaccurate archaeological dates. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 12:52, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Table removal?
I deleted the table on June 23, 2018. Most of the entries are unsourced. None of them have an inline citation, a few of them are sourced through footnotes to equivalent information in the body of the article. I will rigorously enforce WP:V. Here is why I expect many of these items are wrong:


 * The original proposal in Nature only mentions AD and BC, it makes no mention of Julian or Gregorian. But table heading for the first column mentions Gregorian. In 10000 BC there is a difference of over 2 months between the calendars.
 * Some of the dates may be known to the day or month, and abbreviated to just the year in the table. But to get the year right, you have to know how precisely known the date is, and what calendar the date was stated in in the reliable source (so it can be converted to Gregorian if necessary).
 * The year for the founding of Rome does not agree with the AUC calendar in the Astronomical Almanac.

An additional concern is that since this table is intended to illustrate conversions, it is not helpful to choose dates that are not known to an accuracy of 1 year or better. Some of the evets, according to the unreliable Wikipedia articles they are linked to, are not known with an accuracy of 1 year or better (or there are several variants which didn't all occur in the same year).Jc3s5h (talk) 11:09, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I have restored the table, which is informative to readers per prior discussions. To answer your concerns:
 * Verifiability is easy to establish, by citing a source for the conventional start dates of various calendar eras listed. Feel free to add them.
 * The deviation of exact dates by a few months is certainly an issue, but the intent of the Holocene Calendar does not go beyond a granularity of one year, especially for ancient times. It's just a convenient way to list only positive years to document everything that was ever recorded in written history, discovered archeologically in human settlements, or dated in legend.
 * The exact date of the founding of Rome is disputed, but that is a topic for the ab urbe condita article; we use the most common accepted value here.
 * Finally, because there are few sources explicitly linking the Holocene Calendar with other calendars, several entries can only be computed without being independently sourced, which is valid per WP:CALC. — JFG talk 17:32, 23 June 2018 (UTC)


 * User:JFG wrote "Verifiability is easy to establish, by citing a source for the conventional start dates of various calendar eras listed. Feel free to add them." That's not how it works. As explained at WP:BURDEN it is the responsibility of the editor adding information to provide a reliable source. You're right about. WP:CALC; if a reliable source gave the date of an event in, for example, the Julian calendar, it would be acceptable to convert it to the Holoscene year and add it to the table. But a link to another Wikipedia article is not acceptable, nor is it acceptable to just suppose that a citation in another Wikipedia article is accurate. To add a citation to this article must read the source and confirm that it verifies the claim. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:03, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, I didn't add the table; it was here since the early days of the article; I remember trimming it because people had been adding too many random dates. Therefore I don't consider bearing the burden of documenting the traditional years of the founding of Rome or the incarnation of Jesus. I may do it, you may do it, any other editor may do it. Instead of blanking the table, the best way forward to draw attention to the issue would be to add citation needed tags next to facts that need citations, then see who's willing to help. — JFG talk 07:17, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I just added a couple citations to a reference book. Feel free to continue. — JFG talk 07:58, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

AD or CE era notation
WP:ERA states we should pick one or the other, and the article has largely used AD/BC since its creation. Does anyone else want to contribute to this matter? Arcorann (talk) 11:54, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I basically agree. Since this article is about a form of era notation, it seems reasonable to mention that CE is numerically equivalent to AD, and BCE is numerically equivalent to BC, but only when those terms first appear in the article. Otherwise use AD and BC. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:16, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * WP:IDONTLIKEIT but per WP:ERA, I have to agree.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:23, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

"12017" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 12017. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 December 18 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.  Seventyfiveyears (talk) 22:44, 18 December 2020 (UTC)