Holocene Calendar

[Cobra!]

I was watching (or rather listening to) a video with Vsauce's Michael Stevens about time and how we measure it.
The topic of calendars came up, and Michael brought up something called the Holocene Calendar or "Human Era Calendar". Which is a calendar that seemed to have been created in 1993 (11993 HE)

Basically, they add 10,000 to the Gregorian year, and that's to account for when human civilisation began. This would make this year 12026 HE. (HE is used to indicate when said calendar is used)
I've seen people debate how accurate this is and some people say it may be 2000 years off, but it appears we don't know for sure, and 10000 seems to be a good number to settle on as it makes adapting from Gregorian very easy, just add a 1 to the start of the number!

This seems like such a simple change but it makes a whole load of sense to me! It just feels very arbitrary to base the current year off of someone who may or may not have actually existed (or that he was even born the year people claim he was!), when basing it off when human discovered farming and stopped being hunter gatherers feels a lot more logical.

I've been obsessed with this calendar more than I probably should since I saw that video and I've even adopted the calendar for my personal blog where I display the HE year besides CE.

It's also helped with my axiety/depression over time passing as it makes the past feel much closer, if that makes sense.

What do you guys think of this? Should we start adopting this in more spaces? Why or why not?

[Melooon]

I enjoyed that podcast, but Iv always been into time as a subject! I think my issue with the year 12026 is mainly that its kinda hard to parse mentally since its a big number.

You could solve that by inverting the rollover, for example, if we know 2026 is always gonna be 12026, then whats the point of saying 12026 HE? We may as well just say 2026, but then roll it backwards in BC e.g. 2026 = 12026, but 2000 BC = 8000 HE -I know that's missing the point of being about creating a feeling of deep time continuation, but it is neater

ANYWAY, I'm all for alternative year counting; in school me and a friend used to insist on writing the year based on the age of the earth (e.g. its currently 4,567,002,026 - but it was a pain to write  )

[Cobra!]

I enjoyed that podcast, but Iv always been into time as a subject! I think my issue with the year 12026 is mainly that its kinda hard to parse mentally since its a big number.

You mean in terms of pronunciation? Well prior to the year 2000 CD / 12000 HE I can see your point, I'm still pronouncing it as "Two thousand and twenty X", so I'd simply have to change the "Two" to "Twelve".

I've thought about how you pronounce the years where every digit is above 0, like in the 20th century CE (or 120th century HE?). Closest I've gotten to something that sounds "normal" is "One Ninteen Nintey Four" for example.

ANYWAY, I'm all for alternative year counting; in school me and a friend used to insist on writing the year based on the age of the earth (e.g. its currently 4,567,002,026 - but it was a pain to write  )

That gets me thinking. What if we counted all of human history, not just civilised history?
I did a quick search on English Wikipedia and it seems homosapiens have been around for at least 60k-160k years. (Though there's no source)
If we went with the further value, that would make it the year 162,026? ("Sixteen Twenty Twenty Six"?)

[kurohaato]

I see the human era pop up once a year whenever Kurzgesagt releases their yearly calendar. I always think they look gorgeous but I never use a calendar, physical or digital. They did an explainer video on the subject a few years ago:

When Time Became History - The Human Era

That gets me thinking. What if we counted all of human history, not just civilised history?
I did a quick search on English Wikipedia and it seems homosapiens have been around for at least 60k-160k years. (Though there's no source)
If we went with the further value, that would make it the year 162,026? ("Sixteen Twenty Twenty Six"?)

That really puts things in perspective! Mammal species survive a million years on average (source). In an 8th of that time we convinced rocks to think, made miniature suns to use their energy, and systematically wiped out a disease that's followed us around since we've been human. I might be a little biased but humans are pretty cool.

[lotus_start]

I see the human era pop up once a year whenever Kurzgesagt releases their yearly calendar. I always think they look gorgeous but I never use a calendar, physical or digital. They did an explainer video on the subject a few years ago:

When Time Became History - The Human Era

That really puts things in perspective! Mammal species survive a million years on average (source). In an 8th of that time we convinced rocks to think, made miniature suns to use their energy, and systematically wiped out a disease that's followed us around since we've been human. I might be a little biased but humans are pretty cool.

omg! i finally see other people talking about holocene time, i've been using that system personally ever since i was a kid. and it's the exact same video that got me into it, it's so cool :D humans are pretty amazing if you think about it. we've done all this stuff and when you put us in a longer frame of reference, it makes you realize how long we've really existed. isn't that something?

and @Melooon yeah the huge frame of time can be overwhelming at first, but i think that's the charm. because when you see 3000 BCE that doesn't mean much, but when you put it as 7001 HE and today being 12,026 HE, that makes you realize: DANG it's been a long time! reminds me i should probably implement this into my online journal or something XD

[Cobra!]

yeah the huge frame of time can be overwhelming at first, but i think that's the charm. because when you see 3000 BCE that doesn't mean much, but when you put it as 7001 HE and today being 12,026 HE, that makes you realize: DANG it's been a long time!

I think it also puts into perspective how long the earth has really been around, and by extension the universe.
12,000 years of recorded history is incredibly long!
160,000+ years of humans existing is over ten times as long as that!

…And humans have only been around for a very small fraction of all of history. Someone said that if all of the earth’s existence was condensed into an hour, humans would be the last 10 seconds.

That’s actually mind blowing, and even still, the universe has been around for even longer…

Really makes you feel small and insignificant in the grander scheme of things.

What’s even more amazing is what we know what we know about pre-historic times because fossilised artifacts from that time somehow remained, after millions of years. That’s amazing.

But they say after so long after we’re all gone, there will be no evidence of our existence. Makes me wonder if there had been any advanced civilisation before us, but because no evidence remains, we had no idea about it.

And to think this realisation started by adding a 1 to the current Gregorian year.

reminds me i should probably implement this into my online journal or something XD

That’s pretty trivial to do. I use jekyll to make my blog, which doesn’t support holocene times, and I tried to look all over figuring out algorithms to convert the year until I realised I can just add a “1” before the year manually.