Before Present
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
So here we are almost -70 BP in the post-Modern future. I wonder to what cause historians of a century hence will ascribe this anomaly.
From my own limited perspective it seems to relate to the concept of the Year 2000 as "The future". Then we reached it, and now it's the future, presently, and the present lays in the past: with Modern art, Contemporary furnishings, and other old-fashioned things.
But counting negatively toward the future is more fun ^_^
I've always wanted to do a sociological study that asks 1. What is the earliest year you would include in the modern era? 2. A set of questions to indicate your left/right and authoritarian/ libertarian political leanings.
It would be cool to see the results.
TIL: Used because nuclear weapons testing made carbon dating after that date unreliable.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghalayan
[2]: http://www.stratigraphy.org/index.php/ics-news-and-meetings/...
Kind of neat to think that a civilization 10 million years from now could have some clue about our level of technological development by noting the atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the geological record.
Think of archaeologists in 1000 years from now come over documents with 100 different time concepts.
B.C. and A.D. suffice, anything else is political nonsense or anti-religious propaganda.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Years
A days-as-dots representation[1] has one day precision at a thousand years BP, and since accuracy of a day or week is often possible, it was actually an issue. Wrestling with "everyone has their own odd calendar" was a pain.
[1] "History shown with days as dots - so centuries fit on a screen"'s "Days-as-dots demo" was basically an exploratory UX test piece: http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/QEt9x . The Google Books and Google Newspapers links are regrettably rotted - it was great fun to click on random days in the 1800's and 1900's and read random newspapers of that day. :/ The inset NY Tribune from the Library of Congress still works. My fuzzy impression is the google newspapers database is simply unavailable now?
In Sweden we have been discussing about what type of signs should we put up to warn for nuclear waste. Will people in thousand of years be able to understand and decide the warnings?
Same with time concepts, the future must have a sporting chance to understand what we where talking about.
You should read up on the history of the Common Era to correct your parochial misconceptions.
i think this is misleading if not a bit ethnocentric (or rather religiocentric?). the islamic, jewish and hindi calendars all have different numbered years, and presumably most others.
to turn this around, the fixation on AD and rejection of other proposals could be described as christian supremacist 'propaganda'. it 'suffices' because it accommodates to your comfort and privilege.
afaik it's origins are very well established
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini
"The Anno Domini dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus[...]"