And I assume that you also want dates in our calendar. It doesn’t help much to know that someone was born in the seventh day after the harvest moon in the twelfth year of the reign of King Ribroast III, if we don’t know when Ribroast reigned or when in the year that civilization harvested.
In which case the answer is probably one of the ancient Babylonian royalty. We can calibrate their calendar using their detailed astronomical observations of Venus.
And in 1,000 BC they would have worried about the year 999 problem, when the number of digits in the year went down by one.
But seriously, even around 1,000 B.C., for kings and emperors in major dynasties we are guessing at years when they reigned, let alone when they were born (which would have been a much less important event).
I have to ask because this is GQ and you didn’t use a smilie. This is a whoosh, right? You’re saying this because somebody put those dates into the first line on Wiki?
There have to be 10,000 dates given and none of them are validated.
Assuming you want day/month/year instead of just year, Julius Caesar was born on the 13th day of Quintilis, the 5th month of the Roman calendar. (Roman years began in March and their fifth month is now our 7th month and is July for obvious reasons) in 100 BC and died 15 March 44 BC, both of which are fairly well documented. The years of his birth and death in Roman calculation would have been around 653 and 709 Ab urbe condita, though exactly how the years was figured is complicated and not all sources agree (and they weren’t used that much except ceremonially anyway).
I’m sure there are earlier ones but we’ve set the bar as at least 2054 years ago.
OK, I just did some more digging on the Babylonian question. The detailed observations of Venus began under the reign of Ammisaduqa, 1582-1562 BC, which would probably mean that the dates of birth and death of his son, Samsu-Ditana (1626-1595 BC), would be the earliest that could be pinned down. But I’m having a hard time finding more information (the Wikipedia article on him is a stub).