I happened to read an article about Kim Jong-Un today that mentioned that his exact date of birth is not precisely known. This of course is more a function of the secrecy of North Korea than anything else, but it got me thinking about the precision of dates in history.
With that in mind, I was wondering what is the earliest event for which we know precisely the date on which it took place? The first one that comes to my mind is the assassination of Caesar, which took place on 15 March in 44 BC (the Ides of March).
I imagine there must be some older examples out there, but am not enough of a historian to know what they are.
Eclipse of Thales. 28th May 585 BC. Stopped a battle between the Medes and Lydians.
Solar and Lunar eclipses (if reported) can establish date, time and location to fairly accurate degrees. There are other astronomical phenomena which can also do this, (Babylonian astronomers record relate the days before and after Alexanders victory at Gugamela, for instance) but eclipses are both easy to locate and be reported by laymen.
Except that the idea of “stopping a battle” and in fact the entire war which had run 6 years already, doesn’t seem to be believable… its poorly evidenced. The account mentions the war had numerous night time battles,and a lunar eclipse lasts longer.
Mursili’s eclipse, 24 June 1312 BC - there’s a minority that puts it at 13 April 1308 BC, but there are several regional political factors that favour the earlier date. And those are the only two candidate dates.
Unless we can verify it independently, like we can with an eclipse, how can we be sure that the recorded date is accurate? Ancient historians weren’t necessarily slaves to accuracy like we expect modern historians to be.
OK. So I guess the more appropriate thing to ask would have been what is the earliest recorded date that someone posted this question at the SDMB :smack:
Fun fact. We don’t know exactly when the assassination of Julius Ceaser happened. We know it was 15th March 44BC, but there was a rather big mixup in the implementation of the Julian Calender reforms, so what was the Ides of March 44BC cannot be stated with any great accuracy.