Starting a new calendar

Great Debates
1

Well, this is possibly IMHOish, as I doubt my actual question is going to spark a lot of serious debate, but it touches on enough controversial subjects that I figured I’d post it here.

Anyways, last week, in a thread I’ve now forgotten, there was some talk of why people use BCE/CE rather than BC/AD. The reason being that for those who are not Christian or who are but favor a secular method of numbering years it’s a handy way to use the common date system while stripping out some of its religiousness. Which is all well and good, but it seems to me a rather half-hearted measure. I mean, whether or not you use BC/AD the years are still numbered from the supposed birth of JC (more or less).

So, I was thinking of asking whether or not we should change our calendar so that our years are not numbered from some religious event, which would have been very GDish. But, after thinking about it for a little bit, I just couldn’t see anyone seriously advocating that (yes, I realize within the first ten response there will be a post from someone doing just that). Sure, everything else being equal, it might not be a bad idea, and I’m sure quite a few people would favor it (just as there would be those who wouldn’t), but practically speaking it would be a whole lot of expense and trouble for little gain. Yes, it was done in the past, the switch from the Roman system of counting from the founding of the city to our present one, but the costs involved then were miniscule compared to what it would take now, I suspect. So, I came to the conclusion there wasn’t much to debate there.

However, while thinking about it, I wondered: if we’re not going to count years from the birth of JC, what would we count them from? I mean, any choice of an event to start counting from is incredibly arbitrary, and bound to piss some people off. Which will hopefully make this a fun topic to discuss. So, how about it? Let’s say sometime in the near future the US has decided that expense be damned (Al Gore must be president) we’re going to start using a new calendar system, and you somehow managed to get put in charge of choosing a new year one (or year zero, if you prefer). When is it (in the current system’s chronology) and what does it commerate? Or would you do like the french revolutionaries and declare the present as year one? Oh, and assuming you’re not going to start with the Big Bang as your event, what terms would you use to replace BC/AD and seperate the years before year one from the years after it (unless you prefer the idea of negative years)? And if you like the current system and want to pick JC’s birth all over again, feel free, but I’d suggest you take advantage of our increased knowledge and move year one closer to the year he was actually born in (currently considered to be between 6 and 4 BC, if I’m not mistaken).

P.S. I’m aware that I’m using the wrong word, technically speaking. A calendar is a timekeeping system that devides up a year into various other units of time (e.g. months, weeks, etc.), not a system for numbering years. However, I’m not exactly sure what the right word for that would be (chronology?), so I used calendar.

2

The way you have the OP written, it would be the United States creating this new dating system.* If this is the case–we do it for our benefit only–then the logical place for Year Zero** is 1776.

However, if this is going to be a worldwide system, Year Zero should probably be 1945–the year World War II ended and the modern era arguably started.

*It’s a dating system, rather than a calendar as such. Yeah, I know, “dating system” sounds like a prepared plan on how to find women.

**I’m sick and tired of people who don’t know when centuries and millenia change–with a Year Zero the rollovers are in a year with a “0” on the end, and we won’t have half the population unable to grasp that current rollovers come in a year ending in “1.”

3

I would use a year zero and negative numbers because it makes calculations of time intervals easier: year of first event - year of second event = years between events. I would also simplify things by putting the year zero fairly far back; we don’t know a lot of specific years for events when you get back far enough, so important dates would be simple positive numbers.

A reasonable choice for year zero seems to me to be the first invention of writing. This is also the dividing line that historians have taken as the division between “history” and “prehistory”. It is approximately 3150 B.C. in the present calendar.

Hijack:
While we’re at it, I would regularize the calendar. There would be 13 months, each of exactly four weeks each, the weeks being seven days each.
So 13 months of 28 days each is 364 days. The extra day would be the first day of each year, called “New Year’s Day”, and will be a day unto itself: not associated with a day of any week or month. It would be a universal, secular holiday. Every four years, leap day would come at the end of the year, so the leap day/New Year’s day doublet would be a holiday pair. I would also put New Year’s day on the winter solstice.

This would have the advantage that it is a more sensible version of the solar calendar, and conversions to the lunar calendar are far easier, too, because of the 28 day months. The lunar period is 27.3 days, so every three months the lunar cycle is offset to the current monthly date by two less days. Simple.

4

APB9999 just posted my thoughts on this topic ( damnit - too slow ).
Another benefit of this calender would be that every month would start on the same day. I would propose that the first day be called Monday, at least in English. In fact, every date would fall on the same weekday every year. The 4th of July, for instance, would always be on Thursday ( can you say 4 day weekend? ).

I gotta go with MysterEcks on 1945CE as the 0 year. I would prefer the equinox to the solstice as New Years Day.

5

Well… the Japanese already have a different system. It’s based upon the dates of an emperors dynasty. They have a lot of different periods instead of the simple divisions we are so use to.
But if you want a universal date that everyone can relate to (at least in what we consider to be “the west”) stick with Jesus’s circumcision, no matter how you’re going to call it. =]

Of course this is just if we’re talking about human history. If you want to get into scientific history, one should have some sort of sliding scale.

6

How about this: We regularize the calendar as has been proposed and we make our time metric. The system outlined on this page seems workable: http://www.metrictime.org/ I think it would be a great improvement over the current mode that is a strange mix of base-60, base-10, base-12 (unless you’re like me and work to a 24-hour clock), and base-24. As to when the calender system should be started, I vote for putting the zero as far back as possible. I tend to agree with APB9999 as having a more universally human starting date would be in everyone’s interest. However, I would be interested to know on who’s authority the ‘dividing line between history and prehistory’ was set at 3150 B.C. The year seems oddly precise for anthropology/archaeology.

7

Incidentally, Amok, another reason some Christians use BCE/CE rather than BC/AD is precisely because most scholars believe Jesus was born between 6 and 4 BCE.

8

(source : http://www.metrictime.org/)

I think it might be best to avoid a number system advocated by proponents that believe there was such a year as 0 BC.

9

It would probably be best to set the year 0 sufficiently far back that any historical or proto-historical date were a positive number. My vote is for the flooding of the Black Sea, c. 5600 BCE. With tree-ring dating from submerged trees, it should be possible to get the date down to the exact year. This event also has the advantage of being one of the most important events of the past 2K years.

Bill

10

In the above post, please replace 2K with 10K.

Bill

11

I hereby move that we base our calendar upon the birth of the most important person in Earth’s history. Who’s that, you ask? Why Cecil, of course.

Since he started fighting ignorance in 1973, I hereby move that we start the calendar at that point. That would make this year 28C.

:}

Zev Steinhardt

12

Derleth, The date (3150 BC) isn’t perfectly precise. Obviously some guy didn’t wake up one day and start writing. But the earliest examples of writing are, I believe, from about that time. As for the authority to set the starting date of history, no one has it. It’s just that a sort of consensus has arisen among most historians that the appearance of writing is a reasonable dividing line, and most of them, as I understand it, go by that . It’s kind of like the fall of Rome: a long gradual process with no clear beginning or end. But it is convenient to set some date anyway, just to organize the knowledge. So 476 has been adopted. In this year the Goths (under Odoacer) conquered the city, but it was not the first or last time Rome had been taken. It’s just a convenient event, and anyone is free to argue for a different one. Same with the beginning of “history”.

Generally, it would be next to impossible to get the world to adopt a new calendar wholesale; the current one is too well entrenched. However, I would nevertheless try to keep a system as close as possible to what we’re used to, so as to make the change easier. Thus, to regularize the calendar: maintain a seven day week, months of 28 days (not too different from the current length of a month), only one extra month. The names of the months should be kept for the first twelve months, the days of the week, and so on. This is why I would put New Year’s Day on the winter solstice rather than the vernal equinox (which might make more sense): it’s a smaller change from what we have now.

Personally, when the revolution comes, I would install the new calendar only, and leave the metric timekeeping to succeeding generations. People would never accept it now, it’s too much change from what they’re used to.
You know, when you get right down to it, there’s no reason we can’t ALL use GMT. Sure, the sun would be overhead at five o’clock rather than 12 o’clock, but so what? What do we care which number it is , as long as it is consistent? We (in Boston) would all go to work for 2pm and knock off at 10 pm. The new day would start for us at 5am. Time zones would merely be to describe what time people started work in the morning (we would still want to time our activities to the sun, but what specific numbers we ascribe to the daylight hours are of course arbitrary). As the world becomes more integrated, this would have advantages.

But people would never accept it. The sun has to be overhead at noon, damnit! My daddy did it that way, his daddy did it that way, and his daddy did it that way! Anything else is an affront to God, The Flag, and the Sanctity of Womanhood!

13

Astronomers use the Julian Date, which simply counts days since January 1, 4713 B.C., a date which was chosen fairly arbitarily. E.g. Today (Thursday, Aug 2, 2000) is JD2451759.

Writing programs that convert from Gregorian dates to JD seems to be a favorite assignment in programming classes, so if you just type “Julian Date Converter” into a search engine, you’ll find about a million online calculators.

On the upside, it’s very easy to find out how many days have passed from one JD to another–just subtract. (This is why astronomers are fond of it.)

On the downside, there aren’t any months keeping in sync with the seasons.

On the upside, no leapdays!

It’s possibly named for another “JC” (as Amok put it)–this time, though, Julius Caesar Scaliger, father of Joseph Scaliger, who invented the system in 1583.

14

OP: *P.S. I’m aware that I’m using the wrong word, technically speaking. A calendar is a timekeeping system that devides up a year into various other units of time (e.g. months, weeks, etc.), not a system for numbering years. However, I’m not exactly sure what the right word for that would be (chronology?), so I used calendar. *

The word for a sequence of years counted from a standard zero point is “era”—that’s what the “E” stands for in “CE” and “BCE”. The word for the zero point of an era is “epoch.”

15

Well, I phrased the OP to include just the US for a couple of reasons, but I probably should have done the world instead, as I think that makes the question more interesting. Not all of the world currently uses the western system, so if the purpose of the change is to move from an era with a religious epoch to one with a secular epoch, then not everyone would necessarily need to change (of course, some of the other systems also count from a religious event, such as the arab one, IIRC, but I didn’t want to complicate matters too much). And also, it wasn’t clear to me exactly who would have the authority to impose a new system on the international scene. The UN would be the most likely choice, though I’m not sure that they have the de jure power to do it (I suppose I could research that, but I probably won’t), but even if they did, they certainly don’t have the de facto power to do so, if key countries objected.

However, a new era to be used world-wide could be decided by international treaty, just as the time zones and GMT once were. So, let’s say this is an idea whose time has come, an international conference is held to design a new dating system, and we somehow (perhaps we’re all relatives of Kofi Annan) got chosen to pick a new epoch, as well as the other issues I outlined in the OP.

As for the date of year zero (and I agree on year zero rather than year one), I’m not so sure… If it was going to be just for the US, I’d have to agree with MysterEcks that 1776 would be the best choice, but when it comes to the world it’s not as clear to me. I’m not sure that 1945 is going to stand out to history any more than say, 1918, 1871, or 1815. Say what you will about Jesus, but his existance and teachings (or his existance and Paul’s teachings) had a major effect on the world, and are still influential today. Hmm… Perhaps we should go with zev’s idea, since if anyone will be thought well of 1500 years from now, it would have to be Cecil.

I do sort of like the idea of putting year zero fairly far back so that all or almost all of history falls within the positive era. Even so, I’m not sure on an exact date. The beginning of agriculture, the flood of the Black Sea that Willie mentions, the beginning of writing, the founding of Ur (or whatever the first city is considered to be)… We’d have to come up with approximate years for most of those, as well.

I agree with the calendar idea APB9999 proposed, as it certainly looks better than our current one. Haven’t had a chance to check out the metric time site yet.

Kimstu and tracer: thanks for the info.

16

APB9999

Well, there is at least one major problem with your idea to regularize the calendar that I can think of.

Orthodox Jews (speaking from experience) would have a major problem with your regularized calendar. With the current calendar, we can take off Saturdays without problem. Next year, however, we’d have to take off Fridays. The following year, we’d have to switch days off to Thursday, etc. I’m sure other religious groups would have similar objections.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other issues involved as well.

Zev Steinhardt

17

What? Why would it change? Why wouldn’t you stay with Saturday? Jews don’t shift the sabbath when there’s a leap year according to the Gregorian calendar. Or, if we skip a leap year, as pope Gregory prescribed every 400 years (or whatever it is) the day of the week the sabbath is celebrated on doesn’t change, does it? For that matter, there have been several calendar changes down through the ages; If you went back in time an arbitrary multiple of seven days from next Saturday, you wouldn’t necessarily find people calling that day Saturday, would you? So what’s the beef?

18

But with regard to leap years, the cycle of the days of the week doesn’t change. You can call Monday the 29th of one month or the 1st of the next, but it will still be Monday. Tuesday will always follow it.

As to the arbitrary calendar changes…

The only one I can think of off hand is when Pope Gregory took ten days out of October 1583. However, he left the cycle of days intact.

Jews will not, however, arbitrarily shift the day we celebrate as the Sabbath because someone else arbitrarily changes the names of the days of the week. We believe that the cycle of days that currently exists has existed since the creation of the world. Every seventh day is the Sabbath, regardless of what the rest of the world decides to call it.

Zev Steinhardt

19

how about going back to AUC, the date of the founding of rome? For a 1000 years everything was dated from then, and it would cut back on the Pre dates, also.

20

Oh, how about “AF” for “After Ford?”