THE ERA OF HISTORY

Introduction

This site is dedicated to a certain idea that once came on my mind. It was in the year 2008. I searched the web looking for something similar to what I had just invented, but I found nothing. It is a very simple thing and it’s likely that a lot of people have had the same idea. But it looks like nobody has really paid much attention to it until now. So I have to be the first one to draw people’s attention to this thing. That’s what I created this site for.

OK, what’s it all about? As we say in Russia – it’s better to see once than to hear 100 times. Just look at the picture. You’ll get the idea.

So, this site is about some year-numbering system that I like to use when I think about the history and that I want to share with other people. First of all, I’d like to avoid any possible misunderstanding. I’ve spent much time discussing this topic on some russian forums, and I know that many people wouldn’t understand certain things. Many people go like “it’s useless, no one is going to change the system” or “do you have any idea how much it will cost to rewrite all the history books?” and so on. But it’s nothing like that. It’s not about changing anything. The Era of History is just a system that you can start using right now. You use it when you think about history. You don’t have to refrain from using Christian era in your daily life. You just look at the history from a new perspective - that’s what it’s all about.

If you don’t quite get it, let me give you an example. There is a year-numbering system called Ab Urbe Condita (AUC). This system uses the founding of the city of Rome (753 BC) as a reference point. What’s interesting is that the Romans themselves didn’t use AUC. The Romans didn’t count years within an era like we do. The dominant method of identifying Roman years in Roman times was to name the two consuls who held office that year. AUC was used only by the small number of ancient Roman historians. In fact, modern historians use AUC much more frequently than the Romans themselves did. Just think about it. Modern historians really use a year-numbering system that is different from Christian system when they think about the Roman history. Why do they do it? They do it because the Christian system is not good enough for them in that particular case. It’s not practical to count years in the reverse order. And a lot of people don’t get it. Many people tend to think that counting years in the reverse order is somehow a clever thing to do. And I get it all the time – people saying “man, you’ve had some serious troubles with math in elementary school”. In my opinion, the people who think in this way are not smart enough to understand that it’s just stupid - to count years in the reverse order. It’s not about math. It’s not about being able to understand negative numbers. Counting years in the reverse order is just a stupid and confusing thing to do. Many historians understand that. That’s why they like to use AUC.

Now let’s think about the entire history. When I first came to the idea of the Era of History, I wondered, why we didn’t have it yet. It’s just such an obvious thing. If historians use AUC for the history of Rome, why don’t they have something similar to it that can be used for the entire history? I think it’s all about traditions. Why do we use the Christian era? That’s because it’s a tradition established by some medieval people, who were not really concerned with the history. Why do some historians use AUC? That’s because it’s a tradition established by some ancient historians, who were concerned only with the Roman history. Why don’t we still use the Era of History? That’s because there is no such a tradition. So, what’s the problem? Why can’t we establish such a tradition? I think, we can. And that’s what I want to do. I want to establish a tradition of using the Era of History. In order to do so, I created this site more then a year ago. And up until now (it’s March 2010 when I write these lines) it was all in Russian. As I said, I’ve spent much time discussing this thing on the internet. During that time I faced a lot of misunderstanding. But I also know that there is a bunch of people who like the idea.

That’s it for the intro. Now I’m going to give you a more detailed picture of the new timeline. Then I will explain to you, why a timeline like this is better than the one we use now. And only after that I’ll give you the reasons why I chose the reference point the way I did. I didn’t do it at random. There is a logic behind that choice. And that logic makes the Era of History unique. If you make up your mind to get all the history into one era, I propose the best way of doing it. You can’t think of anything better. But first of all, as I said, I’ll give you some details. I just want to make sure you understand what we are talking about here.

Details

Now look at the following picture. It shows the key moments of the two timelines, Christian and historical.

A lot of people mistakenly think that there is year zero in the Christian timeline. But as you see from the picture this notion is false. There is no year zero in the Christian timeline. However, there is a moment zero, which is located between years 1 BC and 1 AD. Look at the small numbers under each timeline. These numbers represent the moments of time. You can see that the reference point of the historical timeline corresponds to the moment 4000 BC. It is not a year! It’s a moment between the years 4001 BC and 4000 BC. The year 4000 BC is the 1st year of the Era of History. Notice that if you take any of the 4000 first years of the Era of History and add to it’s number the number of the same year in the Christian system you will always get 4001. For instance, 1+4000, 2+3999, 3+3998 and so on. So, if you want to translate a year BC from one timeline to another, all you have to do is to subtract it from the number 4001. For example, Caesar was assassinated in the year 44 BC. You just apply the simple formula:

So, Caesar was assassinated in the year 3957 of history. It is much easier to translate the years of the Anno Domini era. You only have to add 4000 to the number of a year. For instance, year 1 AD becomes year 4001 of history, year 2010 AD becomes the year 6010 of history. You can also easily translate centuries and millennia from one system into another. I don’t give you the formulas, though. I think it must be obvious how to make these translations.

What’s wrong with the Christian era? What’s good about the Era of History?

So, why do we need the Era of History? What’s wrong with the Christian timeline? The main fault of the Christian timeline is that it hasn’t been specially designed to be used by historians. The Christian era was invented in the Dark Ages by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus. The guy didn’t even understand the importance of his invention. He used the Christian era only to make his Easter table. And at that time the invention of the Christian era wasn’t really important. That was the time when most people were not educated, they didn’t read books, and didn’t know the history. They didn’t even count years. They just didn’t need any year-numbering system at all. That’s why the Christian era was widely adopted only about a thousand years after it has been invented. The complete Christian era with the years BC numbered in the reverse order was adopted only in the 18th century. So, you can see that the process of invention and adoption of the Christian era was rather spontaneous. There was no any sense or purpose behind it. It wasn’t like somebody made up his mind to create a good timeline, which would represent the history in the best way possible. Nobody cared about history. Medieval people were only concerned with their religion. And they just didn’t know the history as good as we do now. For instance, the age of the pyramids of Egypt was defined only in the 20th century. Medieval people had no idea of the real “length” of the history. So they were not equipped to create a really historic timeline even if they wanted to.

Now think of this. What do we need a year-numbering system for? For recording the history, obviously. What era would be the best for this purpose? The Era of History, i.e. the era that has all the recorded history within it. Isn’t that just obvious? The system that we use now is a heritage of the Dark Ages, and we started using it very recently: some few centuries ago. Yes, we had to use some timeline in order to learn the history, and we had to establish that timeline before we had learned the actual “length” of the history. So, the first widely adopted timeline had to be randomly picked. But now, when we are aware of the “length” of the history, we can create an appropriate timeline that will give us a better representation of history.

As I said before, I’m not talking about adoption of the new timeline. I’m just telling you that a timeline like this should exist. It should exist on this site, in the books, in our minds. It’s something that you can use right now. Just like some historians use AUC when they deal with the Roman history, you can use the Era of History when you deal with the entire history. It’s just a method of arranging your knowledge of history.

The reason why we need a method like this is that the method that we use now is not good. We really suffer from the stupid Christian chronological system. I mean, in our minds we divide history into two parts without any sound reason for doing so. We feel like people BC were somehow different from the people AD. We count years BC in the reverse order, which is a stupid thing to do. And we don’t understand our real place in history. Look at the first picture on this page. The Christian era covers only about one third of the entire span of the history. We have a long history before the beginning of the Christian era. Yet subconsciously we feel like everything that happened before Christ is somehow insignificant. We perceive the history as small, while in reality it is bigger than it seems to us.

Let’s look at the way we perceive the history now. Take for instance Alexander of Macedon. The picture shows how we perceive Alexander’s place in history.

The guy lived in the 4th century BC. Every time we think about him we pay heed to the fact that he lived some several centuries before Jesus. What we really do is we take into account the part of the history which is absolutely irrelevant to Alexander. All those centuries went by after his death. For Alexander they are in future. We look at the history from a wrong perspective. And we do it all the time. When we think about ancient history we always tend to notice HOW LONG AGO this or that guy lived. That is the wrong way of looking at history. Returning to the instance of Alexander of Macedon, we don’t have to take into account all those centuries that came after his death. To understand who Alexander was and what kind of world he lived in we have to look behind him. We must take into consideration all the history that preceded him. And that’s exactly what we just miss when we use the Christian timeline. The missed part of the history is colored black on the picture. And I cut it short on the left side to show that most people don’t even have an idea of the actual span of the history.

The next picture shows how we can perceive the history if we use the Era of History.

We can see that Alexander lived in the 37th century. Looks like a big number. And it is. But it contains all the history that preceded Alexander. That part of history has nothing to do with Jesus. We don’t need to know how many years separate Alexander from Jesus. It is not significant. What is significant is how many years separate Alexander from the very beginning of the history, because that number shows us Alexander’s real place in history. To perceive the history this way you have to learn the dates of historical events in the new timeline. You have to rearrange your knowledge of history. It’s like learning a foreign language only much easier.

Why does the beginning of the Era of History correspond to the moment 4000 BC?

As I promised before, now I’m going to tell you how I chose the reference point. To make that choice we must somehow decide the beginning of the history. When did the history begin? First of all, by the history I mean only the recorded history, because identifying particular years is important only for that period of time. Everything that happened before the recorded history is prehistory. This division into history and prehistory is commonly used, but some people don’t like it for unknown reasons. They believe that the word “history” should refer to everything that happened to the humanity since our predecessors abandoned the trees or something like that. I don’t want to argue about that. And I don’t have to. There is a better solution. Those who don’t agree, that the history and the recorded history is the same thing, may think of what I call The Era of History as of The Era of Recorded History. The point is, as I said, identifying particular years is important only for the recorded history. It doesn’t matter whether you believe that the recorded history is the history itself or just a part of some “Big History”. The Era of History should include only the recorded history.

So, we are going to determine the beginning of the recorded history. There actually is a recorded historical event that can be considered the first historical event. It’s the unification of Egypt. When did it happen? We can’t tell the exact year. We can’t even tell the exact century. But we can tell the exact millennium. Egypt was unified in the late 4th millennium BC. That’s why I call that millennium the 1st millennium of history.

Some people don’t understand this approach to defining the beginning of the history. They ask me, what exactly happened in the year 4000 BC. The answer is: I don’t use that level of precision. I measure the historical time on the grand scale in millennia. Measuring history in millennia is a pretty natural thing to do. When you think about the early history you can’t be certain of anything. You can’t be precise. So, you have to use the larger measuring units. That’s what we normally do in such cases. Consider this instance. If we want to measure the distance between two cities, most probably we are going to use miles or kilometers. We are not going to use inches or millimeters. Why? Because we don’t need to be that precise. And we do it all the time. When we don’t want or can’t be precise we just use the larger units. It’s a pretty natural thing to do. In this sense I don’t invent anything new. So, I’ve just given you one good reason why we should measure the historical time in millennia. I’ll give you another still better reason a little bit later.

So, you don’t have to ask me what happened in the year 4000 BC. Instead, you should ask me what happened in the 4th millennium BC. And the answer to that would be: the history began in that millennium. And this assertion is ubiquitous. You can find it in any history book. We know that the first civilizations emerged in the 4th millennium BC. We know that writing, which defines the history itself, emerged in that very millennium. Mind you, you can’t find a historical event that preceded the emergence of writing. Everything that preceded the emergence of writing is prehistory. So, the history began in the 4th millennium BC. You can’t find anything historical in the 5th millennium BC and earlier.

The notion that the history began in the 4th millennium BC is actually a commonplace. But we are not used to pay any attention to it. That’s because we are so accustomed to the Christian chronological system that we feel like we don’t need the very concept of the beginning of history. As I know from my internet discussions, some people believe that the Christian chronological system is a good thing because the beginning of history for some unknown reasons “can’t be defined”. I showed above how we can define the beginning of history, if we use the appropriate measuring units, so, there is no such a problem. Some people go as far as to tell me that I propose an artificial division into history and prehistory. Well, in my opinion, what really is artificial is the whole BC/AD thing. I mean, the people that lived “before Christ”, they were civilized people, just like you and I. They didn’t have cars, airplanes, computers, cellphones and a lot of other things that we have nowadays. But apart from all the technological stuff, what makes us so much different from that ancient people? Christianity? Bull shit! Christianity is just a part of the history. And the history has many other parts. Why Christian era? Why not computer era or space era? Look, people who lived before the computer era – they lived in a totally different world. They didn’t have computers. Why don’t we take everything that happened before the invention of the first computer and start numbering the years of that period of time in the reverse order? So we’d be able to feel like from its very beginning the humanity has been moving towards the invention of a computer! Don’t you see that it is a wrong way of looking at history? When we use Christian timeline, we look at the history in a similar way. I don’t want to say that Christianity is not an important part of history. Christianity is important. And computers are important. And space exploration is important too. We can name a lot of important things in history. But they are all just parts of something big. That big thing is the history itself. And everything has its own place in history. Look, even if you are a Christian, would it be too bad if you paid attention to the “fact” that Jesus came into this world at the time when the history of our civilization had already numbered 4 millennia? You know what? I think you would have a better understanding of your own religion, if you did. Christianity, like everything else, has its place in history. And that place is not at the very beginning of time. Anyway, I’m just trying to say that Christian timeline would make sense for us only if we were medieval Christians. From the historian’s point of view there is no any good reason to split up the history into two eras. The BC/AD thing is artificial.

On the other hand, the division of time into history and prehistory is very natural. There is a world of difference between history and prehistory. In the history we can see governments, states, wars, historical events, historic figures and so on. We don’t have all that stuff in the prehistory. That’s why there is nothing artificial about this division. And as I said before, we identify particular years only within history. That’s why we don’t need to include the prehistory into “our era”.

Now let me give you the second reason why we should measure the historic time in millennia. And it is very important. If you compare the two timelines, Christian and historical, you will notice that they have the same structure. They use the same units. That enables us to make simple translations from one system into another on four levels. These levels are: years, decades, centuries and millennia. How we create the Era of History is: we give a second name to every unit of the Christian timeline. For instance, the 21st century is the 61st century of history. The 3rd millennium AD is the 7th millennium of history and so on.

Let me show you what would happen if we didn’t measure the history in millennia and picked the reference point being guided by some other principles. Suppose we were able to tell the exact date of the first historical event. Let’s say it is 3123 BC. If we made this year the 1st year of the Era of History this is what we would get:

As you can see, the units don’t match. That makes the translation difficult if not impossible. Suppose, we have a text to translate. The text goes as follows:

How are we going to deal with the centuries? You can see from the picture that, for instance, the 20th century BCE doesn’t correspond to one particular century of the new timeline, rather it corresponds to a part of 12th and a part of 13th century. It’s a problem. Now, let’s see how we can translate this text into the normal Era of History with the reference point at the moment 4000 BC:

Let me give you another example, which involves usage of millenniums.

And the translation goes as follows:

You can see now how important it is to keep the units of the Christian timeline intact. We should have used this approach even if we could tell the exact date of the first historical event. Since we can’t anyway, why bother? The moment 4000 BC is the best reference point for the Era of History.

Adequacy and future-proof

Many people ask me: what if in future we are going to discover that the history is much bigger than we think now, what if we are going to have some historical events before the moment 4000 BC. These people say that the EH is not future-proof. There is an answer to that. First of all, I want to remind you that the EH is not a substitute for the Christian timeline. It is just an auxiliary system that may help you better understand the history.

The position of the boundary between the history and the prehistory is not something we don’t know. It is not something that we are to discover in future. The boundary between the history and the prehistory is actually a boundary between the known and the unknown. Its position is defined by our knowledge of history. Of course, the boundary may change its position with time if our knowledge of history changes (I admit that, although I consider the probability of such an event very low). But in any given moment of time we know where that boundary lies (with a certain degree of precision). And right now the boundary lies somewhere in the 4^th millennium BC.

Of all the millenniums of the Christian timeline the 4^th millennium BC is the first millennium that has something to do with history. So, it is not like I propose to call it the 1^st millennium of history. Rather I want to draw your attention to the fact that the 4^th millennium BC is actually the 1^st historical millennium. It is a fact. Things may change with time, but for now it is a fact. And the EH is based on this fact. That’s why the EH is adequate to our knowledge of history. I consider that adequacy to be much more important than the “future-proof” of the system.   

Now let’s imagine that one day we are going to discover that some historical events belong to the 5^th millennium BC. That will make the 5^th millennium BC a historical millennium. So, we will have to include it into the Era of History. And it is not as problematic as you might think. Let’s have an example: the life of Gaius Gracchus 3847-3880. If we move the reference point to the moment 5000 BC we’ll have this: 4847-4880. It is not hard to comprehend. It is very easy to switch to the new system if you are accustomed to the EH. In fact it is as easy as understanding that 2010 CE is 6010 EH.

So, when you learn dates of historical events in EH, you may be sure that you are using the system which is the most adequate to our knowledge of history. And you may be sure that you are not wasting your time, because whatever happens you’ll be able to use your knowledge of EH dates. You’ll be able to switch to a more adequate system easily if such necessity arises. You don’t have to use some future-proof system now. Adequacy is more important than future-proof. It may happen so that the necessity of switching to another system will never arise.

When you use the moment 4000 BC as a reference point, you can at least explain to yourself why you do it: you compose the Era of History of all the Christian millenniums that have something to do with history. If you use some future-proof system that counts years from say 10000 BC, you can’t explain to yourself why you use that system. You can’t explain why 10000 BC, why not 11000 BC for instance.

Further explanations

Right now you may be thinking that though the very idea of the Era of History makes sense, the whole thing is useless. Let me tell you something. That’s exactly how I felt about it when the idea of the Era of History first came on my mind. It was in the beginning of the year 2008. I didn’t take this thing seriously at that time. What I did is I just started to make translations from the Christian timeline into the historical timeline. I did it just for fun. I wanted to know how I would feel about the history if I looked at it from a new perspective. After a while I realized that I had mastered a new vision of history. I was able to see the history as a whole. And I liked that. At that time I understood that I had something that I should share with other people. That something is not the timeline itself but the new vision of history. To understand me you have to master this new vision of history. You have to spend some time memorizing the translated dates of historical events. If you are not sure about the whole idea, I hope you’ll do it just for fun, like I did in my time. And you don't even need to translate anything. You can use my library, in which I have some stuff already translated into the EH.

You may be wondering whether it is sane to use a timeline that is used by almost nobody. Let me tell you something. Learning a language that nobody in this world understands can be quite a waste of time. But the Era of History is not a language. It is not about communicating to other people. If you want to talk to somebody about the history you can still use the Christian timeline in order to be understood. The Era of History is all about how YOU perceive the history. It’s a pretty personal thing. So, if you like the Era of History, there is no reason why you shouldn’t use it.

And there is still one thing about the Era of History that you should understand. If you don’t like history, don’t know it, and are not even interested in learning history, than the Era of History will be useless for you. You may even feel like the whole idea is stupid. But you know what? If you are not a physicist, the Kelvin scale can be likewise useless for you. Does it mean that the Kelvin scale is a stupid thing? No. So, don’t be too quick at your judgment. May be you are just a wrong person and the Era of History is not for you.

How you can help

As I said, I want to establish a tradition of using the EH. To do that I don’t really need to convince everybody that the EH is useful. It is sufficient to create a community of people who like the EH.

Once the community is created it will start growing. It is going to grow slowly, year after year. One day it will reach its critical mass, and all people will have to accept the EH as a fact of life. I’m not talking about replacing the existing convention with a new one. I just say that one day the EH won’t look strange and unfamiliar to anyone any more. People will start to perceive it as something usual. Does it seem unusual to you that, for instance, “PM 4:00” and “16:00” is the same thing? No. And likewise one day it won’t seem unusual to you that you can name the 21st century CE the 61st century of history. That’s what I’m trying to create – an alternative view on history.

So, gathering people together is one thing that we should do. And if you like the idea of the EH you should at least join our community on Facebook.

Another thing is creating literature that uses the EH. I’ve been doing that for the last several years. Now we have about 10 history books translated into EH. And we also have a whole historical encyclopedia that contains about 150 articles now. Unfortunately all that books and articles are in Russian. The translation of English historical literature into the EH has only just begun. We have the English historical encyclopedia, but it contains only some 5 articles right now.

So, if you really like the EH you can help me in developing the encyclopedia.

And there is one more thing. You might have noticed that English is not my native language. I will gladly accept any advice on improving my English on this site.

You can contact me via e-mail: history1234567@yandex.ru

By the way, my name is Kevin Robertson.