Summary: Introduction (I introduce this shortform series), Year 0 for Human History (I discuss when years for humanity should begin to be counted)
Introduction
This shortform post marks the beginning of me trying to share on LessWrong some of the thoughts and notes I generate each day.
I suspect that every “thoughts and notes” shortform I write will contain a brief summary of its content at the start, and there will very likely be days where I post multiple shortforms of this nature, hence the (X) after the date.
As for the year in the date on these posts, I want to use something other than the Gregorian calendar’s current year. Moreover, I want to better capture the time of origin for a key moment in human history, such as the origin of agriculture, writing, or permanent settlement. The rest of this shortform consists of some notes on this topic.
A Starting Year for Our Calendars
In 2019, after I watched the Kurzgesagt—In a Nutshell video A New History for Humanity – The Human Era (2016), I opted to change the year in the date in my journal entries from 2019 to 12019. This Kurzgesagt video describes the idea that different choices for “year 0” for the “human era” result in different perceptions of human history.
Regarding this claim, I generally agree. If “year 0” for humanity began when the first anatomically modern humans appeared, then the year would be ~202022, and if “year 0″ began when the first nuclear weapon was deployed, the “human era” would be only 77 years old. These scenarios seem to strongly allocate my attention in different areas, with the former placing my attention on the thickness and mysteries of what we today call “prehistory” and the latter focusing my attention on the rapid progress and dangers that are characteristic of modernity.
The Kurzgesagt video explores the idea of setting “year 0” to 12000 years ago (the 10th millennium BC), which is apparently around the time the first large scale human construction project seems to have taken place. Having 12000 years ago be “year 0″ means that, when the current year is being considered, more attention would likely be allocated to the emergence of widespread agriculture, writing, and intensive construction of settlements and cities than is currently allocated.
Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin. The development of agriculture about 12,000 years ago changed the way humans lived. They switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to permanent settlements and farming.[1]
Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 105,000 years ago.[2] However, domestication did not occur until much later. The earliest evidence of small-scale cultivation of edible grasses is from around 21,000 BC with the Ohalo II people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
Following the emergence of agriculture, construction and architectural practices became more complex, leading to larger projects and settlements (see History of construction and Neolithic architecture)
The Neolithic, also known as the New Stone Age, was a time period roughly from 9000 BC to 5000 BC named because it was the last period of the age before woodworking began.
Architectural advances are an important part of the Neolithic period (10,000-2000 BC), during which some of the major innovations of human history occurred. The domestication of plants and animals, for example, led to both new economics and a new relationship between people and the world, an increase in community size and permanence, a massive development of material culture, and new social and ritual solutions to enable people to live together in these communities.
Located in southern Turkey. The tell includes two phases of use, believed to be of a social or ritual nature by site discoverer and excavator Klaus Schmidt, dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BC. The structure is 300 m in diameter and 15 m high.
Writing systems are believed to have emerged independently of each other, with the oldest instance of writing being in Mesopotamia potentially as early as 3.4k BCE.
However, the discovery of the scripts of ancient Mesoamerica, far away from Middle Eastern sources, proved that writing had been invented more than once. Scholars now recognize that writing may have independently developed in at least four ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia (between 3400 and 3100 BCE), Egypt (around 3250 BCE),[4][5][2]China (1200 BCE),[6] and lowland areas of Southern Mexico and Guatemala (by 500 BCE).[7]
Given that these historical developments I have outlined above seem very valuable to consider in context of modern civilizational progress, I’ve decided to take “year 0” to be 12000 years ago. The official name for this calendar system is actually the Holocene calendar, which was developed by Cesare Emiliani in 1993. The current year in the Holocene calendar is 12022 HE. Below are two comments on the benefits and accuracy, respectively, of the Holocene calendar’s Wikipedia page:
Human Era proponents claim that it makes for easier geological, archaeological, dendrochronological, anthropological and historical dating, as well as that it bases its epoch on an event more universally relevant than the birth of Jesus. All key dates in human history can then be listed using a simple increasing date scale with smaller dates always occurring before larger dates. Another gain is that the Holocene Era starts before the other calendar eras, so it could be useful for the comparison and conversion of dates from different calendars.
When Emiliani discussed the calendar in a follow-up article in 1994, he mentioned that there was no agreement on the date of the start of the Holocene epoch, with estimates at the time ranging between 12,700 and 10,970 years BP.[5] Since then, scientists have improved their understanding of the Holocene on the evidence of ice cores and can now more accurately date its beginning. A consensus view was formally adopted by the IUGS in 2013, placing its start at 11,700 years before 2000 (9701 BC), about 300 years more recent than the epoch of the Holocene calendar.[6]
So, why is the year on this shortform 0012022 and not just 12022? There are two reasons for this. The first is that I would like for myself to think more deeply and frequently about my own future and about humanity’s long-term future.
An organization developed around the idea of thinking about and safeguarding humanity’s future is the Long Now Foundation (LNF), which most LWers have likely heard of. This is its description:
The Long Now Foundation
is a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking.
Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.
The LNF’s foundation year consists of 1996 with a 0 appended to the front, indicating that the timeframe under consideration − 10k years—is slowly being reached, one year at a time.
I aim to do a similar thing but believe that the timescale of 10k years is too short, so I instead opt for 1 million years, given that 1 million years is roughly the base rate for hominin species survival duration. It is also very interesting to imagine what humanity will be doing (should they persist) 1 million years following the start of the agricultural revolution. So, 12022 → 0012022.
Snyder-Beattie, Andrew E., Toby Ord, and Michael B. Bonsall. “An upper bound for the background rate of human extinction.” Scientific reports 9, no. 1 (2019): 1-9.
Hominin survival times. Next, we evaluate whether the upper bound is consistent with the broader hominin fossil record. There is strong evidence that Homo erectus lasted over 1.7 Myr and Homo habilis lasted 700 kyr [21], indicating that our own species’ track record of survival exceeding 200 kyr is not unique within our genus. Fossil record data indicate that the median hominin temporal range is about 620 kyr, and after accounting for sample bias in the fossil record this estimate rises to 970 kyr [22] . Although it is notable that the hominin lineage seems to have a higher extinction rate than those typical of mammals, these values are still consistent with our upper bound. It is perhaps also notable that some hominin species were likely driven to extinction by our own lineage [34], suggesting an early form of anthropogenic extinction risk.
I will close this shortform post here, but definitely want to parse out my thoughts concerning humanity’s future more in subsequent posts, and enjoyed writing this first post.
Thoughts and Notes: October 10th 0012022 (1)
Summary: Introduction (I introduce this shortform series), Year 0 for Human History (I discuss when years for humanity should begin to be counted)
Introduction
This shortform post marks the beginning of me trying to share on LessWrong some of the thoughts and notes I generate each day.
I suspect that every “thoughts and notes” shortform I write will contain a brief summary of its content at the start, and there will very likely be days where I post multiple shortforms of this nature, hence the (X) after the date.
As for the year in the date on these posts, I want to use something other than the Gregorian calendar’s current year. Moreover, I want to better capture the time of origin for a key moment in human history, such as the origin of agriculture, writing, or permanent settlement. The rest of this shortform consists of some notes on this topic.
A Starting Year for Our Calendars
In 2019, after I watched the Kurzgesagt—In a Nutshell video A New History for Humanity – The Human Era (2016), I opted to change the year in the date in my journal entries from 2019 to 12019. This Kurzgesagt video describes the idea that different choices for “year 0” for the “human era” result in different perceptions of human history.
Regarding this claim, I generally agree. If “year 0” for humanity began when the first anatomically modern humans appeared, then the year would be ~202022, and if “year 0″ began when the first nuclear weapon was deployed, the “human era” would be only 77 years old. These scenarios seem to strongly allocate my attention in different areas, with the former placing my attention on the thickness and mysteries of what we today call “prehistory” and the latter focusing my attention on the rapid progress and dangers that are characteristic of modernity.
The Kurzgesagt video explores the idea of setting “year 0” to 12000 years ago (the 10th millennium BC), which is apparently around the time the first large scale human construction project seems to have taken place. Having 12000 years ago be “year 0″ means that, when the current year is being considered, more attention would likely be allocated to the emergence of widespread agriculture, writing, and intensive construction of settlements and cities than is currently allocated.
Some notes for the preceding paragraph:
Agriculture seems to have started roughly 12k years ago (see History of agriculture).
Following the emergence of agriculture, construction and architectural practices became more complex, leading to larger projects and settlements (see History of construction and Neolithic architecture)
The oldest known surviving manmade building is Göbekli Tepe, which was make between 12k to 10k years ago (this is the structure alluded to in the Kurzgesagt video I mentioned earlier).
Writing systems are believed to have emerged independently of each other, with the oldest instance of writing being in Mesopotamia potentially as early as 3.4k BCE.
Given that these historical developments I have outlined above seem very valuable to consider in context of modern civilizational progress, I’ve decided to take “year 0” to be 12000 years ago. The official name for this calendar system is actually the Holocene calendar, which was developed by Cesare Emiliani in 1993. The current year in the Holocene calendar is 12022 HE. Below are two comments on the benefits and accuracy, respectively, of the Holocene calendar’s Wikipedia page:
So, why is the year on this shortform 0012022 and not just 12022? There are two reasons for this. The first is that I would like for myself to think more deeply and frequently about my own future and about humanity’s long-term future.
An organization developed around the idea of thinking about and safeguarding humanity’s future is the Long Now Foundation (LNF), which most LWers have likely heard of. This is its description:
The LNF’s foundation year consists of 1996 with a 0 appended to the front, indicating that the timeframe under consideration − 10k years—is slowly being reached, one year at a time.
I aim to do a similar thing but believe that the timescale of 10k years is too short, so I instead opt for 1 million years, given that 1 million years is roughly the base rate for hominin species survival duration. It is also very interesting to imagine what humanity will be doing (should they persist) 1 million years following the start of the agricultural revolution. So, 12022 → 0012022.
From An upper bound for the background rate of human extinction (Snyder-Beattie et al., 2019)
Snyder-Beattie, Andrew E., Toby Ord, and Michael B. Bonsall. “An upper bound for the background rate of human extinction.” Scientific reports 9, no. 1 (2019): 1-9.
I will close this shortform post here, but definitely want to parse out my thoughts concerning humanity’s future more in subsequent posts, and enjoyed writing this first post.