The Holocene Calendar

This calendar first proposed in the 1920s is an alternative to the whole BC/AD year zero shenanigans. To convert from BC to HE, subtract it from 10001. (So 133 BCE becomes 9868 HE.) To convert from AD to HE, add 10000.

I’ve kept thinking about this awesome calendar for the past two days since I first heard about it from Opfez, I love it. I especially wish it would get adopted in place of BCE or when discussing events and eras that span BC/AD (BCE/CE). If I never see a BC date again I’m happy.

Usually widespread reforms like Prairial or Tau don’t get adopted but here we have a golden opportunity to:

• Keep using the normal ISO dates for our modern life (so I’m writing this in 2021).
• Whenever we’d need to put AD, CE, BC or BCE, (i.e. when discussing old stuff) instead convert it to HE (and write HE after).

(This is similar to my suggestion for tau, which is to introduce it where it makes sense: teaching high school kids trigonometry and unit circle stuff. Also I need to write up my anti-dozenal rant at some point…)

A tool that’s useful on its own, like this and tau both are, doesn’t need widespread adoption in order to be good. We can just start using it.