If religion had not happened at all what would the year be?

Astronomers use Julian Day for some purposes - sequential days since 4713 BC. Today is JD 2,453,390 or so. Why they chose that year I know not. I once though it was the founding of Rome, but that year's a speck too early.

The answer appears to have been lost in antiquity.
Good question though!

Ah yes, Brave New World!

what!!! you have the first modelT !?!!?!

One thing people seem to have missed, surely if you re-run history sans religion and gods and all that, then virtually nothing in history would have been the same.
Would there have been a Roman empire? What shapes would the differing nations be, what forms of government would have arisen, would there have been more wars less wars.Feel free to invent and play.

Regardless there would still be a calendar, one of about the same length and likely divided into something around 30 days.My guess is that until consolidation there would be many calendars based on some unique cultural date for each. Once the consolidated calendar came about they would have to fix some standard date as day 1. To not offend anyone the most likely compromise would be an arbitraty date.The other major possibility is a calendar that is impossed by some conquering nation.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

That'd be my bet.

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Confused ? You will be...

Coragyps writes me:

quote:

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Why they chose that year I know not.

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From Cornell's website I found this explanation, which I thought you might also find interesting.EDITED to add subtitle. And then again to correct it.This message has been edited by berberry, 01-20-2005 22:05 AMThis message has been edited by berberry, 01-20-2005 22:11 AM

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Keep America Safe AND Free!

Cool! Thanks!

So we can be sure that wouldn't be used, since it is based on religious assumptions (the moment of Creation).

Well, according to the Cornell piece one of the concerns was to find a date prior to any known historical event in order to obviate "BC / AD" type designations. One can imagine that a year in that same century might still have been chosen.

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Keep America Safe AND Free!

I agree.Assuming no dark ages, one might suggest that with another 100+ years of scientific advancement (assuming some other event would not have held us back) we’d have a fair chance basing history off an accurate cosmological model.The question is just unknowable. For instance, without religion, would we be more or less likely to adopt systematic change? Would our culture be more or less anti-science than it is curerntly?

I like this topic. I'm not sure how many remember the thread I started advocating a change to another dating system to avoid the whole BC/AD issue of dating (not to remove religion but to have a singular coherent timeline of history).I think Ned would be right, except that the Jewish calendar was created based on religion so if the thrust of this thread is without any religious basis, then we can't include that calendar system.That would make the Chinese system the longest running calendar system and is almost useful enough to divide history from prehistory. I am with Berberry in thinking that it would be (have been) useful to set a point either regarding written history or human civilization.The Jewish Calendar is so close to written history that it could work and I would not be against simply adopting that one (showing that I am not opposed to religious inspired dating).However more accurate dates would be to set 0 at 3500 BC the time at which writing was being created in Sumeria (thus the beginning of recorded history), or 10,001BC.The older dating system would be based on human civilization. It starts at the end of the last major ice age, and encompasses the major agricultural, animal domestication, and urbanization achievements including those before recorded history. Writing would have come in at 6500.It also has one practical advantage... we keep the same dates we have now. Everything we call AD would simply be +10K. All BC dates you simply subtract from 10,001. Thus there would be no issue in just continuing to use 2005 on our checks and in our databases, though in history classes we would note it is 12005 of human civilization.Just a pet hobby of mine. Does anyone think this would be a good idea?For those interested in dates and dating, Wikipedia has good info on how they came about.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)"Don't believe I'm taken in by stories I have heard, I just read the Daily News and swear by every word.."(Steely Dan)

and funnily enough I just realised ties in quite close to the chinese calender..... oooooh.

that's why I said have fun, speculate, invent play.