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

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)

Although I did move a bit off topic, engaging in what we could do, I didn't think I just argued to remove Xian faiths. That is to say I thought I started by answering on topic and then moving off topic.I'll try and repeat my post but keep it on topic.Without religion, we'd probably have kept using the style of dating we'd used up through the 1500's which was picking one, if not more, important events and stating how much time has passed since then. It was usually from local or regional leaders. That is the same method you are suggesting the Japanese date things. It was actually a pretty universal method.Of course the judeo-xian calendars would be right out without religion.Once the world became more globalized and trade became important we probably would have adopted the longest running non-religion based system which is the chinese calendar. Actually this is not true nor required. It was quite practical to date the years of a political leader's reign. Apparently scribes would often list more than one set of dates on papers including dukes and barons and such and they didn't have to be divine at all.The planetary alignment scheme is interesting, and may have held sway if astronomers or astrologists gained in prominence. It does seem a bit complicated though. I tend to think that if the drive for uniform dating came more recently, it would be based on history/prehistory (written). It would be practical and have historical relevance. It would also be humanist, which might be more appealing than purely scientific/abstract concepts like celestial alignments.You could be right though.

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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)