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Week 3 [20.03-26.03.2017] The Human Era

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A New History for Humanity – The Human Era / Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

          As cultural mingling becomes more and more common, wrapping your head around different calendars in different cultures might become confusing. In our Gregorian calendar it is year 2017, in the Hebrew calendar it’s 5777 in China it’s year 4714 and those are not even all calendars that are out there! 

Now what if we went back in time, to the point where there were no different cultures as we understand it? Back to the point where we, as a species, became a civilization and started measuring time from that point? Not only would it make things much easier but also put our history, as an advancing species into a much clearer perspective. Right now we measure our time by splitting it into our era – Anno Domini and ancient times, but does that line make any sense? Looking at our history without this artificial separation can help us see how much we have achieved in an incredibly short period of time. 

To understand this new way of measuring time watch this video:




1. Did it make you look at human history in a different way?

2. Do you think this way of time measuring and looking at history would benefit us? What benefits or disadvantages do you see?

3. Would you like to see this year 0 measurement taught at schools? Or maybe you think we should keep the BC / AD form of measuring while teaching history?


Source:


Comments

Unknown said…
WOW I have never thought about calendar in this way. I think that it is interesting and we should think about this. Of course we will not change calendar to year 12017. But looking in the future this is not a bad idea. Now the whole world is connected. We should consider what people who lived before us did. I totally agree that it would change our opinion about world. Great topic.
21 March 2017 at 13:08
Jagoda Bielawska said…
This film really gives a new perspective on human history. I like the idea with year 0. It's very universal.

And when you give someone a date, the date will always remind you of the time we spent on earth and what history we made.
Very interesting!
22 March 2017 at 11:37
Unknown said…
Very interesting article. I have always been intrigued human history. I think that we will not change calendar to year 2017. I'm curious how people will live for 1000 years
22 March 2017 at 18:11
Unknown said…
I think that this would be a great thing if there was one lesseon about it - not to taught it, but rather as a trivia. There is many interestinh things, that could be mentioned, just to make them curious - maybe some of them will be interested and they will read or watch about it on their own or they will look for some more interesting thingd? To encourage them to look for something more - and this will be perfect topic. And how many trivias to tell friends! Thanks :)
22 March 2017 at 21:24
Unknown said…
I suppose counting years from the year "zero" would be easier and usefull, as well as it would help us to understand how many years human spiecies have already been living on our planet. That's a good idea to add years before Christ and Anno Domini, I just wonder how they estimated what was the oldest year human lived in.
On the other hand such a long date would be much complicated, thus difficult to remember especially by children. That is why I don't think we should try to change dates as they are now.

P.S.I was shocked that people in South America were the first to mummify deceased, even before Egyptians.
22 March 2017 at 21:27
Paweł Redzyński said…
I think that it would be better to start new calendar. First of all doesnt it sound awesome? "Today is 12017". The second thing is it would be much easier to teach children with one and consistient timeline, rather than using date that not every culture can relate to.
23 March 2017 at 20:20
Ihor Ahnianikov said…
I agree, it would be much easier if there was a common calendar. My suggestion is UNIX epoch time:)

But seriously, it would save a lot of time and money if there was a common timeline. Most of the existing initial calendar dates are inherited from religion, these traditions can be kept while a common calendar can be used, at least for counting years.
24 March 2017 at 00:29
Unknown said…
This is such an interesting point of view, I have never thought about it this way... From my perspective it would be very useful to unite all the calendar and time measurements. There wouldn't be more misunderstandings between cultures according to this. Human history is really interesting. We could create such common calendar and use it as well as all the others - as we got used to, so it is not a problem to measure time in the same way but also count years in some united common to every culture way.
25 March 2017 at 14:25
Unknown said…
Thanks for your comment, I agree that it will take a long time before such a change occurs.
25 March 2017 at 16:40
Unknown said…
Now it might be trivia, but in the future, I hope all children can learn about the same calendar and the same 'year 0'. It shouldn't be connected with religion. If you like those kinds of trivia check out other videos on that channel, they touch on a lot of interesting topics there.
25 March 2017 at 16:41
Unknown said…
Thanks for your opinion! Of course it's hard to decide which moment was the '0 year', it's just a single event the researchers had to choose. It's not an ideal method but I think it's better than estimating where Jesus was born.
I think it's not too difficult for children to remember a new date, just a matter of habit.
25 March 2017 at 16:46
Unknown said…
That was nice and quick revision of human development and I think it changed my point of view. For it would be easier to learn history using this new calendar because gregorian's one introduce a lot of mess and focus on religion, not the human history.

25 March 2017 at 17:31
Krzysztof Maciaszek said…
It definitely made me look in a different way at human history, but to be honest I don’t see really a reason to change year measurement.
It would be an unnecessary nuisance and most people wouldn’t be very happy.
It would be for sure easier to learn history that way but I think it would be an unnecessary complication.
25 March 2017 at 17:45
Unknown said…
What a great idea! It surely made me look at human history in a different way. So many things, milestones occured during last 12 thousand years. With 2017 year we don't look that much 'back' before the actual year '0'. Last 2 thousand years is just a small fraction of how humanity developed. It makes the view on our history shrinked and underestimated (thanks religion). I fully support the idea. Even though it would cause problems implementing it, on the long run it would benefit us all.
25 March 2017 at 18:25
Mieczysław Szumilak said…
Never thought to check how far back, from year 0 in gregorian calendar, humans started to create history. Gregorian calendar can be confusing at the begining and it is based on religion not human achievements. So simplyfying it to a calendar that is based on human developement and using it to teach history in school could be a good idea. But making it happen in a country where religion is one of the school subjects can't end successfully.
25 March 2017 at 22:04
Łukasz Domeradzki said…
It's hard to say what we should consider as "starting point", we can't be really sure how much "back" we should look, even today not everybody agrees with our common calendar - prime example is North Korea that ditched it entirely.

But yes, I think that many people do not actually realize that world did not suddely happen in year 0 or 1, but existed for a long time before, with some of the greatest achievements being dated many years before our current "startng point". Question is, should we really bother with changing the entire system just for that? I'd say not really, it's not some crucial change, and I'm quite sure that we wouldn't come to agreement since "what" event we should count forward.

Plus, it's not really possible to do easily considering how entire technology around us is working - the cost is too high, even if the decision was made today, we'd probably live for good 20-30 years more before the entire world transitionted to it.

Thanks for interesting topic.
26 March 2017 at 01:23
Adam Paśniczek said…
This is impressive when we look at this in that way. I agree that a lot of our history is missing under the cover of antiquity. On the other hand I think this kind of change will not be possible now. Maybe in the near future. People get use to western way of measuring time. Further more for many people the boundary of the ages when the Christ was born is very important. From then on, our world began to change. In my opinion Gregorian calendar should stay but this does not mean that we can forget about the achievements of previous civilizations.
26 March 2017 at 15:09
Shashkov Oleksii said…
Yes, it adds more logic in what humanity has achieved in such a short time.

Maybe , but I think that this transition will take some time , as how much you need to rewrite the books , and review the history with account of 0 years.
26 March 2017 at 17:52
Jakub Mańkowski said…
I would not change a calendar because that would lead to a global disaster.. really. Just look back 17 years ago when there was a Millenium date problem - changing it by 10 000 would make most computer systems go boom :) The different look at history is not a problem, but changing something that is related to everything we are currently using today just for fun of changing a year is a very reckless idea.
26 March 2017 at 18:01
Łukasz Grzybowski said…
This video gives a new, fresh look to human history. That is an interesting idea, but I wouldn't change it. I totally agree with Jakub M. We can teach about it in schools, but we shouldn't make this method official. It would take too much time and cause many problems.
26 March 2017 at 18:46
Kateryna Skachek said…
The film is really very interesting and the idea impressed me. I believe that it would not be bad to introduce such calendar in schools, it would be easier for children to perceive information when there is a causal relationship between the development of modern man. In my life there was a case where I met a man who quite seriously believed that the Earth have 2017 years old and human appeared almost from the beginning about the same as now. And it is very frightening that there are people with such opinion. I think, at least, with this calendar, such people would be a little more erudite.
26 March 2017 at 20:13
Łukasz Stawiany said…
This calendar gives me a new look at human history. It shows us how much we've achieved in last 2000 years, 200 years or even 40 years. How much faster is our development right now, but changing calendar is mission impossible, mostly because we can't maintenance peace between countries or culture how we could make them to change year measurement for now it's like I said impossible. From historic point of view changing year measurement would be very profitable. it would be easier to learn history and to understand when anything happened and I would like that to happen but for now it's very unlikable.
26 March 2017 at 22:37
Magdalena Popek said…
Definitely looking at the calendar this way made me think about human history in a different way. I did not feel as if all the things we have done 'Before Christ' are separated. It's all one history. Not "before" and "now". Definitely the adventage would be feeling less separated from that times. It's all human history, it's our history and personally I'd actually prefere to be in 12,017 now. What is more making religion count years does not seem to be a good idea.
26 March 2017 at 22:44
Michał Pycek said…
Thank you for this article, as many have previously admitted, I have never thought about the calendar in this way. I think it could help and make it easier for us too look at the history and also the future when using an universal calendar like this.
26 March 2017 at 22:50
Wojtek Kania said…
Well I think that our christian civilization proved outweigh the others. Let me explain. Great Britain was 'the empire on which the sun never sets'. Great Britain conquered all others humanity. In our times US, other christian civilization representative, is most powerful empire in a world. I think universal calendar can't arise. And because our civilization is most powerful other civilizations should accept our calendar.
8 April 2017 at 13:03
Bartosz Łyżwa said…
This is amazing article and movie. I've never thougt about our civilization, time, calendar in this way. It's amazing that people 12000 years before were able to build "the castle". This article only proves that if we want then we can. There are no barriers for us excluding our imagination and desire.
29 August 2017 at 16:34
Unknown said…
Very interesting article, it makes me look differently at human history. In my opinion replacing present calendar isn't a good idea, using both of them is better.
3 September 2017 at 09:25
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