Holocene Calendar | Year 12020

The Holocene calendar, a.k.a. the Holocene Era or Human Era (HE), is a year-numbering system that applies precisely 10,000 years to the present prevailing (AD / BC or CE / BCE) numbering scheme, putting the first year at the beginning of the Holocene Geological Epoch and the Neolithic Revolution, as humanity switched from hunter-gatherer existence to farmland and established villages.

The present year in the Gregorian calendar, AD 2020, is 12020 HE of the Holocene period. The HE system was first introduced by Cesare Emiliani in 1993 (1993 HE).

HE uses the "beginning of the human age" as its period, randomly described as 10,000 BC as year 1 HE such that AD 1 fits 10,001 HE.

It is a vague estimate of the onset of the modern geological period, the Holocene. The explanation for this is because human civilization, e.g. the earliest villages, cultivation, etc., is thought to have emerged during this period. Emiliani would later suggest that the beginning of the Holocene be set on the same date as the beginning of the new age.

The Holocene Epoch or Period is the present era of geological time. The word often used is the Anthropocene Epoch, as its main feature is the environmental shifts induced by human activities. This definition may be inaccurate since modern humans were well known well before the beginning of the period.

The Holocene Epoch started 12,000 to 11,500 years ago at the close of the Paleolithic Ice Age and persists today.

As the Earth began to warm, the glaciers of the late Paleolithic retreated. Tundra has given way to the forest. As the climate changed, very large mammals that had adapted to extreme colds, such as mammoth and wooly rhinoceros, were extinct. Humans, previously reliant on these "super mammals" for most of their food, turned to smaller games and expanded their selection of plant materials to support their diet.

Data suggests that around 10,800 years ago, the world underwent a sudden cold change that persisted for many years. The glaciers did not rise, however, the game and plant resources must have been sparse. As temperatures started to recover, the human population continued to increase, and we began to develop mechanisms that would transform the world forever.

In 1993, the American-Italian scientist Cesare Emiliani came up with a genius concept of the Holocene calendar, a whole new calendar that produced the year zero for all mankind, and rightly marked the establishment of Gobeklitepe, which is claimed to be the first-ever large-scale temple constructed by humankind. Human culture has begun a long time ago. Mankind, who did little but search and collect, started to plant land, create tools and houses out of stone, and eventually learned how to use certain things, such as metals. Both these successes and innovations have made us who we are now. Small steps have been taken by ancient citizens, opening the way for future modern advances.

For millennia, historians and scientists claimed that man had the concept of constructing huge public structures for worship and other uses after discovering how to farm the land and construct vast communities. But the finding of Gobeklitepe, an ancient site situated in southeastern Anatolia, has modified this whole school of thought. Founded almost 10,000 years ago, when people were still hunter-gatherers. This sheds light on the history of humanity and how we started to grow and become sedentary.

As Emiliani addressed the calendar in a follow-up report in 1994, he found out that there was little consensus on the date of the start of the Holocene period, with predictions of time between 12,700 and 10,970 years BP.

By then, experts have strengthened their knowledge of the Holocene on the basis of ice cores and are now able to date it more accurately. A mainstream opinion was officially introduced by the IUGS in 2013, beginning at 11,700 years before 2000 (9701 BC), about 300 years older than the Holocene period.

Agriculture takes its root

Agriculture is one of the main forms of industrial behavior that has influenced the world. Around 8000 B.C., the production of maize, barley, and other plants had expanded across most of the Indo-European region from its beginnings in the Fertile Crescent.

The domestication of pigs, goats, and cattle began about around the same date. In Central and South America, maize, bottle gourds, squash, and beans were the most commonly domesticated plants. Farming appears to have begun in Asia a little later. Recent research indicates that contact with the Indo / European peoples might have been brought to China, but it seems to have been popular at the period of the founding of the Shang Dynasty in around 1675 B.C.

Until the advent of agriculture and urbanization, the human population was largely limited by the same factors that constrain other living organisms. Limiting influences in the climate, such as the supply of food, water, and shelter, social interactions such as predator/prey ratios, or the existence of pathogens, offer a normal balance of species.

In total, the population must rise before it exceeds the carrying potential, and the full number of people and the atmosphere will be able to sustain it without detrimental consequences, after which point it will level out. Continued expansion outside load efficiency usually results in a gradual fall to a point well below the load limit. If enough genetic diversity remains, the population may recover; it may also be extinct.

Beginning in the first century A.D., humans started to set aside these prohibitions. Agriculture has raised the number of humans that may be helped by the environment, we have become the first species to expand the holding ability of our current ecosystem. The population started to grow gradually. About 170 million people were dwelling on Earth at the turn of the first century; by 1800, the number reached over 1 billion.

The 19th century Industrial Revolution caused human populations to rise exponentially. Industrialization, better hygiene, and medical services have led mortality levels to decrease, although birth rates have continued to increase in most areas of the world. Technology has managed to help us increase the carrying power of the earth, but not the scale of the earth.

Holocene Extinction

Pressure from the human race has had far-reaching impacts on the planet's biodiversity. At least five significant mass extinction events have happened on Earth. Most citizens are conscious of the last mass extinction that ended the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago and culminated in the extinction of dinosaurs. Most scientists agree that we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction event triggered by ourselves.

Based on population numbers needed to sustain genetic viability, it is projected that as much as 30% of plant and animal organisms could be extinct over the next 100 years. Currently, the environmental loss is the primary cause of species extinction.

They also had major effects on Earth's geophysical characteristics. Monoculture, which devotes vast amounts of land to single crops, has influenced soil quality and productivity in most arable sections of the world. This trend has been enhanced with the use of organic fertilizers but has not been removed. The depletion of aquifers reduced the availability of free freshwater.

We focus our division of geological time on proof of shifts of life forms found on Earth at various periods. Global climate change has also been synchronous with mass extinction in the past. While there is some debate as to whether humans are part of the cause of the ongoing global warming phenomenon, there is no question that the World is undergoing climate change. We could be approaching the end of the Holocene era.

The Pleistocene–Holocene boundary

Any of the best-preserved remnants of the border are located in Southern Scandinavia, where the shift from the most recent glacial period of Pleistocene to Holocene was followed by a maritime transgression. Such hills, south of Goteborg, have been elevated and are open to the air.

The border stretches back about 10,300 years of radiocarbon years. This border represents the very beginning of the cooler temperatures that have taken place in Scandinavia since the current slight glacial advance. This progress contributed to the creation of the last Salpausselka moraine, part of which corresponds to the Valders substage in North America.

The resulting warming pattern was characterized by the Finiglacial withdrawal in northern Scandinavia, the Ostdian (early Flandrian) coastal transgression in northwestern Europe.

Until June 2019, when the IUGS (International Union of Geological Science) and the International Commission for Stratigraphy divided this era into three periods, the Holocene Era withstood the systematic classification.

• The beginning of the Greenland period 11,700 to 8,300 years ago, identified from the Greenland ice cores, corresponds with the lower boundary of the Holocene.
• The beginning of the Northgrippian stage 8.300 to 4.200 years ago, also calculated from the usage of Greenland ice cores, correlated with the freezing phase that happened in the North Atlantic around 8.300 years ago.
• On the other hand, 4.200 years earlier, the Meghalayan stage was calculated using a speleothem or cave deposit in this case, a stalagmite from Mawmluh Cave in Meghalaya, India.

Stalagmite caught 200 years of worldwide warming and cooling from about 4,200 years ago. Climate change has caused significant changes in natural resources experienced by cultures in the low and middle latitudes across the globe, including ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Yangtze River Valley.

Formation in Holocene

The very youthfulness of Holocene's stratigraphic series makes classification complicated. The relative slowness of Earth's crustal motions ensures that most regions comprising a full underwater stratigraphic series are now submerged. Luckily, there has been a gradual postglacial uplift (crustal rebound) in places that have been stressed by a load of glacial ice, which has contributed to the recovery of nearshore deposits.

Deep oceanic deposits

Aside from occupying over 70 % of the Earth 's atmosphere, the aquatic domain provides much greater prospects than coastal habitats for undisturbed sediment protection. For deep-sea cores, the border can typically be identified at a distance of around 10-30 centimeters, as the Holocene sediments move back through products contributing to the late glacial period of the Pleistocene.

The border is also defined by a subtle shift of tone. For example, globigerina ooze, abundant in the ocean at intermediate depths, is sometimes somewhat pinkish in the Holocene period is attributed to traces of iron oxides typical of tropical soils. At greater depth in the section, the globigerina ooze may be grayish due to the larger quantities of clay, chlorite, and feldspar that have been introduced during the glacial period as a result of the erosion of the semi-arid hinterlands.

After each glacial phase, the freezing of ocean waters contributed to decreased evaporation and thus less precipitation, lower rainfall, decreased vegetation, and therefore to the development of comparatively more clastic sediments.

Therefore, the worldwide eustatic lowering of the sea level induced an explosion in flooding, together with the lower courses of all rivers and on submerged coastal shelves, such that the rate of clastic sedimentation in the seas became higher at glacial periods than during Holocene. Turbidity currents, produced on a large scale during low sea-level times, became much less frequent after the increase of the sea level in Holocene.

Continental shelf and coastal regions

It was recognized as early as 1842 that a large-scale withdrawal of ocean water would be a logical consequence of the glacial age. As a result, deglaciation would produce a postglacial "glacioeustatic" transgression of the seas across the continental shelf.

The evidence of this Holocene rising of the sea level was first noticed around the coast of New England and along the coast of Belgium, which Georges Dubois named the Transgression of Flanders in 1924.

Whereas deep-sea Holocene sediments typically approximate those of Upper Pleistocene without delay, there is almost always a split in the chain on the continental shelf. When the sea level increased, it slowed or fluctuated at different times, leaving erosion terraces, sand layers, and other still-life markers. In particular, short regressions permitted the growth of peat deposits that are important in the Holocene record since they can be dated through radiocarbon analysis. Dredging at other sites on the ground, such as off-eastern North America, is often valuable because of the identification of terrestrial fossils from the latter glacial era or early Holocene, ranging from mammoth and mastodon bones and tusks to modern artifacts. Approximately 70 % of the world's continental shelves today have a limited amount of sedimentary deposition after the beginning of Holocene, meaning that dredging or coring activities frequently expose hard rock, with older deposits at or very similar to the shore. In other areas, particularly near the former continental ice fronts, the shelf is filled by periglacial river sands (meltwater deposits) which, due to their unconsolidated existence, were extensively remodeled into beaches and bars during the Holocene Transgression.

As the sea level rose, the Earth's crust reacted buoyantly to the removal of a load of ice, and at critical times the rate of rising water levels was outstripped by the rate of rising land. In these places, the highest ancient coastline that is now preserved is known as the marine boundary. The near the former core of the ice cap, the greater the maritime mark.

It is more than 300 meters strong in northern Scandinavia, Ontario and northwestern Quebec, along the Bay of Hudson and Baffin Island. It may be more than 100 meters in central Maine and Spitsbergen, while it is rarely more than 10-15 meters in coastal Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The great deltas of the world, Missouri, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube, the Nile, the Amazon, the Niger, the Tigris-Euphrates, the Ganges and the Indus, all correspond with the areas of tectonic subsidence. Since the water-saturated soil continues to compress during more soil filling, there is an inherent built-in process that contributes to the subsidence of these regions.

Holocene sequences are present in this deltaic environment that are very distinct from those in postglacial elevated areas. Whereas the Holocene beaches in the elevated areas stretch horizontally through the nation in concentric bands, the Holocene series in the deltaic regions is, for the most part, vertical in nature and can only be analyzed with good results.

For both the Mississippi and Rhine deltas, sediments representing the early aquatic Holocene are absent. Sediments may settle on the shoreline of the sea, and the earliest underwater deposits are known to fall primarily on the silts and gravel of the late Pleistocene flow.

In a delta of around 0.5 to 3 millimeters each year, the rising sea of the Flandrian Transgression gradually spread through the river beds to the inner edge, where there is a fulcrum similar to that of the glacial zones, defining the border between the downwarp areas and those of greater stability or gentle upwarp.

Sea beds contrast with marine soils reflecting river or marsh conditions. Significant variations can be found in both the Mississippi and Rhine deltas. By radiocarbon dating, the transgressive and regressive stages have been seen to be time-related.

Holocene Environment 

In once glacial areas, the Holocene was a period for the re-establishment of ordinary cycles of sub-aerial degradation and gradual re-occupation of flora and fauna. The latter quickly developed into what became an ecological void, but with a very small number of species, since the atmosphere became initially cold and the soil was still young.

Palynology, the study of pollen, spores, & other small organic particles was the most significant biological means of maintaining the Holocene atmosphere. The pollen from trees, shrubs, or grasses is collected annually in vast amounts and is therefore well contained in fine-grained wetlands, swamps, or aquatic sediments.

Statistical associations of modern and fossil assemblies offer a framework for estimating the relative composition of local or national ecosystems over time. Even the simplistic classification into Arboreal Pollen (AP) and Non-Arboreal Pollen (NAP) represents the former forms of the atmosphere. Tundra vegetation during the last glacial period, for example, mostly creates a NAP, and the change to woodland vegetation indicates the temperature shift that heralded the beginning of the Holocene.

According to a study of several carbon-dated sites undertaken by James I. Mead and David J. Meltzer in 1984, 75 percent of the bigger mammals, any with greater than 40 kilograms with living weight, who became extinct in the Late Pleistocene, did so by around 10,800 to 10,000 years ago.

If the origin of this decimation of Pleistocene fauna was climatic or behavioral has been discussed after another American scientist, Paul S. Martin, suggested an overkill theory in the 1960s. Until then, there have been other explanations regarding late Pleistocene extinctions, such as those concerning climate disruption or occurrences of the disease. In either event, most geologists and paleontologists suggest the onset of a modern epoch - the Holocene - approximately 11,700 years ago, a period coinciding with the abrupt termination of the warmer era of the Younger Dryas.

Holocene Climate

In the mid-latitudes and the tropics, the culmination of the last glacial era was characterized by an unprecedented rise in rainfall. The increased precipitation at the end of the Pleistocene was characterized by a large expansion of the Pluvial Lakes in the Great Basin of western North America, especially Lake Bonneville and Lake Lahontan, the common predecessors of today's Great Salt Lake & Pyramid Lake.

Two lake levels were reached at approximately 12,000 ± 500 BP (beginning of the Allerod Warm stage) and approximately 9000 ± 500 BP** (beginning of the Boreal Warm stage). High terrace levels at Lake Balaton in Hungary also mark the Allerod and early Boreal Warm periods. East Africa's Lake Victoria has the same twin oscillation on its terrace floor.

The same proof of strong solar exposure and heavy rainfall at the end of the Pleistocene and during the early Holocene is visible in the record of the Nile sediments of equatorial areas. The Nile, like the other great rivers of Africa in particular, the Congo, Niger, and Senegal, was significantly diminished, if not entirely diverted, by silt and desert sand during the low-precipitation, arid periods of the Pleistocene.

An erroneous association between glacial and pluvial periods in the tropics has been generally recognized in the past, whereas cold ocean water implies less snow, not more. The pluvial periods lead to elevated rates of solar radiation, the latest period being around 10,000 years old. Therefore, tremendous changes in the drainage of the Nile were estimated by radiocarbon dating, which happened between 12,000 and 9,000 years respectively, isolated and accompanied by alluviation, suggesting decreased precipitation in the headwaters.

Expansion of monsoonal rain during the early Holocene in the tropical latitudes has enabled a widespread of moist savannah-type vegetation across the Sahara in North Africa and the Kalahari in South Africa and in large areas of Brazil, India & Australia. Much of these regions had been dry savannah or arid throughout the last glacial period.

Signs of the late Paleolithic and Neolithic people can be found in the Sahara today, and art is symbolic of the life and hunting scenes of the period. Lake deposits were aged as young as 5000-6000 BP. Lake Chad occupied a large region in the late Pleistocene and up to 5000 BP. The Dead Sea in the early Holocene reveals a record of sedimentation from the wet headwaters of the Neolithic site in Jericho of around 9000–10,000 BP**.

People also decided to use water in the subtropical areas of Mesopotamia and the Nile River. Stationary villages, sophisticated cultivation, and moderate temperatures encouraged a broad flowering of human civilization. It is believed that, as regular rains started to collapse, human creativity flourished as demonstrated by the construction of irrigation canals and machinery.

The Sub-Atlantic stage (2200-0 BP) is the last significant physical division of the geological record. Historically, its history corresponds with the emergence of the Roman Empire in Italy, the prosperity of the Chinese imperial dynasties, the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Olmec of central Mexico and Guatemala, and the pre-Incan Chavin civilizations in Peru.

The evidence of solar activity is revealed by the description of the aurora in the ancient Chinese court documents, and later by the number of sunspots. In general, both phenomena represent solar activity, but the connection with weather records in higher latitudes is complicated. Certain climate measures, such as tree ring analysis and palynology, have already been listed, but other documentary signs do include the timing of the cherry blossom festival in Kyoto, Japan, the freezing of dams, the occurrence of flooding, blizzards or droughts, the economics of farming, salt evaporation, certain disease figures, and so on.

The water rates of the closed basins, such as the Caspian Sea and, in particular, the evaporite basin of the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Basin, represent the drainage to the Volga. The Dead Sea pays witness to the rains of the eastern Mediterranean.

Summing up & Know in Laconic

The term "Holocene" means "very recent" The Holocene Period (HE) covers the development, background, and influence of human beings worldwide. Many claims that the era should be referred to as the "Human Period" instead of the "Holocene Age," but when the HE Calendar was first introduced by the scientist Cesare Emiliani in 1993 (think 11,993 HE), he preferred the "Holocene" name.

We 're going to stick with Holocene instead of Human to be compatible with Cesare Emiliani 's suggestion. Emiliani died before he could render his plan a reality. We want to help put his idea to wider usage. 1708 The HE calendar relates to year 1 at a period when people lived in farming cultures. This refers roughly to the onset of the "Holocene period" of geology.

It is clear that the choice of a single moment in time must be random, yet a concept must be selected. Cesare Emiliani picked a level to fit the existing AD / CE year figures with the inclusion of 10,000 for his calendar change proposal. The conversion from AD / CE years to HE is achieved by applying 10,000 to the AD / CE year. The year 2020 AD / CE is 12,020 HE.

Of the uncertainty of having the traditional calendar still in usage, John Cleese said of his early days of teaching history, "I was always puzzled as to how dates with 16 on the front might exist in the 17th century. That's almost as important as history is.

Timeline

Georgian Year    30001 BC

Holocene Year    20000 BHE

Event                  Pleistocene

Georgian Year    10001 BC

Holocene Year    0 HE

Event                  Beginning of the Holocene Era

Georgian Year    9701 BC

Holocene Year   300 HE

Event                  End of the Pleistocene and beginning of the Holocene epoch

Georgian Year    4713 BC

Holocene Year   5288 HE

Event                  The start of the Julian at January 1, Greenwich noon, Julian proleptic calendar

Georgian Year    3761 BC

Holocene Year   6240 HE

Event                  Beginning of Anno Mundi in the Jewish calendar

Georgian Year    3102 BC

Holocene Year   6899 HE

Event                  Beginning of the Kali Yuga in Hindu cosmology

Georgian Year    3000 BC

Holocene Year   7001 HE

Event                  Beginning of Indus Valley Civilization

Georgian Year    2250 BC

Holocene Year   7751 HE

Event                  Beginning of the Meghalayan Age

Georgian Year    544 BC

Holocene Year   9457 HE

Event                 The death of Siddhartha Gautama. The start of the Buddhist Era

Georgian Year    221 BC

Holocene Year   9780 HE

Event                 The founding of Imperial China by the Qin dynasty

Georgian Year    45 BC

Holocene Year   9956 HE

Event                 Introduction of the Julian calendar

Georgian Year    1 BC

Holocene Year   10000 HE

Event                 Year zero at ISO 8601*

Georgian Year    1 AD

Holocene Year   10001 HE

Event                 Beginning of the Common Era and Anno Domini

Georgian Year    30 AD

Holocene Year   10030 HE

Event                 The possible date of the crucifixion of Jesus

Georgian Year    622 AD

Holocene Year   10622 HE

Event                 Migration of Muhammad, starting the Islamic calendar

Georgian Year    1502 AD

Holocene Year   11502 HE

Event                 The Voyages of Christopher Columbus

Georgian Year    1582 AD

Holocene Year   11582 HE

Event                 Introduction of the Gregorian calendar

Georgian Year    1912 AD

Holocene Year   11912 HE

Event                 Epoch of the Juche and Minguo calendars

Georgian Year    1950 AD

Holocene Year   11950 HE

Event                 Epoch of the Before Present dating scheme

Georgian Year    1993 AD

Holocene Year   11993 HE

Event                 Publication of the Holocene calendar

Georgian Year    2020 AD

Holocene Year   12020 HE

Event                 Current year

*ISO 8601: International Organization for Standardization (ISO) was first published in 1988. The purpose of this standard is to provide an unambiguous and well-defined method of representing dates and times, so as to avoid misinterpretation of numeric representations of dates and times, particularly when data is transferred between countries with different conventions for writing numeric dates and times.

**BP: Before Present (BP) years is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology, and other scientific disciplines

References:

-Book: Human Achievements, Advancements, Innovations, and Understanding in Science using EMILIANI’s HE calendar.

-Book: Correspondence – Calendar Reform and Calendar reform for the year 2000 by Cesare Emiliani 

-Encyclopedia

-LiveScience

-Articles of Rhodes W. Fairbridge and Larry D. Agenbroad

                                                                                       

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