It was also at this time that arithmetic was developed. Both writing and math developed as a means to help keep track of the resources needed to keep cities of 80k+ alive and thriving.
Using this as the proverbial year 1 puts us in the year 5502 right now. Today actually marks 1/1/5502. This may help with calculating your birthday, as 8/1/2020 is a starting point, if you were born in a month before August, your birth year will be calculated differently than if after.
So, when math meets writing, and they're both being developed at the same time, it seems like a reasonable time to start the clock ticking on "recorded" history. The natural metaphor for math/writing would be a calendar, and being set that far back puts everything into a specific perspective.
This is where the name comes from: MHs stands for "Modern Homo sapiens."
Not modern as in anatomically modern, but modern as in "we're now recording abstract thought in two separate ways---through a writing system and through math."
Look at these interesting years in MHs notation:
- Year 1: Writing and math developed and harnessed
- Year 1382: the Epic of Gilgamesh is written in Akkadian
- 2302: the Bronze Age Collapse
- 2729: Founding of Rome
- 2919: Siddhartha born
- 3261: Unification of the Warring States in China; founding of Qin Dynasty
- 3438: Caesar assassinated
- 4643: Genghis Khan born
- 4697: Magna Karta signed
- 4935: Fall of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire
- 5257: 4th of July, "1776"
- 5450: Humans land on Moon for first time
- 5490: Obama elected president
Is it me, or does it seem astounding how much we've been able to accomplish is what amounts to a geologic blip, 5500 years?
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