Every time I read anything about ancient history or archaeology I really wish we'd adapt the #HoloceneCalendar.
This calendar starts (roughly) with the invention of farming and adds 10,000 to the Gregorian year, so that this year would be 12026.
Using it would avoid having to remember to count down for years in the BCE era and generally make dates in ancient history and most archeology less confusing.
A lot of times archaeologists use "BP" or "Before Present", so that all the years an artifact is discovered count down (instead of counting up like a normal calendar).
But this is also a bit confusing since the "present" is defined as 1950 and it is no longer 1950.
I think that's used as the epoch date for BP partly because of nuclear testing potentially messing up radioactive dating technology.
minor repair: let BP stand for “Before Plutonium”.
Floaty Birb
clew