Timing History

History is divided into ages each of which is either twice as long or half as long as its predecessor. These ages exist in objective reality. Ages are twice as long if history declines, and half as long if history advances from the previous age.

Our current age began near the start of 1993 and will run until the early part of 2021.

Here is a list of historic ages starting from the present and moving back:

Dividing history into eras or ages is arbitrary, subjective and dangerous. The above list seems to be written from a particular European perspective, and even among European histories I've never seen the Enlightenment end that early. Remember that the world outside Europe had entirely different "ages". After the Roman Empire transformed into the Roman Catholic Church and the "dark ages" started, the Islamic Empire flourished and expanded. Vedic science is not mentioned above.

The timing for Europe is completely off. The dark ages ended before 1152, and the Enlightenment didn't start until well after the Rennaissance. I agree completely that these eras don't have any correspondence with other areas, beyond that caused by expansionism and imperialism, and saying they exist in objective reality is exceedingly strange. And how could failure to invent a numerical system destroy an entire social and economic structure that had done fine for centuries without it?

Japan's development tracked European development rather closely.

Also, the list above gives the idea that primates evolved, then monkeys evolved, then apes evolved, as if they were all scheduling their evolution with each other. The truth is that organisms co-evolve. The common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees wasn't a chimpanzee. It was something that no longer exists.

It was an ape, though. Likewise apes did evolve from monkeys, just not any of the monkeys around today.

[According to DNA analysis bonobo chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than to common chimpanzees. This means that both kinds have a common ancestor which would likely have been classified as a chimpanzee also. Since humans are also descended from this same common ancestor (though a later branching with proto-bonobo chimpanzees), then humans probably are descended from chimpanzees. Perhaps they should all be placed together in the sapiens Genus: homo sapiens, bonobo sapiens, pan sapiens.]

[this is nonsense. Bonobos are not more closely related to humans than standard chimps. If you are convinced then produce a reasonable cite. Humans are indisputably a chimp species. Nick Keighley]

(see Cladistic Vs Linnaean Taxonomy)

To the extent that this analysis is wrong it is dangerous. To the extent that this analysis is right, it is useful. It is dangerous because our understanding of history affects our actions in the present. It is also useful for this same reason.

moved to Timing The Future:

It would be interesting to compare the number of Homo Sapiens that have ever lived with the number alive today 1B was reached only in 1800, in the 60s population was only 3B now it is over 6B projected to be 8B by 2025. Does that mean more significant historical events are happening now based on events/humans living? At what point did (will) number of humans alive exceed previous cumulative amount (not including ones living)? See www.census.gov . 'Ages' also are not usually recognized by people in them - the 'Art Deco' movement was not labelled as such till the 60s even though it flourished in the 20s-30s. World War 1 was known as "the Great War" while it was happening. Da Vinci probably had no idea he was living in "The Renaissance"

The Renaissance was generally recognized by people living at the time, though I don't know about Leo. Indeed, the discontinuity with the Middle Ages wasn't nearly as significant as they thought, and were it not for them we might not ascribe so much significance to the period.

Timing History also reminds me of the problem of dealing with Call Detail Records (CDR) in telecom during Daylight Savings Time (DST) cutovers (especially with multiple switches in multiple Time Zones some of which don't have the same policy ie not all Canadian provinces are the same). The date/time and duration fields can get calculated wrong if switches, mediation and billing servers are not synchronized and provisioned with the appropriate logic leading to over or underbilling issues for customers. Ie a call started at 1:30AM local time just before cutover and finishing at 2:30AM (the actual customer may be 5 hours ahead so to them it is 7:30AM quite probable) and the clocks move forward the potential is that the CDR could record an End Time of 3:30AM because of faulty Timing History. If the CDR has a DST flag then 3:30 may be ok if not 2:30 may be better.

History as defined by historians comes only from written information that they can cite. Everything that isn't written or yet decipherable is in the realm of archaeology. Example: the Phoenecians had extensive trade networks throughout the Mediterranean Sea, but had no written language. Thus all their information comes from archaeology and later historians, starting perhaps with Heroditus. Their culture remains Pre Historic. -- Chris Garrod

The Phoenicians had a written language, and in fact invented the first alphabetic script, though few records of it remain. There are contemporary references to them in works like the Iliad and Bible. And, actually, there were still plenty of Phoenicians around when Herodotus was writing, just not politically independent Phoenician cities. They are very much a historical culture. But the gulf between history and archaeology is much smaller than you seem to indicate, since both draw off of each other constantly, even for periods like the Middle Ages.

moved to Timing The Future:

The pattern above can be carried into the future assuming that historic ages continue to advance, whatever that means:

By macro, what is meant is that the gross features or existence of something is being developed, for example larger brains. By micro what is meant is that the subtle architecture of something is being developed for example how the brain is organized in a human alive today.

Star Trek is an alternate universe rather than a possible future of ours. The genetic wars of the 1990's clearly disrupt civilization so badly that we decline into another material age where fossil fuels are used up and Warp Drive is invented. Civilization then declines once again as interaction with other intelligent species is too much to handle for our political systems and we need to have another organizational age to rebuild our political structures. The first series takes place during this period. The next generation series takes place during the following advancement period. None of them experiences an age like we are going through now.

My extrapolation above assumes the essence of Star Trek, Star Wars etc, not an exact duplication. Jules Verne imagined A Trip to the Moon we went there but not fired from a cannon. Circumnavagation of the globe was achieved by aircraft first not balloons like Around the World in Eighty Days although Bertrand Piccard finally did it the Orbiter III in just 19 days. Someone said "Science Fiction is the first draft of the future" we can imagine possible worlds long before we have the ability to participate in them. Obviously there were no genetic wars in the 90s so it won't happen exactly the same but it is likely if human civilization survives to expand beyond the solar system they will encounter Life On Other Planets, a quasi-federation will be formed if one does not exist out there like in Star Trek, and as more civilizations are encountered conflict, power struggles and their resolution will dominate as in Star Wars not unlike WWI and II when technology allowed many nations to simultaneously move men and materials and communicate rapidly on a global basis. Other possible futures are: an asteroid takes us out or (god forbid) we take ourselves out by nuclear holocast; Also a One World Government (1984/Brave New World) could emerge and stifle progress, or machines take over like in The Matrix but being an optimist the projection above is hopefully a best case scenario. If such a thing as a Galactic Wiki does evolve that would be amazing for millions of civilizations to share and argue ideas in real 'time' (whatever that is since physicists say simultaneity does not exist), and discuss how this galaxy will reach out to Andromeda (which by the way will collide with us in a few billion years according to a display at the Haydn Planetarium), the Local Supercluster and the billions of galaxies beyond. For serious analysis of galactic colonization possibilities see "Interstellar Strategies for Interstellar Colonization" hanson.gmu.edu and "The ETH and the likelihood of Interstellar Travel" www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk . By the way happy 100th anniversary of the Wright's first flight (Dec 17, 2003)

Some (absurdly) think the Brazilian Santos-Dumont beat the Wrights to it in (see www.cnn.com ) the late 1800s.

"He would keep his dirigible tied to a gas lamp post in front of his Paris apartment at the Champs-Elysees and every night he would fly to Maxim's for dinner. During the day he'd fly to go shopping, he'd fly to visit friends."

See also Human Population Stabilizes, Time Travel, Big Inventions Timeline

Category Future

See original on c2.com