The ancient Greeks dated years from the (mythic) foundation of the Olympic Games.

The ancient Romans dated years from the (mythic) foundation of the city of Rome.

We, however, date our years from the (mythic) birth of Christ.

Call it “Common Era” if you like, but clearly we need a more fitting way to count sacred time. We need some other pivotal mythic event from which to number our years.

For my pentacles, the best proposal to date comes from Merlin Stone's seminal 1979 essay “9980: Repairing the Time Warp,” in which she proposes that we date our old-new year-count from the beginning of agriculture.

For better and for worse, agriculture has changed everything that came after it. It's an event of both historic and mythic proportion. Better yet, it's something that we all share.

Since we don't (and never will) know the specific year in which the Great Mother first taught us the mysteries of digging-stick and seed, Stone suggests that we simply bareback onto consensus reality instead.

Back when she wrote her essay, it was thought that agriculture had originated some 10,000 years previously. Hence, 1980 became 9980 ADA: After the Development of Agriculture.

Well, time marches on. Archaeologists have now pushed the origins of agriculture back to about 12,000 years ago.

OK, so. Twelve-oh-seventeen.

12,017.

ADA, that is.

 

With special thanks to Magenta Griffith,

for archival archaeology.