
Before Present - brudgers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present
======
samatman
Intriguing that this corresponds fairly precisely with what we call the Modern
era.

So here we are almost -70 BP in the post-Modern future. I wonder to what cause
historians of a century hence will ascribe this anomaly.

From my own limited perspective it seems to relate to the concept of the Year
2000 as "The future". Then we reached it, and now it's the future, presently,
and the present lays in the past: with Modern art, Contemporary furnishings,
and other old-fashioned things.

~~~
kybernetikos
I suggest AP for 'after present'. It's currently the year 68 AP.

~~~
samatman
This is clearly the better convention.

But counting negatively toward the future is more fun ^_^

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linsomniac
Also "Before Physics". Very nice! :-)

TIL: Used because nuclear weapons testing made carbon dating after that date
unreliable.

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brudgers
I came across the concept of "before present" when reading about the
Meghalayan age [1] being adopted by the International Commission on
Stratigraphy [2] earlier this month.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghalayan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghalayan)

[2]: [http://www.stratigraphy.org/index.php/ics-news-and-
meetings/...](http://www.stratigraphy.org/index.php/ics-news-and-
meetings/119-collapse-of-civilizations-worldwide-defines-youngest-unit-of-the-
geologic-time-scale)

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kcorbitt
> The abbreviation "BP", with the same meaning, has also been interpreted[1]
> as "Before Physics"; that is, before nuclear weapons testing artificially
> altered the proportion of the carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, making
> dating after that time likely to be unreliable.

Kind of neat to think that a civilization 10 million years from now could have
some clue about our level of technological development by noting the
atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the geological record.

~~~
drewrv
I thought that was the most interesting part of the article. Anyone know where
I can learn more about how unreliable it makes carbon dating and what far
future civilizations will be able to learn about when/how our civilization
lived?

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PunchTornado
hmm, interesting

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XparentX
Inventing new time concepts, now and then, is very narrow sighted.

Think of archaeologists in 1000 years from now come over documents with 100
different time concepts.

B.C. and A.D. suffice, anything else is political nonsense or anti-religious
propaganda.

~~~
rhplus
AD/BC has a fundamental counting flaw [1] which is accounted for by ISO 8601
[2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Years)

~~~
dfxm12
I wonder what the practical side effects are of being off by one when
discussing events that happened c. thousands of years ago.

~~~
mncharity
> I wonder what the practical side effects are of being off by one when
> discussing events that happened c. thousands of years ago.

A days-as-dots representation[1] has one _day_ precision at a thousand years
BP, and since accuracy of a day or week is often possible, it was actually an
issue. Wrestling with "everyone has their own odd calendar" was a pain.

[1] "History shown with days as dots - so centuries fit on a screen"'s "Days-
as-dots demo" was basically an exploratory UX test piece:
[http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/QEt9x](http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/QEt9x)
. The Google Books and Google Newspapers links are regrettably rotted - it was
great fun to click on random days in the 1800's and 1900's and read random
newspapers of that day. :/ The inset NY Tribune from the Library of Congress
still works. My fuzzy impression is the google newspapers database is simply
unavailable now?

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sandworm101
Oh great, another measure that defines the entire world by whether or not it
existed in the 1950s. Greatest generation my axx. I'm a clear athiest, but at
least the AD/BC line was so long ago nobody can claim to have invented it.

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hnbroseph
> nobody can claim to have invented it

afaik it's origins are very well established

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini)

"The Anno Domini dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus[...]"

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sandworm101
Noone _alive_ can claim it.

~~~
hnbroseph
oh... you mean a specific individual claiming personal responsibility? what's
the relevance?

