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by dalbasal 2908 days ago
It starts to get cumbersome when you use it multiple times in a paragraph. The problem is really the BC/AD (starting the clock 2018 years ago) is clunky.

It's pretty widely used in the context of history these days, mostly because it's common to look at long stretches of time. It's really the easiest system once you know the acronym.

Here...

Herodotus is a 5th century BC historian, a favourite among the 13th century European historians that founded the modern discipline. He was relaying information that may have been invented sometime in the 2nd millennia BC, as many primary records were lost during the 19th century BC dark period. The Pyramid itself was constructed in the 24th century BC.

This is a little more confusing to me than ybp.

BTW, I'm still not really sure what AD stands for.
2 comments
mkohlmyr 2908 days ago
While you may think BC/AD is clunky, having a static reference point in the past obviously has its advantages. 200BC will forever correctly and uniquely reference the same year, 2218 YBP not so much, as it depends on year of writing (which is fine for a live interaction, but less handy for written and archived content).
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JackCh 2908 days ago
> 2218 YBP not so much, as it depends on year of writing

As I understand it, the "present" in YBP refers to 68 years ago, 1950. This is related to the advent of carbon dating, and the way widescale nuclear tests altered the proportion of carbon isotopes found in nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present

Insofar as 68 years is a rounding error when discussing the Great Pyramids, YBP is a lot less clumsy. But 500 years from now it will probably begin seem just as clumsy as BC/AD. At least this time there is a pragmatic reason for the delineation (carbon 14 levels being altered.) Of course in 1,000 years you'll probably have people on hyper-reddit very smugly pointing out that nuclear testing actually started in 1945 not in 1950, just as today they point out Christ was not born in 0AD. ;)

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dalbasal 2908 days ago
Yup. I can live with 2 systems.

I like the holocene calendar idea, personally. I can live with AD, but kind of dislike the non-universalism of using a specific church's calendar.

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madhadron 2908 days ago
AD = Anno Domini, "year of the lord". It refers to when the Medieval church in western Europe thought Christ was born.
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