World Calendars
Holocene calendar date today
Cesare Emiliani proposed in 1993 to add 10,000 to every year, so that all of history has positive years and none count backwards. It is a proposal and is not in official use.
11 November 12,026 HE
- In the Gregorian calendar
- Wednesday 11 November 2026
- This day began
- At midnight, as Wednesday 11 November 2026 begins
- This day ends
- At midnight, as Thursday 12 November 2026 begins
- Year 2026 began
- Thursday 1 January 2026
- Next new year
- Friday 1 January 2027 (in 51 days)
- This year has
- 365 days in 12 months
- Year 1 began
- 10000 BC
- How it works
- Add 10,000 to the usual year, so 2026 becomes 12026
- Years count from
- 10,000 BC, near the start of the Holocene, the geological epoch it is named after
- Unusual detail
- 1 BC and AD 1 become 10000 and 10001, so there are no BC years
- Used
- Not officially; it remains a proposal
Next holidays in this calendar
51 days
1 January 2027 · Gregorian, Japanese era, Thai solar (Buddhist era), Republic of China (Minguo), Juche, Holocene (Human Era), Discordian, Revised Julian, Soviet work week
How the Holocene calendar works
Months and days are Gregorian; only the year changes. For years AD, add 10,000, so AD 2026 is 12026 HE (Human Era). For years BC, subtract the year from 10,001, so 1 BC is 10000 HE. Year 1 HE is 10,000 BC, chosen to fall near the start of the Holocene epoch and the Neolithic Revolution.
| Gregorian year | Holocene year | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 BC | 1 HE | Epoch of the calendar |
| 9701 BC | 300 HE | Start of the Holocene as dated in 2013 |
| 1 BC | 10000 HE | Last year before AD |
| AD 1 | 10001 HE | First year AD |
| AD 2026 | 12026 HE | - |
Because 1 BC and AD 1 become 10000 and 10001, the count has no gap, and every date before Christ gets a positive year that grows towards the present.
Variants and the method used here
The rule is a fixed offset, so there are no variants. This site takes the Gregorian date and adds 10,000 to the year, counting 1 BC as year 0 so that BC years follow the subtract-from-10,001 rule. For dates before the Gregorian calendar took effect on 15 October 1582, the month and day are on the proleptic Gregorian calendar, which extends the Gregorian rules backwards.
A short history
Cesare Emiliani proposed the Human Era in 1993, in a short piece on calendar reform in Nature (volume 366, page 716). He argued that the Anno Domini count makes time spans awkward to work out because it has no year zero and its BC years run backwards, and that the birth of Jesus, which scholars place in or before 4 BC, is a less universal starting point than the beginning of the Holocene.
Similar ideas came earlier. Gabriel Deville proposed a count from 10,000 years before AD 1 in 1924. In Latvia, followers of Dievturība have used the Latviskā ēra, which starts at the same point, since 1929. E. R. Hope proposed an Anterior Epoch with the same start in 1963.
In 1994 estimates for the start of the Holocene ranged from 12,700 to 10,970 years before present. The International Union of Geological Sciences later adopted a 2013 consensus of 11,700 years before 2000, about 300 years after the calendar's epoch.
Sources
How this site calculates the date: Gregorian year + 10,000, proposed by Cesare Emiliani in 1993.