New “Shape of History” Page

more reposted old stuff at theAbysmal

Longer Periods of time tend to be organized by orders of 10. There are more compelling measures to consider.

Like 52 years and 260 years and 5,200 years.

Seizing History

How we’ve trapped ourselves in time.

While browsing through the wikipedia entry on history, I was surprised that there was no mention of calendars. History, in one sense, is the fixing of past events, for which there is documented evidence in time – the founding of Rome 753 BC, for example. While oral histories are considered less reliable by western thinkers, some have proven themselves time and again.

Chronological history is often defined by the development of written records, but also on a calendrical framework. Unfortunately, the global calendar is currently the godawful Gregorian, which seizes history in a rigid linear chronological framework.

The problem isn’t the linear framework in and of itself, but rather the general absence of alternatives. Studying the history of Persia, for example, should rely more on the Zoroastrian and Islamic calendars, as Iran does not use the Gregorian. However, events in Persia/Iran are presented to Westerners with Gregorian dates, which distorts the shape of events.