MythHome's Time Scale + Other Time Scales

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Last Updated: Wednesday,Feb 25, 2009

There is a variety of time scales that paleo-people,historians and web-masters use:

MythHome's Time Scale:

• Years before Today (the day this site was put up, roughly 1999 A.D. so 1000 A.D. is said to 1000 years before today, 500 B.C. is called 2500 years before today, abbreviated sometimes to B.T.)

Other time scales used, and which you may see in links pointed to by this site:

Historian's Widest Time Scale:

• A.D.-'anno domino', years after Jesus Christ's birth/death, created by a Dominican monk. Anno Domini History
  
• B.C.-'before Christ', the years before the birth/death of Jesus Christ.
  
• C.E.-'current era', which is any time from 500 A.D. to now, or from 1500 A.D. to now, depending on the book.
  
• B.C.E.-'before current era', which is any time before C.E. (There is a handful of scholars, such as Langford, which use B.C.E. to mean before contemporary era, which is like before today above. However B.C.E. is used only as before current era which is equal to B.C. not before C.E. Weird but true.)

Geologist's Time Scale

• Era: Units of a Billion Years since the beginning of the planet. Right now, and for quite a while yet we are in the 5th billion year period called by geologists the Cenozoic era.
  
• Period: Each era is divided into 10 eras...were are in the Quaternary or fourth era now (300,000,000 -400,000,000 years since the start of this era) , a million years ago was end of the prior one, the Tertiary.
  
• Epoch: Each era is (arbitarily) cut up into times chunks called Epochs
  
  • Holocene is the current epoch, which started about 10,000 years before today.
    
  • Pleistocene was the prior one (starting about 2 million years ago)
    
  • Pliocene was the one before the Plestocene, at it started 5 million years ago and lasted till 2 million, a 3 million year difference.
  • Miocene was the one before the Pliocene, and it started in 25,000,000 years before today, so it lasted 20,000,000 years. I told you it was arbitrary.
  • For this Mythology Site I need not mention earlier epochs.

Biologist's and Anthropologist's Time Scale

• Cultural Stage: Each Epoch is divided into biological life, or cultural stages...an anthropologists or biologists opportunity to set each time period to event which is considered significant by the classifiers
  
  • In the case of the Stages, except the most recent, the classification is usually new animal life: The cultural stage in the Miocene Epoch closest to our time is the Hominoids meaning human-like (like Zomboids are zombie-like).
    
  • The Plesistocene Epoch is divided into three: Upper, middle and lower (furthest from our time) Paleolithic (old stone age).
    
  • The First stage of the Holocene Epoch (includes our time) is the:
    • Neolithic (new stone age, also the start of cultivation of plant-agriculture), then
    • Copper( also the start of animal husbandry, the raising and domestication of animals),
    • Bronze,
    • Iron,
    • Plastic, and Silicon. (I made up these two.)
      
  
  
  
• Cultural Period: Each cultural period is divided into periods, again the division is based on criteria created by anthropologists
  • The Pliocene has only the Oldowan (a site of earliest stone tools known - about 2 million years ago.)
  • The lower (early) Paleolithic has the
    
    • Acheulian (another site where better designed stone tools made about 1.5 million years ago by different hominoids than those at the older Oldowan site)
    • Clactonian(more stone tools, better design, different site, about 150,000 years ago, maybe Neanderthal)
    • Levalloisian(another site, about 80,000 years ago, different design at this different site)
    
    
  • The middle Paleolithic has the Mousterian period(the name of the site where Neanderthal tools were found, 40,000 years ago )
    
  • The upper (late) Paleolithic has five periods, each a site of interesting artificats left by Neanderthals, or by the Cro-Magnons people (basically us humans today)
    • Chatelperronian(about 30,000 years ago)
    • Aurignacian(about 25,000 years ago}
    • Gravettian (about 20,000 years ago)
    • Solutrean (about 15,000 years ago)
    • Magdalenian(about 12,000 years ago)
    
    
  • The Neolithic Stage has the Azilean period(10,000 years ago) at the beginning of it.