On Tuesday 2004-01-27 15:35, Alberto Monteiro wrote: > Some comments: > > 2.8 - 2.2 BYA: Progenitors rule the galaxies in what is > > traditionally thought to be a Golden Age. Mention of 13 Galaxies. > > Records extremely sketchy. > > It seems that what is implied by the text of Contact Aliens is that > _early_ in this period Galaxy 1 and Galaxy 2 became linked, and > then a horrible War began, with total annihilation of O-2 civ, except > for the Progenitors. This led them to Uplift.
Yep. > > 2.3 BYA: Progenitors separate themselves from affairs of lesser > > races, passing on laws and edicts. > > > > 2.305 BYA: First Wars with Hydrogen-Breathers begin. > > Of course this is a typo: 2.305 happens _before_ 2.3 :-) Dang. I thought I got all of those... > > 2.24 BYA: Zang establish separate peace with O/2 Civilization paving > > the way for a general peace. > > Contacting Aliens gives this date as 2.25 [ok, we can accept that > 2.25 is an approximation - the entry in CA is quite long] > > Why not add the following: > > 545 MYA: Diversity is artificially induced in many worlds, including Earth > [causing the Cambrian explosion]. This is the last reference to Earth in > the Galactic Library. It depends on DB. I expect that he has a personal politcial agenda of supporting--or at least not undermining--support for evolution as fact. (I know that the pro-evolution theme is important to me....) For this sub-theme it is critical that the Galactics *NEVER* mess with Earth. > > 0xY /2211 CE: First Galactic Contact. Human explorers contact > > Tymbrimi colonists. This was 87 paktaars ago by Galactic measure. > > Nope. So it needs to be 2212 CE. BTW, what was the date the first Cosmonaut went into space. > BTW, why the dates are usually referred as "after/before Contact" > or as "years ago"? This makes conversion to AD and BC a useless > task, and we have had several different, mutually contradictory, > dates for Contact. Based on the data of Sundiver, I could compute > the Year of Contact with reasonable precision, and it was fixed in > 2212 AD. I disagree. Very old dates (over 100KYA) can safely be refered to with "years ago". Indeed, one wants to avoid using an epoch since it can imply undo precision. For dates under about 5000 BCE you really need to use an epoch. The CE/BCE system is annoying in that it lacks a year zero. You have two reasonable choices for a year zero. Either 1 BCE or Contact. I chose Contact since it is THE critical date in the Uplift Universe. There are a lot of good reasons for picking Contact as your zero year. In short, I like the *xY notation and probably can't be persuaded to change it. I might be persuaded to get rid of the *YA notation in favor of *xY throughout. > > 31 AxY: A small branch Library is installed at La Paz, Earth. > > The Human starship Tabernacle disappears. > > The flight of Tabernacle should happen _after_ Sundiver, because > they carried a book written by Jacob Demwa in year 42 after Contact. This isn't my entry. It is from SeJ. We can assume that GU2 superceeds the earlier source or assume it is is error and make a correction. > > 40 AxY /2290 CE: Sundiver incident. Library at La Paz is upgraded > > through a GLI grant. > > Sundiver gives the explicit date of 2246 AD [which corresponds to > 34 AxY] Ok. We have Contact at 2212CE/280 YA and Sundiver in 2246 CE/240 YA per CA and GU2.... Lets go with 2246CE/34 AxY/246 YA. > I would like to present the "recent" dates in terms that are > human-understandable. For example, it doesn't make sense to > write "277.25 AxY: Garth invaded by Gubru". Why not _explicitly_ > give some date? But this is something that is still beyond my > computing powers: right now I am busy trying to spot some > inconsistencies in the movements of Jijo's Moons. As in 277-Q1, or 277-February? > Alberto Monteiro > > _______________________________________________ > http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
