Talk:5th millennium BC

Comments

I'm not entirely happy with this bit: "Creation of the world, according to a literal interpretation of the genealogy of early mankind given in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible." As far as I can recall, the genealogy alone is not enough to deduce the date of the Creation. I remember from trying to work it out myself, several years ago, that there is enough information to deduce that Abraham lived about 2,000 years after the Creation, but beyond Genesis, the timing beomes more vague, and so different people have dated Abraham to different periods. This results in differing estimates of the date of the Creation. According to the Hebrew calendar, for example, the Creation took place in 3761 BC (4th millennium BC). -- Oliver P. 17:53 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Obviously one needs to estimate the average "length" (in years) of a generation, so one can only ever get an approximate date this way. My main source actually states "around 4000 BC", and another book I once got from the library said 4200 BC IIRC. Interesting about the exact year in Jewish tradition; I did not know that. Do you know how that was determined? At any rate, it's within a few hundred years (less than 10%) of the other sources, which is what I'd expect the +/- uncertainty of a genealogical determination to be.

I'd suggest giving the range of estimates or, if it turns out that the 3761 BC figure is backed by more than just genealogy, placing it there in the wikipedia timeline. Mkweise 18:34 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Within Genesis itself, the lengths of each and every generation is given in years! One can add up all the generation lengths to get Abraham's birth as something like 1948(ish) years after the Creation. Except that since the ages are given as integer numbers of years, even a literal interpretation should take into account the idea of rounding errors, so I suppose this would have to be plus or minus a few dozen years. I suspect that the people doing the calculations ignored this problem. I don't know how any of them extended the chronology beyond Genesis, I'm afraid. I might have to look into it, and do an article on Estimates of the date of Creation! -- Oliver P. 18:51 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

If you assume that the whole years are the precise figures rounded to the nearest whole years (not necessarily a valid assumption), then statistically the rounding errors should tend to balance out, so that any such calculated date should, in theory, be pretty close. As for extending beyond Abraham, there are other Biblical references to lengths of time that allow extending the dating up to the end of the times of the kings, although a few of the references here are ambiguous and there is still some flexibility in the figures of, say, a couple of hundred years. Philip J. Rayment 15:18, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Some Trinity College, Dublin academic actually 'calculated' not merely the actual date of creation, but even specified a time, 9am on the particular date. I forget the guy's name, but I think it was in the eighteenth century. I can do some checking, but someone else might know the details. JTD 18:59 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)~

I think you must mean Bishop Ussher. He did give an exact time and date, although his article only gives the year. I'll go and put the exact time and date into his article! -- Oliver P. 19:17 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Oops. My mistake. Apparently Ussher didn't give an exact time. This page[1] says that the date of "October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning" has been attributed to John Lightfoot (1602 - 1675), Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University. -- Oliver P.

I though that the purpose of the timelines was to include the facts that actually took place, not those that should have occurred had a certain theory been true. Are we willing to include every single important event predicted (or "retrodicted") by all the known religions, cults, false scientific theories and artistic or literary creations? That would be quite confusing, and hardly useful. -- Sir Paul

It's a significant date that has been much discussed. So I think it should stay in. As for other made-up dates, I think we should only include them if they are particularly significant. Although what that might mean, I have no idea. -- Oliver P. 10:10 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The non-biblical dates given are not facts, but dates derived from calculations based on various theories and assumptions, such as whether or not the Egyptian dates are reliable, whether various archaeologists' ideas are valid, etc. etc., and particularly on the assumption that the biblical dates are not reliable. The only ones that are 'facts' are those for which there is reliable documented contemporary evidence that dates a particular event to a known reliable base date. Depending on your views of the reliability of the Bible, the biblical dates actually fit this criterion best. Philip J. Rayment 15:18, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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And can we really be so precise about when the plough was introduced into Europe? Dating to the nearest century seems a bit too precise when talking about what was still prehistory. Can anyone attribute this date to any source? -- Oliver P. 18:33 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Time line

Sorry to interrupt ya all , but my Assyrian friend here in Iraq has the current year in there calendar as 6756 ( 1 April 2006). That seems to make a bit of a mockery out of your timelines

The whole thing about Bedazzled should be taken out in my opinion, but I'm not gonna take the responsibility of doing so... Anyone wanna help me?

the articles, this and 40th century bc

I think some people have trouble misunderstanding human history. Alot of people mostly because of the differences that evolution has made in how man looks at himself and the universe. Regardless of what the infidels think. How valid are the ideas that human history started in the garden of eden, or that the world was repopulated by the sons of Noah. Where is mankinds Cradle of Humanity is what im trying to sayPortillo 09:11, 18 May 2007 (UTC).

Mythology

I've created a new section called "Mythology" and moved the entry for 4004 there. 4004 is not used by any modern chronologies as it's simply a date calculated by somebody by reference to a creation myth and a biblical chronology. It's part of a belief system rather than a historical chronology. --TS 06:45, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Population estimates?

This article says world population is "roughly" 40 million, citing Biraben (1979). World population estimates cites a source by Biraben a year later, but does not show any number from it in the table for -5000, and the other estimates listed are 18M, 5M, and 5-20M - half as much as the number given on this page. I don't doubt that 40M may be as good an estimate max as 20M, but it would perhaps be nice if there was consistency between this page and the page on population estimates. --Lasse Hillerøe Petersen (talk) 19:08, 9 May 2019 (UTC)