Religion:After the Development of Agriculture
After the Development of Agriculture (ADA) is a system for counting years forward from 8000 BCE, making 2023 the year 10023 ADA. It was developed in feminist thealogy. It is not often used.
A.D.A. is similar to the Holocene calendar system, with which the year 2024 is written as 12024 HE.
History of A.D.A.
"In 1978, artist and intellectual Merlin Stone advocated that feminists adopt a new dating system, according to which 1978 was 9978 ADA—After the Development of Agriculture".[1][lower-alpha 1] Stone criticized "Christian dating [because it] skews time in a manner that makes the A.D. era the 'real' time and the B.C. era, which is enormously larger, 'a vast emptiness of the unknown or unreal.'"[2] "Stone uses a dating system that counts 8000 B.C.E.—when women presumably invented agriculture—as the year zero."[3] Stone said it was the midpoint of the 2,000-year-long proto-Neolithic period (Stone's classification of the period).[2] "Others in the feminist spirituality movement have adopted her dating convention as a more 'feminized' way of reckoning history than the standard one that counts from the advent of Jesus."[3] The "system [was meant] to reflect the cultural accomplishments of women."[4]
Whether agriculture began 8,000 years before the Common Era may not be agreed with among scholars, but it is close to some estimates. It also did not begin in all places at the same time.
The A.D.A. calendar system is not often used.
See also
- Holocene Era (also called Human Era)—a similar system, which adds 10,000 years to Common Era
- History of agriculture
- Neolithic Revolution or Agricultural Revolution in the Stone Age, on the beginnings of agriculture in many human cultures
Notes
- ↑ Merlin Stone, author of When God Was a Woman
References
- ↑ Eller, Cynthia (2000). The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. p. 42. ISBN 0-8070-6792-X.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Spretnak, Charlene, ed (1982). The Politics of Women's Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement (1st ed.). Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press (Doubleday). page xxiv (footnote). ISBN 0-385-17770-4. "Berkeley, Nov., 9980 [A.D.A.]", subquoting Stone, Merlin (September 1978). "9978: Repairing the Time Warp and Other Related Realities". Heresies (5).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Eller, Cynthia (2000). The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. page 157 (footnote) and see page 8 note 8. ISBN 0-8070-6792-X.
- ↑ Eller, Cynthia (February 1991). "Relativizing the Patriarchy: The Sacred History of the Feminist Spirituality Movement". History of Religions 30 (3): page 283 note 5. doi:10.1086/463229.
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