When looking at the full expression of a date on the Earth Epic Calendar, the three numbers you see in the parentheses are the three largest units of time, known as the Epic Time Scales.
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These time scales are for units of time that are much larger than what is normally found on most traditional calendars or expressed in dates currently used. The units of time range in size from 25,000 years to 250 million years. As such, these numbers are in parentheses because in everyday use, people will see no need to include them–just as most people see no need to include the initials “AD” or “CE” after the year while writing the date.
Human beings simply can’t fathom the notion of millions or billions of years, but we can visualize 100 as a 10×10 grid. Thus each of the units of time below are separated by factors of 100. Furthermore these units of time are related on significant events in human and Earth history that happen to align around the number 25, which is why each of these units are the length that they are.
Eon – 250 million years, or roughly the length of a Galactic Year (the time it takes for the Solar System to orbit the Milky Way Galaxy), or the time between the advent of the dinosaurs and now. Eon 0 starts when the Earth was first created.
Genesis – 2.5 million years, roughly the time between the advent of the first humans (genus Homo) and the present. The beginning of the current Genesis 16 dates back to a little over 300,000 years ago, roughly when Homo Sapiens is believed to have appeared.
Epoch – 25,000 years. The approximate age of the oldest human settlement ever found, and the approximate length of the Axial Precession. This current Epoch began two months before 9701 BC on the Proleptic Gregorian Calendar, which is the date set by the International Commission on Stratigraphy as the beginning of the Holocene Epoch.
If you wish to go into greater detail about each of these three units of time, click here.
If you wish to skip those details and instead continue the tour with the Calendar Time Units page, click here
If you wish to go back to the page discussing the basic structure of the calendar, click here.