After the Development of Agriculture
{{Short description|Feminist calendar era, epoch 8000 BCE}}
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After the Development of Agriculture (ADA) is a system for counting years forward from 8000 BCE, making {{currentyear}} the year {{#expr: {{currentyear}} + 8000}} 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 {{currentyear}} is written as 1{{currentyear}} 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".{{cite book |last=Eller |first=Cynthia |title=The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future |location=Boston, Mass. |publisher=Beacon Press |year=2000 |isbn=0-8070-6792-X |page=42 }}{{Efn|Merlin Stone, author of When God Was a Woman}} 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.{{'"}}{{cite book |editor-last=Spretnak |editor-first=Charlene |title=The Politics of Women's Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement |location=Garden City, N.Y. |publisher=Anchor Press (Doubleday) |edition=1st |year=1982 |isbn=0-385-17770-4 |at=page xxiv (footnote) |quote=Berkeley, Nov., 9980 [A.D.A.] }}, subquoting {{cite journal |last=Stone |first=Merlin |title=9978: Repairing the Time Warp and Other Related Realities |journal=Heresies |issue=5 |date=September 1978 }} "Stone uses a dating system that counts 8000 B.C.E.—when women presumably invented agriculture—as the year zero."{{cite book |last=Eller |first=Cynthia |title=The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future |location=Boston, Mass. |publisher=Beacon Press |year=2000 |isbn=0-8070-6792-X |at=page 157 (footnote) and see page 8 note 8 }} Stone said it was the midpoint of the 2,000-year-long proto-Neolithic period (Stone's classification of the period). "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." The "system [was meant] to reflect the cultural accomplishments of women."{{cite journal |last=Eller |first=Cynthia |title=Relativizing the Patriarchy: The Sacred History of the Feminist Spirituality Movement |journal=History of Religions |volume=30 |issue=3 |date=February 1991 |doi=10.1086/463229 |s2cid=162395492 |at=page 283 note 5 }}
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 {{formatnum:10000}} 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
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References
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