Officially, the current
we live in Holocene Epoch, of the Quaternary Period, in the Cenozoic Era (of the Phanerozoic Eon)
2023 (MMXXIII) is the current year, and is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2023rd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 23rd year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 4th year of the 2020s decade.
Our current geologic epoch, the Holocene, began 11,700 years ago with the end of the last big ice age.
Some historians argue that the Iron Age never ended and that we are still living in it today. This was most likely because steel was still widely used, particularly during the Industrial Revolution in the early twentieth century and even today.
The geologic time scale divides up the history of the earth based on life-forms that have existed during specific times since the creation of the planet. These divisions are called geochronologic units (geo: rock, chronology: time).
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and modern humans have been around for around a mere 200,000 years.
As of April 2022 there are currently ten defined eras/erathems. A period is a major rank below an era and above an epoch.
Therefore, this current period in history has been understood to be called the new Carolean era.
The current year by the Gregorian calendar, AD 2023, is 12023 HE in the Holocene calendar. The HE scheme was first proposed by Cesare Emiliani in 1993 (11993 HE), though similar proposals to start a new calendar at the same date had been put forward decades earlier.
Why is King Charles III reign called 'the Carolean era'? The Carolean era began after King Charles ascended to the throne, following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on September 8, 2022. The word Carolean comes from the name Charles.
Advances in nano-technology and bio-technology among others, will soon further raise access to information and knowledge to a level of ubiquity that only our imagination can limit. So yes, the information age is still in the process of evolving, and we are, to some degree, still in it.
Modern Era (1946 - present)
Ten eras are recognized by the International Union of Geological Sciences: the Eoarchean Era (4.0 billion to 3.6 billion years ago), the Paleoarchean Era (3.6 billion to 3.2 billion years ago), the Mesoarchean Era (3.2 billion to 2.8 billion years ago), the Neoarchean Era (2.8 billion to 2.5 billion years ago), the ...
Modern humans originated in Africa within the past 200,000 years and evolved from their most likely recent common ancestor, Homo erectus, which means 'upright man' in Latin. Homo erectus is an extinct species of human that lived between 1.9 million and 135,000 years ago.
Assuming a breeding cycle of 30 years, 300 generations is equivalent to about 10,000 years in humans.
Cenozoic Era: 65 Million Years Ago to the Present
The final time period on the Geologic Time Scale is the Cenozoic Period.
The early Earth is loosely defined as Earth in its first one billion years, or gigayear (Ga, 109y). The “early Earth” encompasses approximately the first gigayear in the evolution of our planet, from its initial formation in the young Solar System at about 4.55 Ga to sometime in the Archean eon at about 3.5 Ga.
The Phanerozoic Eon is divided into three eras, the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. These were named for the kinds of fossils that were present. The Cenozoic is the youngest era and the name means “new life”.
That is why the generations today each span 15 years with Generation Y (Millennials) born from 1980 to 1994; Generation Z from 1995 to 2009 and Generation Alpha from 2010 to 2024. And so it follows that Generation Beta will be born from 2025 to 2039.
Generation Z, also called Gen Z, zoomers, iGeneration, centennials, post-millennials, or Homelanders, term used to describe Americans born during the late 1990s and early 2000s.