One that is entirely too long to write on a check.

Either:

12,000 – Based on some of our oldest civilizations and cities.
200,000 – Based on how long modern man has been around.
4,000,000,000 – Based on the age of the planet.
13,000,000,000 – Based on the age of the universe.

If I had to choose one, I would go with 200,000 as it is the one that seems more appropriate to me.

If we have to keep it based on man kind’s recording of time, then it probably only goes back about some 5,000 years, to the earliest forms of time keeping.

200,052
I was told by my teacher in grade school, that man has been around for 200,000 years, and that was 52 years ago

shit @DrBill , you told my joke before I had a chance to
I’d say @poisonedantidote‘s 12,000 is the best answer because that s about when man recorded years and seasons, They very well anticipated them, but at the time of the first civilization was when they began to keep track of when they were and were going to occur.

It makes most sense to base it on when Man developed writing which would make the coming year 5013. The many thousand years before that were pre history.

There are tons of calendars made by man.

check it out for a quick glimpse

My point is there is no clear way to know what year we’re really in. Even carbon dating relies of estimation.

I understand we started counting after Jesus was born.

The numbering system and the use of B.C. and A.D. came hundreds of years after the “birth of Christ.” Previously, the Romans had numbered their years from the presumed founding of Rome.

Behaviourally modern humans emerge at around 50,000 years ago, maybe as far as 100,000 years ago. It’s these humans that would have had the curiosity and cognitive capacity to actually count anything at all.

It’s with the invention of agriculture that recording the months and days of the year became important and at all necessary, and the earliest known counting systems are from around 11,000 years ago, coinciding with the advent of agriculture.

I just watched a TV documentary about cave paintings that have been dated as 40,000 year older or more. If we understood the meanings, it might be a calendar type record. One that especially interested me was a series of hands that could have represented days or months passing.

@mazingerz88: Since I don’t think anybody can pin it down to even the century, it seems impossible to say ”...when man began supposedly started recording hours, days, months and years?” But I don’t think written language goes back more than about 10,000 years, but keeping calendars would have been one of the early uses. I wonder which came first – writing or calendars?

Since nobody knows the origins of calendar reckoning in prehistoric times, the Hebrew Calendar, mentioned in OP, probably comes as close to answering your question as any system in use. The present year is 5773. 5774 arrives in September. (By tradition year 1 was the time of “waste and void” referred to in Genesis 1:1 ref.)

This apparently predates the earliest Chinese, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Mayan calendars.

Somewhere around the year 13.500.000.000

Seeing my universe began in December 1961, I’d say its the year 51 AC.

Let me see, err…12 carry 4 x a squillion + a bakers dozen…I make it around tea time in the year of our lord 6969, ooh, suits you sir!