Merry Xmas and a happy 12018 HE.

First off, I want to wish everyone a merry Christmas, and for later this week, a happy new year.

For an atheist, the 2018 number is of course a somewhat random number. But a smart scientist, called Cesare Emiliani offered a solution to that. Ladies and gentlemen... let me introduce you to the Holocene Calender.

If you add 10,000 to the Christian calender, we can honour and (roughly) mark an occasion. It will be roughly 12018 years ago that our ancestors transitioned from hunting and gathering to settling and farming. And by doing this, forever changed the course of human history.

Imagine that: before the year 0 HE, there was no place that humans could call home. Forever moving to where their prey was going. So restless, so vulnerable.

So, dear friends, a merry Christmas and a happy 12018 HE. It's been a great 12018 year run of settling and farming. We should be thankful for it.