Conglomera Timeline

## Timeline format and procedure

As a collaborative worldbuilding project, Conglomera allows events, civilization and stories to span a wide range of times, from prehistory to far future. This allows us to work on many things in different times while keeping Canon in check.

### Format

The Format is to use "Anchored" and "Relative" reference for temporal locations. Each temporal location is called an Age, a cohesive period in a technological and geopolitical view.

An Anchored Age has a fixed date when it begins and ends, known as a quantitative location. Relative Ages are described "the far future", "the classical civilisations", "the last ice age", qualitative locations.

All other temporally located events, places, civilizations and stories must be located inside an age. For example, "Robin Hood" is located in "Medieval Europe". These can all be located absolutely "The Battle Of Hastings was in 1066" or relatively "Robin Hood occurred in the life of King Richard"

One thing to note is that relative events and ages can have new events and ages inserted between seemingly adjacent ones. For example, if "The Fall of Rome" was followed by "Medieval Europe", a creator could insert "The Dark Ages" provided at least one of the two established ages were relative ages.

### Procedure

To locate an event in an Age, you merely need to declare that is when it occurs, and can define it in an anchored or relative manner. To create a new Age however, you must  submit it to the canonisation thread as a "creation".

When a new Age is proposed, it must be described with an overarching reason for this temporal location to be isolated and named. What grips the world such that this has a global effect across species and cultures and overrides other aspects? However, do not draw too tightly, as you are not seeking to lock down creative direction, merely give it a foundation.

General levels of evolutionary / scientific / social / cultural advancement should be indicated. Constraints on exploration, technology, culture, weather, disease can be placed, although these should be applied lightly and openly. Finally, approximate length of the Age should be noted and large enough to give narrative room. Parallels to Earth are acceptable, but not required.

If you wish to create a new Anchored Age, it must be adjacent to a Canon Anchored Age, so that our Anchored Canon Ages form one unbroken timeline.

*Note: Global event ages are not allowed without serious community consultation. Do not think you can add in a "age of recovery from the nuclear war / asteroid / alien invasion" or "Ice age" or "volcano age" because they interfere with peoples ongoing cultures and species too much.*

## Conglomera Timeline

The Canon Ages are recorded here. The calendar used on Conglomera is indexed to the first year that one culture managed to publish a full and relatively accurate world map and distribute it to all species. Before this year is BG "Before Global", and afterwards is GA "Global Annums"

### 249 BG to 167 GA: The Age of Meeting

 End
 Major Themes

The Age of Meeting is analogous to the period between the 15th and 19th centuries on earth. Science was moving from the peak of the Renaissance through the Enlightenment. Transport allowed large, open ocean going ships to reliably cross Earths oceans (less so on Conglomera). Trade moved from localised to global, with strong establishment of things such as the silk road and ocean trading companies.

Most of all, it represents the start of global understanding, discovery and meeting. At the start of this period, 3-4 of the continents were isolated from the other 3, and there was no culture which knew of them all in any detail. By the end of this period, all continents were discovered, most were well mapped and cultures from extremely different backgrounds and geographic locations had met each other (with varying results).

For reference, on Earth, America was not discovered by Europeans until 1492, the first serious circumnavigations were not made until 1580, and world maps of reasonable accuracy were not made until 1780 to 1786

The Constraints this Age places are:

* Before this age, no culture had a fully global understanding of the world's geography.
* Before this age, no culture knew of every  Sapient species.
* This Age extends for approximately 400-450 years.
* This Age roughly corresponds to 1450AD - 1850 AD in earth terms for technology and inspiration purposes.