Millennium turning

摘要

Millennium—1000 thousand years! Humans conceive most easily of a lifetime, in years, decades, perhaps a century. Since a millennium covers many lifetimes, many generations, and the rise and fall of nations, it stretches our sense of time and assumes a human significance far beyond its physical and temporal significance. A millennium is indeed a time span of myths and legends. An estimated 300 million humans were alive in the year 0, and surely none of those realized the significance that the year would have to future generations—the reckoning of the beginning of the first millennium A.D. or C.E. (or whatever is "politically correct" at the moment); 1000 years later, as the calendar changed from 999 A.D. to 1000 A.D., the population was still approximately 300 million. At the 1000 A.D. millennium turning, however, some were aware of the significance— the passage of 1000 years of human history. As the calendar changed from 1999 A.D. to 2000 A.D., six billion humans witnessed the second to third millennium turning, and a signif-. icant percentage had some comprehension of the significance