The question of which year to designate as Year One of the Continuous Calendar has occupied more of this office's deliberation than any other aspect of the proposal, and the answer arrived at is, the office confesses, imperfect.
The ideal starting point for a continuous calendar is the earliest event in the historical record that can be assigned a specific year with reasonable confidence. In practice, the earliest event in the historical record that anyone agrees on is the arising of the First Mortals from the soil of Aethermark, which Rootwarden tradition places in what would become Year 1000 of the Continuous Calendar under the proposed system.
[Editorial note: The author here reveals the central logical difficulty of the proposal — they are working backward from the present to assign Year One, using the Rootwarden traditional date for the First Mortals' arising as an anchor point approximately one thousand years in the past. The accuracy of this anchor point is, as subsequent scholarship has established, uncertain. The Rootwarden date was itself derived from oral tradition and may be off by as much as several centuries in either direction. The Continuous Calendar's Year One is therefore an estimate rather than a fact. This was known at the time of the proposal and was considered acceptable, since the primary purpose of the calendar was administrative consistency rather than historical precision.]
This office therefore proposes that Year One of the Continuous Calendar be set at the traditional Rootwarden date of the First Mortals' arising, and that all subsequent years be numbered continuously forward from that point. The current year, under this system, is approximately Year 1660 CC.
[Editorial note: The "approximately" in the preceding sentence reflects the author's own uncertainty, noted in a marginal comment on the original document that reads: "Rootwarden Elder Cassith estimates between 1658 and 1663. We have selected 1660 as the midpoint. Close enough for administrative purposes."]
This office acknowledges that the starting year is an estimate. It submits that an agreed-upon estimate, applied consistently, is administratively superior to thirty-seven local systems that are individually precise and collectively incomprehensible.
