Onto had problems since he could remember. It was all about how people measure time. When he was a little boy, his parents would keep talking about events or art works created sometime in B.C or A.D. There was some division and, as he could see it, the time was going back in the B.C. times. That was confusing and hard to understand. All his art history books were using this system. When he grew up, he started imagining how people of various religions and beliefs would interpret this type of time measurement and how they would cope with this issue. He started reading more, talking to people from various cultures and religions, and yet he still had problems. If an artwork were labeled as a Ming Dynasty, for example, how its exact age would be determined: how old it would be in years? People often come from abroad to study. His friend has arrived along with his wife, from another culture, another system, or even another value system. They had to learn it all, and they both had to take difficult entry tests. His friend’s wife was studying diligently for the test, but his friend answered the questions by either guessing, or according to his senses, intuition or general knowledge. Not because he was lazy, but he knew the tests were written for people who were raised in this system, and all this was so far from his beliefs and rules. This was his form of protesting against having them all passing tests that did not make much connection to all students coming from different cultures. In effect, his wife’s score was only slightly higher then his own. Was he proud? Not really, but she still felt angry. Onto wanted to develop a unified time measuring system, so all people around the world could communicate better. So, according to him, children would be schooled that in 120015, also known as 2001… Well, that double numbering would be needed for about three generations only. After that, all will be smoothly converted, just like currency in some countries, for example. People all over the world use the Coordinated Universal Time system, known also as the Greenwich Mean Time. However, people use so many other kinds of calendars. For example, Chinese people use Chinese Zodiac calendar that consists of a 12-year cycle, each year named after a different animal. The years of Rabbit are 1963, 1975, 1987, or 1999, years of Dragon are1964, 1976, 1989, or 2000, Snake, 1965, 1977, 1989, or 2001, Horse, 1966, 1978, 1990, or 2002, Sheep 1967, 1979, 1991, or 2003, Monkey, 1968, 1980, 1992, or 2004, Cock, 1969, 1981, 1993, or 2005, Dog, 1970, 1982, 1994, or 2006, Boar, 1971, 1983, 1995, or 2008, Rat, 1972, 1983, 1995, or 2009, Ox, 1972, 1984, 1996, or 2010, and Tiger, 1974, 1986, 1998, or 2011. Many Chinese believe that each animal imparts distinct characteristics to its year and also to a person born in this year. Over one thousand years ago, ancient Chacoans or Anasazi people created in stone a solar and lunar calendar in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. An assembly of three nine foot stone slabs lined up sunlight into patterns of light and shadow onto a spiral petroglyph in the cliff wall. The patterns marked the year’s solstices and equinoxes and were believed to track the 18.6-year cycle of the moon. Alan Price and an archeoastronomer Anna Sofaer reconstructed the site in 2002 as a real time simulation “The Sun Dagger Interactive,” for the Adler Planetarium and Museum in Chicago. When it comes to space, it is simpler. There are latitudes, the angular distances of a place north or south of the earth’s equator, expressed in degrees and minutes. There are also longitudes that measure (in degrees and minutes) the angular distance of a place east or west of the meridian at Greenwich, England, or west of the standard meridian of a celestial object. Onto pondered the question of what cartographic system the Chinese people use to locate a place. Do they use latitudes and longitudes in everyday life, he wondered. Onto is not quite satisfied with a fact that people bring different elements of time and space into unified coordinated systems, because he knows that, in spite of the advantages of a common system for the world’s economy and business, there are still acres, yards, and inches in everyday use. He knows that the length of the year is based on the astronomical year – the time taken by a planet to make one revolution around the sun. It is often referred as the solar year – the time between successive spring or autumnal equinoxes, or winter or summer solstices, roughly 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds in length. Onto wants to set up the timeline in history by drawing a line as a point of reference, in some point of time. This way every artwork could be easily compared age-wise to other artwork created someplace else on the globe. The onset of such timeline may begin, for example, 50 million years before now, depending on how old is the human history on Earth. A mankind is very old, but whom do we compare them with to determine how old man is? Onto wants to find out when the human kind began and make it the year “0.” So maybe we need to add 50 million years to the present date, and from now on, measure time from the beginning of the first year. However, Onto realizes that someone would develop some new system based on a new discovery in archeology, cultural anthropology, or a proved theory that would set the new actual time. There are many problems, though: when the very first people emerged and how to measure it. Defining humans is hard too: separating abilities from cognition is not that easy, after all. People had different rules for a wet year and for a dry year. The tool usage also got complicated because it is not an exclusive characteristic of humans. Beavers, for example, have an intuitive understanding of the tool. Going by the ability of domesticating wild animals and making them homebound was another idea. But ants create factories using aphids to support a food bank for larvae and a breeding queen. Going by an upright posture was another idea, but some humanoids or humans were already erected but they still preferred living on trees. Judging by human ability to make art was not easy either because of a lack of information about the purpose of making artifacts. Venuses were made early in history to enhance fertility, in the belief that pre-women deities could bring the rain, and to show respect for the beauty of a woman. Many also tried to examine the old findings, skeletons, and even coins to determine the beginning of human history. Onto wanted to open a contest on the Internet where people would vote which year to name a Number One and refer to it as the first one. He also wanted to organize a conference on this theme. He listed the disciplines and specialists representing branches of knowledge related to the conference's theme. He believed that specialists of knowledge visualization, as well as people who concentrate on documentary film would be very helpful in providing common understanding among people working on different subjects and using differing tools and technologies. He even wanted to invite people who work on philosophy, as well as aesthetics in art and science, and might make easier a common understanding. Paleoclimatologists would tell about a climate prevalent in the geological past and climate changes in the geological past. They would discuss how events and processes in the earth's history, such as glacial periods, with its surface covered with ice, followed by interglacials with milder climate, would add to the changes in earth's physical structure that determined the beginning of human history. Together with paleozoologists, they would discuss conditions necessary for the beginning of life, so difficult to specify when many living forms can be found in hot water or water containing sulfur and sulfur acid. They would present data obtained from insects, fungi, germs, and other specimens preserved in resin for tens of thousands years and then retrieved from the sea as amber. Doctors who conduct medical research could say something about human health and diseases. Proteins decompose, so the DNA-based research would not work. However, there are plenty of petrified items, organic compounds of carbon, so it would be possible to cooperate with specialists in paleobiology to measure the age of the objects using the C14 method for radioactive coal, and paleopathology to examine the pathological conditions found in ancient human and animal remains. The conference would include people who concentrate primarily on places of origin of civilization: archeologists and specialists that collect knowledge about original or indigenous inhabitants of ancient places. A mankind is very old, but whom do we compare them with to determine how old man is? There were many nomadic cultures with people traveling from place to place to find fresh pasture for their livestock, and migratory cultures moving from one area to settle in another, in search of better life. Then the new, the soil-related sedentary tribes inhabited the same area throughout their life. Their lifestyle resulted in accumulation of sedimentary deposits of objects related to material culture, like those formed by rocks. The traveling tribes were not making so many tools as the sedentary ones would. They would not create homes. The static sedentary cultures would erect a house for good and would take care of the soil. They would see any stranger as an enemy, as they’d endanger their agricultural and hunting areas. Thus, to conquer meant to survive. They’d organize war expeditions to protect their fields and hunting territories, to catch and hold women captive. They needed women for birthing children and men for working on fields, so they used force or trade to have them, not necessarily as the slaves. Ancient Egypt used physical work of people from the neighboring, conquered countries even without making them slaves. Cultural anthropologists could look for the track of tools. Petroglyphs may allow deciphering what was a tool and what was not. Bones are known for their mineralization, but we could recognize the bones from some prehistoric rock carvings. Some tools made of horns, teeth, or bones would need to be embalmed in raisin or lava (such as in Herculaneum) to be preserved in spite of their protein composition. They could also use the paleontological data to decipher the reasons of death: hunger, early tortures, reminders of viruses, bacteria, animal and plant poisons, or such events as a person having a stick attached to a leg as an early prosthetic device. Paleoanthropologists concerned with fossil hominids would discuss their search results for the graves’ content, with clay and ceramic bowls, pots, and tablets, any signs of bone reminders, petroglyphs, stone arrows, and iron or other metal tools. Cultural Anthropologists were also researching early forms of a language and communication. In 80s, Noam Chomsky along with other researchers, were discussing whether the language would have common grounds (cradle of civilization). They were looking for a pre-noun concept for a mother, child, snow, soil, or a fight. It intrigued them whether languages would have common genetic roots, or is it the brain of a man wired depending on the place, such as Africa, China, so it brought about some articulation. Or maybe it’s a genetic function: some trends stating that the language evolution might be common and general. Art Historians would look for the beauty of men and women across the time, be it shown to exaggerate procreative abilities, or the height, strength, and muscularity, so valued in the wartimes. Chemists would look for traces of fire; they would search and research organic matter petrified into a stony concretion by encrusting its substance with a calcareous, siliceous, or other mineral deposits. They would measure radioactivity, the emission of ionizing radiation caused by the spontaneous disintegration of atomic nuclei. It would require collaboration of specialists in various fields in physic, chemistry, and paleontology concerned with fossil animals and plants. The indigenous inhabitants of several continents would be invited to share their ancestral culture preserved for centuries through geographical isolation. Australian Aborigines would look for old traditions and secure various forms of conveying information for next generations. Researchers on the history of South Africa and Central Africa, and those who carry on the study of the language, history, and antiquities of ancient Assyria, the terrains between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in southwestern Asia, as well as those who concentrate on Australian, New Zealand, South American, Aztec, Mayan, or Nazca culture. Specialists in the Upper Paleolithic Period would discuss how Asiatic people traveled from Siberia toward western Alaska. Also researchers about the pre-historical Greenland people belonging to Paleo-Eskimo cultures who were later colonized by Norse settlers. Researchers on Neolythic peoples would talk about the Stonehenge in England erected about 3,000 years ago. The conference would also host specialists representing various disciplines related to all under-the-sea discoveries. It would also include research about Atlantis, a legendary island first mentioned by Plato in his dialogues. The Linguistic specialists would refer their knowledge of old alphabets. They would go from the oldest pictograms drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns, and then analyze the cuneiform scripts on clay tablets, the earliest written texts created by the Sumerians about 3000 BC. Other specialists would talk about hieroglyphic writings, such as Egyptian, Cretan, Greco-Roman, Mayan, or ancient Chinese characters. Communication specialists would encipher aboriginal non linear ways of thinking, transmission of ideas from person to a person via dance, music, body signs, or signs on sand, which is so fragile and perishable and yet lasting through tradition for thousand of years. These non-linear forms preserve information depending on the actual conditions. It will differ when the year is dry from messages created in the rainfall period. Bats can communicate through ultrasounds, and we can use gestures, pictures, melody, by whistling, using a Morse code, and other systems. There is a need to search for paralanguages, without focusing on languages, as we understand them now. Some say we cannot think without the language. So how a cat or a dog thinks? They communicate feelings of joy. They dream, often we can see them running, barking, breathing heavily while asleep. How about their imagination, anticipation, sense of humor (yes, some dogs do make jokes, tease their owners, and like to play. And, in Johan Huizinga's view, play was a vehicle for creating culture, because play, particularly symbolic play, was where cognition and culture met. The musicologist. How much can be told from music about the past? Indeed, we sung before we talked, and communication with sounds is even older than humans are. For example, according to David Attenborough, dolphins, that are acoustically the most sophisticated animals in the world, compose sets of 30 - 40 sequential sounds that they repeat many times. The musician’s job would be to tell about the ways people code messages as music and songs. We are vocal humans, aren't we? Tam Tams can be considered a language. The sounds go between tribes for a long distance. But, as David Attenborough said, music sadly doesn't fossilize. But, as he once said, music has to be listened as a whole, because a single note has no meaning in itself. But put the notes put together and musical phrases begin to emerge; phrases can be connected to make melodies, and melodies become themes. Then, themes evolve through variations, and all that can be combined according to particular rules. In the caves visited by our Stone Age ancestors there are drumming marks made on the stalactites, which suggests they were played like the xylophones. One may believe, rhythms sent by the tam-tam drums can be considered a language, with sounds going between tribes for a long distance; the 30 or 40,000-year-old pipes with finger holes made Stone Age music. Is it a language, or is it music, or both? When does the form of serenade started? Birds, in order to win a female did exactly what the name of a song implies. Some people do the same, be it to a certain woman, or to a perfect, imaginative one. They used the instruments, though. Sport Science specialist and a Military specialist. When the sport started? People practiced war art. Sport is close to war exercise, like in Sparta, for example. Olympic games came out of the needs of skills needed for a war. Cheerleaders can raise the team spirit and raise the hormone level in the players. To win a war, or a battle, one must master many areas, disciplines, and skills. For example, Napoleon had abstract thinking ability. Warriors perfected their coordination, usage of tools and their muscles, endurance, speed, balance, as well as psychological skills to make the enemy scared. Some soldiers do not feel cold or are not affected by it, some have a posture and a body language that shouts “bold,” thus generating an aura of a fearless warrior, some would just ignore the enemy and win psychologically. War dances can bring fear on the enemy and the pain resistance to the fighters. War dancers were showing both to the army and to the enemy how fit they were, how much endurance they possessed, and how they could do the impossible, walk on fire, jump high, and achieve higher states of mind, with no pain or fear. Some shamans used psychedelic, often hallucinatory agents, such as plants containing peyote (mostly mescaline) to ask invisible forces or spirits for help, and thus support the warriors. Special equestrian units in 17th century Poland, called hussars, carried wings on the battlefield; they were making noise that frightened the opponent’s horses. Mathematicians and astronomers would also contribute their knowledge to the conference, Topo thought. Yet another specialists would talk about quipu, – a system of knotted cords, called talking knots, that were used in the Inca Empire to encode information by knots on cords. Mathematicians help archeologists to solve the codes of quipu, where a relative placement of the knots, their kinds, colors, and spaces between knots add to the logical numerical recording. The Incas have never developed a system of writing but they recorded data precisely with quipus acting like their primitive computers. The strings presenting the Fibonacci series, 1, 2, 3, 5, were found by the Portuguese and American explorers at the beginning of the 17th century. By designing computer programs computer scientists analyze patterns in quipus and other ancient artifacts, art objects, and documents. Astronomers interested in ancient studies of star and planet configurations would tell about the forgotten knowledge in geometry, trigonometry, and other fields acquired by Arabian mathematicians and also astrologers acting as pre-astronomers; also, about old traditions in Persia, Iran, Iraq, and other countries, involving setting horoscopes, building mandalas, and telling the future. Onto would also want to invite a specialist of beliefs, first religions, and religion movements who would cooperate with a cultural anthropologist on researching polytheism and old myths, such as ancient Greek myths, or scriptural stories such as that about the Noah arc and the flood. Onto wanted to make all so unified that true collaboration could emerge in a true democratic environment. However, Onto and all participants of the Conference learned that the idea of finding out when the humankind began and making it the year “0” was unrealistic. As it often happens at many other important meetings, the participants agreed to end with another conclusion. The idea was simple: to create a monetary value of a Global. Just like euro in Europe, dollar in the US, the Global would be a common currency for everyone. Global would not be printed. It would be beamed via cell phones. Or whatever the new name would become for that new pocket computer that does it all and the devices would do all the calculations, before beaming it all, just like palm pilots used to do. Someone would say 1 Global = 2 Euros, and it would be no problem if one would like to pay with old currency, he thought. People have to trade, after all, but the fixed value, with no decimals, would help many do business in a more effective manner, Onto thought. There were some security measures of course. The device (a new portable computer) would be connected to its owner through a biofeedback sensor. Thus, a person under duress would not be able to transfer any money. That would generate a need for both the bankers and the robbers to be extremely composed and polite. It would replace a war of muscles with the war of brains, but so what, he kept thinking. After examining an immense content of the conference proceedings, Onto wants to put together some practical conclusions. First of all, he wants to create a new rule, that one can take a text from Wicki without any penalty. That’s the new form of sharing. There are other ideas he is ready to share. Internet based learning would dominate the market. Everyone would be able to celebrate their own holidays and their own religious celebration could be observed according to their calendar. If someone would choose to celebrate all the holidays and all the religious events, that person, simply would not pass the school exams. He has also developed a list of differences that would need to be addressed, as well as a list of issues and problems to be solved: Space Resources Women Economical differences Religions Abilities Races Languages Norms of behaviors (feeling better then), values (America free), dominations Ideologies (cold war, etc) Genetic engineering Satellites controlling weather and sending typhoons to some other place before they hit hard Saving summer’s energy for winter and winter’s chill for the summer.