Thobel's Calendar

Thobel cannot have a Julian Calendar; Julias Caesar never existed there.  Eliza spent a bit of time thinking about time -- how our technology grew in a pretty short span of time (all things considered). When creating a world for Thobel, where technology is quite a bit behind ours, there were two things that really struck her. First, technology might not move at the same pace because magic changes necessity, and second, the people of Thobel shouldn't mark time in the same way when their circumstances aren't the same as ours. Without a religious revolution to restart time necessitating counting backward for time previously, there cannot be common era or before common era. Nevertheless, they probably need more than a thousand years of history and pre-history. Research into calendars of ancient peoples proved how often humans tend to think in terms of a thousand years as if it marks beginning and end. Thobel is populated by people with a technological level equal to pre-renaissance. Named millenia were born.

Eliza liked the idea that millenia might be named individually, and that they might bear names of the sun and moons -- items that might have been thought deities in the past.  In "Something Special", you see a book that declares the current year as "Millennium of Raj, 635". By this you can probably guess there were other millennia.  In fact, the previous was the Milennium of Kubi. Prior to that was the Milennium of Elis, a great deal of which is just like our BCE in that it is marked by archeological finds rather than actual recorded history. Why doesn't Thobel mark time back millions of years? They aren't that scientifically savvy yet.