It must also be remembered that any dates given are HIGHLY tentative. They ARE based on the easily deciphered Forerunner dating system, but we have nothing to relate this to our current dates - The Terran equivalents are therefore necessarily approximate, based as they are on a radioactive half-life dating system that as given us a series of dates that range from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 BC (+/- 250,000 years).

For this reason, all dates given in this FM will be based on the actual Forerunner Calendrical system.

The Forerunner Calendar - like both the Christian and Atomic Era dating systems commonly in use in the Terran Federation - counts the number of days that have passed since a fixed point in past time. This date is always referred to with the same ideograph - the meaning of which has never been satisfactorily translated (see "Omnilinguals in Archaeological Xenolinguistics" for details). The only reference that has been found that seems to be a definition or explanation of it refers to "the acceptance", as if that reference explains everything! There is still much controversy over whether that phrase even refers to the date Glyph or not - and is included for reference only.

Of course, the forerunners did not use any time length measurement that would be recognisable to us, but we have managed to determine the equivalents of their measurements to ours due to the good fortune that their smallest Time units were based on the rate of vibration of certain crystalline molecules. The equivalents are given below:

1 KKLA = 0.91 seconds

20 KKLAE = 1 OMQU (18.2 s)

20 OMQUE = 1 YNYXX (364 s)

20 YNYXXE = 1 TYXXA (7280 s/ 2 h 1.33 min)

20 TYXXAE = 1 LJO (145600 s/approx. 40 h)

20 LJOE = 1 VJOBM (2912000 s/approx. 33.7 days)

20 VJOBME = 1 UVO (58240000 s/approx. 674 days)

20 UVOE = 1 LBUVO (1164800000 s/approx. 36.91 years)

20 LBUVOE = 1 CBLUVO (23296000000 s/approx. 738.21 years)

The Forerunners wrote their full dates in the following format:

Cbluvoe/Lbuvoe/Uvoe/Vjobme/Ljoe/Tyxxae/Xnyxxe/Omque/Kklae

with a more normal "shorthand" form being the following

Uvoe/Vjobme/Ljoe

corresponding, one would suspect , to our "Year/Month/Day" standard format used in letters, etc.

Every 20 full Cbluvoe (approx. 14764.11 years) - referred by the Forerunners by a single Glyph we translate as "Cycle" - the Calendar was evidently reset to "zero", but a further Date Glyph was added to the initialising sequence (i.e. the "acceptance"Glyph). It was presumed that this system is artificial - as it shows a TOO amazing regularity, compared to the difficulties all known races have had attempting to fit in the irregular rotational periods of their home planets into a logical and well-ordered scheme. The significance of the 20 Cbluvoe/1 "Cycle" period to the Forerunners is currently still unknown.