The Human Era (HE), also known as the Holocene Era or Holocene calendar, is a year numbering system that adds exactly 10,000 years to the currently world-dominant Anno Domini (AD) or Common Era (CE) system, placing its first year near the beginning of the Holocene epoch and the Neolithic revolution. Human Era proponents claim that it makes for easier geological, archaeological, dendrochronological and historical dating, as well as that it bases its epoch on an event more universally relevant than the birth of Jesus Christ. The current year of AD 2012 can be transformed into a Holocene year by adding the digit "1" before it, making it 12012 HE. The Human Era was first proposed by scientist Cesare Emiliani in 1993 (11993 HE).

Cesare Emiliani's proposal for a calendar reform sought to solve a number of alleged problems with the current Anno Domini era, which number the years of the commonly accepted world calendar. These issues include:

Instead, HE places its epoch to 10,000 BC. This is a rough approximation of the start of the current geologic epoch, the Holocene (the name means entirely recent). The motivation for this is that human civilization (e.g., the first settlements, agriculture, etc.) is believed to have arisen entirely within this time. All key dates in human history can then be listed using a simple increasing date scale with smaller dates always occurring before larger dates.