what clearly marks a new era?

Some kind of major event maybe...

This is something I kind of wonder about myself -who decides exactly? It seems that there is generally a major turning point that marks the end of the previous era, something big that says "things are different now"And it also seems that a major declaration or understanding must be reached as well. In the TES universe, if people believe something to be (as I understand it) then so it is, if they believe strong enough. In other words if you convince the people that a new era has arrived, then indeed it has. This is a possible theory as to why a new era -marked by event in tamriel- has an effect on EVERYHING such as Jyggalag can return at the end of every era. But once again, I am prone to thinking out loud.

There has to be at least x amount of time passed, I think (quite obviously, or we would be in the 361th era now). Couple that with a continent-changing event (for example, the Dragonfires made obselete and the end of the Septim line) and a general consensus among the people, scholars, rulers and adventurers and there you have it, a new era!

1E : Starts with somebody actually recording time.
The Merethic is then created by counting backwards from the First Era.
The Dawn Era then defines itself as not having any consistent time to count back into. Which coincides with the gods leaving and an event called the Convention.

2E : Starts because the Potentate Declared it to have started.
3E : Starts when Tiber Septim conquered Tamriel and says it started.

4E: Presumably that new new guy will say so. Septims dead, I rule, new era.

Serjos,

Proweler's words should be heeded, for they "ring with the chimes of truth" http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/sotha_sil.shtml.

An Era in our favorite mythos is not so much a measure of time (because each Era has been differing durations) but a word used to define "something going on". Allow me to elaborate.

Take, for example, the 2nd Era. This Era marks a period of time when no human truly sat as Emperor-in-fact over Cyrod and its provinces. The Potentate assuming the throne and public declaration marks the new Era's beginning. The 2nd Era lasted until someone else took the throne (Tiber Septim) and proclaimed that a "new era" had begun.

Thus we find ourselves faced with an "era" being defined more by categorical events more so than by any preordained length of time.

Had the Septim lineage not ended, then the 3rd Era would have continued onward. But the "Septim Era" is over.

I hope that my brief addition has aided the current discourse, for JHUNAL has long deigned that to fall in line with "the mucker-upper of all things in this world" (http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/aldudagga.shtml#3) would only add to his foul intentions.

For all the aforesaid and that better left unspoken, I remain...


Yours in the Scrolls,


___The Word Merchant of Julianos

A doesn't-make-sense bell just went off in my head. If these 'eras', as defined, recorded, and numbered, were a concept completely derived from mortal thought, then why the devil does Jyggalag choose the beginnings of these unpredictably changing human time markers as the date to periodically launch his temporary reclamation of the Isles?

Note I'm kinda TES IV ignorant:

1. I thought a SI era was roughly 1000 years in the realm, a bit different from the Tamriel idea.

2. I've been lacking in my Jyg reading, but I kinda saw Jyg's periodic retaking of the isles as a bit symbolic, representing the upheaval and cataclysmic change that would go across Tamriel.

I will say those ideas were conceived in a pretty haphazard fashion. I've been slacking WAY too much in TES reading...

Perhaps when there are major changes in Tamriel and the declaration of a new era is generally accepted by the people...
this is just a guess though.