The Hubris of the Traction Era (TE) Calendar
The primary timeframe in which Mortal Engines takes place is known as the Traction Era. In this post-apocalyptic universe, time is officially measured in TE (Traction Era) years - calculating the years since the very first traction cities got their engines rolling.
To my reading, the exact date is not always explicitly referenced by characters in casual conversation within the main Mortal Engines series, but it serves as the foundational timeline for their civilization. For some context, Municipal Darwinism began at the exact same time the Traction Era began, and we know from page 9 of the first novel that this predatory ecological system has existed for about 1,000 years.
This places the events of the original novel roughly around the year 1000 TE.
There is a profound, almost arrogant philosophy baked into this calendar system. By resetting time to the moment cities began eating each other, the architects of the Traction Era essentially declared that true human history didn't matter until humanity became a mechanical predator.
It is the ultimate expression of Municipal Darwinism's hubris: erasing the past to glorify a violent, mobile present.
Year Zero: Nikolas Quirke and the Prequels
If you want to understand exactly how the calendar reset, you have to look at Philip Reeve's excellent prequel series, starting with Fever Crumb. These books take place centuries before the events of Mortal Engines, right on the precipice of the Traction Era.
Before the cities moved, the timeline was murky. London was ruled by the Scriven, a genetically engineered mutant ruling class, and survival was the only real measure of an epoch. In the lore, "Year Zero" of the Traction Era officially marks the monumental moment when the engineer and visionary Nikolas Quirke successfully mobilized the city of London.
By mounting the ruins of the city onto massive caterpillar tracks to escape the geological instability and lack of resources of a poisoned Earth, Quirke birthed the concept of Traction Cities. The moment London lurched forward to hunt its first prey, the old calendars used by the nomad empires and static settlements were violently abandoned, and the TE calendar was born.
The Sixty Minute War and The Black Centuries
But what about the time before the cities moved? To understand the timeline, we must consider the apocalyptic event that fractured history in the first place.
Mortal Engines is set on a ravaged Earth, destroyed by the catastrophic Sixty Minute War. This devastating conflict utilized quantum energy weapons (like MEDUSA), causing massive geological upheaval, shifting tectonic plates, and the near-total destruction of humanity. The war was so brief and destructive that historical records were practically vaporized.
Following this, humanity entered a horrific dark age. Phillip Reeve’s companion book, ‘The Traction Codex’, gives us vital insight into this lost timeline:
“After the Ancients destroyed themselves in the Sixty Minute War, there were several thousand years in which nothing much happened. These were the Black Centuries. The great civilizations of the Screen Age had been utterly swept away, and humanity was reduced to a few scattered bands of savages.”
Because no one was formally recording history during the Black Centuries, humanity lost all track of the Gregorian calendar (our current calendar). It is a bleak commentary on the fragility of human achievement; it only took one hour to erase thousands of years of recorded time.
By the time civilization began to rebuild itself in the form of Traction Cities, establishing a brand new "Year One" wasn't just an ego trip for Nikolas Quirke - it was a societal necessity.
The Fragility of the "Screen Age"
The people of the Traction Era refer to us - the people who fought the Sixty Minute War - as "The Ancients," and our current era is hilariously, and tragically, dubbed the Screen Age.
Reeve's worldbuilding here serves as a brilliant satire of our modern reliance on digital data. Because our culture is stored on fragile servers and microchips that could not survive the Black Centuries, the historians of London (like Tom Natsworthy) are left to piece together our history from garbage. This leads to some brilliant in-universe examples of historical distortion:
- The Extinct Whale: We know that the whale skeleton hanging in Tom's Museum in London City has been extinct for thousands of years. The oceans became too toxic for them shortly after (or during) the Sixty Minute War.
- Deities of the Ancients: Artifacts from our time are highly prized but entirely misunderstood. In the books, statues of Mickey Mouse and Pluto are believed to be the animal-headed gods worshipped by the Ancients - a sharp nod to how modern archaeologists attempt to interpret the pantheons of ancient Egypt. In the film, Minions are used instead of the Disney characters.
- Old-Tech: Compact Discs (CDs) and smartphones are dug up by the Guild of Historians, but their actual use is completely lost to time. Without power or the internet, a smartphone is just a useless black rectangle. They are simply considered shiny trinkets or mysterious "Old-Tech" fragments.
The Anti-Traction League: A Conflicting Timeline
It's also worth noting that timekeeping is deeply political in the Mortal Engines universe. While the great predator cities of the West proudly use the TE calendar to celebrate their dominance, the static settlements of the Anti-Traction League view the mobilization of cities as an ecological crime.
While the League might begrudgingly use TE dates for the sake of espionage, trade, or diplomacy with the West, their own cultural relationship with time is vastly different. Because they worship the Earth and strive to heal the scarred landscapes, their timekeeping likely relies on the natural rhythms that the Traction Cities ignore: growing seasons, lunar cycles, or solar equinoxes. To the people behind the Shield Wall of Batmunkh Gompa, the dawn of the Traction Era wasn't the start of civilization - it was the day the world chose to remain barbaric.
