Date sequence in R spanning B.C.E. to A.D - r

Question

I would like to generate a sequence of dates from 10,000 B.C.E. to the present. This is easy for 0 C.E. (or A.D.):
ADtoNow <- seq.Date(from = as.Date("0/1/1"), to = Sys.Date(), by = "day")
But I am stumped as to how to generate dates before 0 AD. Obviously, I could do years before present but it would be nice to be able to graph something as BCE and AD.

Answer 1

To expand on Ricardo's suggestion, here is some testing of how things work. Or don't work for that matter.
I will repeat Joshua's warning taken from ?as.Date for future searchers in big bold letters:
"Note: Years before 1CE (aka 1AD) will probably not be handled correctly."
as.integer(as.Date("0/1/1"))
[1] -719528
as.integer(seq(as.Date("0/1/1"),length=2,by="-10000 years"))
[1] -719528 -4371953
seq(as.Date(-4371953,origin="1970-01-01"),Sys.Date(),by="1000 years")
# nonsense
[1] "0000-01-01" "'000-01-01" "(000-01-01" ")000-01-01" "*000-01-01"
[6] "+000-01-01" ",000-01-01" "-000-01-01" ".000-01-01" "/000-01-01"
[11] "0000-01-01" "1000-01-01" "2000-01-01"
> as.integer(seq(as.Date(-4371953,origin="1970-01-01"),Sys.Date(),by="1000 years"))
# also possibly nonsense
[1] -4371953 -4006710 -3641468 -3276225 -2910983 -2545740 -2180498 -1815255
[9] -1450013 -1084770 -719528 -354285 10957
Though this does seem to work for graphing somewhat:
yrs1000 <- seq(as.Date(-4371953,origin="1970-01-01"),Sys.Date(),by="1000 years")
plot(yrs1000,rep(1,length(yrs1000)),axes=FALSE,ann=FALSE)
box()
axis(2)
axis(1,at=yrs1000,labels=c(paste(seq(10000,1000,by=-1000),"BC",sep=""),"0AD","1000AD","2000AD"))
title(xlab="Year",ylab="Value")

Answer 2

Quite some time has gone by since this question was asked. With that time came a new R package, gregorian which can handle BCE time values in the as_gregorian method.
Here's an example of piecewise constructing a list of dates that range from -10000 BCE to the current year.
library(lubridate)
library(gregorian)
# Container for the dates
dates <- c()
starting_year <- year(now())
# Add the CE dates to the list
for (year in starting_year:0){
date <- sprintf("%s-%s-%s", year, "1", "1")
dates <- c(dates, gregorian::as_gregorian(date))
}
starting_year <- "-10000"
# Add the BCE dates to the list
for (year in starting_year:0){
start_date <- gregorian::as_gregorian("-10000-1-1")
date <- sprintf("%s-%s-%s", year, "1", "1")
dates <- c(dates, gregorian::as_gregorian(date))
}
How you use the list is up to you, just know that the relevant properties of the date objects are year and bce. For example, you can loop over list of dates, parse the year, and determine if it's BCE or not.
> gregorian_date <- gregorian::as_gregorian("-10000-1-1")
> gregorian_date$bce
[1] TRUE
> gregorian_date$year
[1] 10001
Notes on 0AD
The gregorian package assumes that when you mean Year 0, you're really talking about year 1 (shown below). I personally think an exception should be thrown, but that's the mapping users needs to keep in mind.
> gregorian::as_gregorian("0-1-1")
[1] "Monday January 1, 1 CE"
This is also the case with BCE
> gregorian::as_gregorian("-0-1-1")
[1] "Saturday January 1, 1 BCE"

Answer 3

As #JoshuaUlrich commented, the short answer is no.
However, you can splice out the year into a separate column and then convert to integer. Would this work for you?

Answer 4

The package lubridate seems to handle "negative" years ok, although it does create a year 0, which from the above comments seems to be inaccurate. Try:
library(lubridate)
start <- -10000
stop <- 2013
myrange <- NULL
for (x in start:stop) {
myrange <- c(myrange,ymd(paste0(x,'-01-01')))
}