Thanks to those who wrote in to remind me of what I confirmed on a second viewing: Morpheus makes the claim that Zion is 100 years old in his speech delivered in the temple.
But wait… hasn’t Morpheus been the source of (unintentionally) self-deluding misinformation concerning the actual date? He told Neo in the first movie that the year was closer to 2199. As we will see below, that figure simply cannot be true. However, we can use that figure to see what his estimate of Zion’s age tells us about his (and other Zionistas’) beliefs concerning the Matrix and the One.
For Morpheus the existence of Zion is basically co-extensive with the war against the machines, since humans wouldn’t settle Zion until forced to do so by the exigencies of war. So if Morpheus figures that the war and Zion are roughly 100 years old the he is discounting the prior 100 years (from 1999 as depicted in the Matrix to 2099) as necessary for the development of machine consciousness and all the other additional events that were the precursors to the current war. So this means that for Morpheus the freeing of minds has existed for some time less than 100 years.
Why? Because we should remember that for Morpheus Zion was not founded by the previous incarnation of the One – he doesn’t know that Zion was ever obliterated… as far as Morpheus understands, Zion has existed uninterrupted since the beginning of the war, predating both the Matrix and the first incarnation of the One.
So Morpheus would not assume (as some message board folks have) that those who were first freed by the One would be 100+ years old.… they would have to be less than 100 years old because Zion and the war itself are “only” 100 years old. The Matrix (and the One who was born in the matrix) must be younger. And so it is perfectly sensible for Morpheus (and for us) to believe Councilor Hamann was one of the first freed by the One without believing that the Councilor must be 111 years old.
So how old is the Matrix?
Now, I think we all agree that Morpheus can't be older than 40, and the councilor is somewhere between 65-75 years old. Morpheus thinks this is the first and only matrix and that Zion has existed since the outbreak of the war... but we know better now. The Councilor was freed when he was 11 years old, so the current (sixth) iteration of the Matrix -- and this iteration of Zion -- is roughly 55-65 years old.
If we want to gauge what year it is we can use the Councilor’s age, Morpheus’ estimates and the new knowledge derived from the Architect. We can grant (as Morpheus did) an initial 100 years from 1999 for events to come to the point of war, leaving us six incarnations of the present form of the Matrix, plus two previous failed Matrices (one a paradise, another modeled on human history). If the war began with the scorching of the sky, then we can assume that attempts to generate the Matrix began relatively shortly after the outbreak of war. The two failures may account for 20 years or so, following that we can use the Councilor’s age as an average to estimate the passage of time: 6 x 60 years = and additional 360 years.
If these guesstimates are roughly correct then the year is actually closer to 2499 than 2199.
[There may be another way of reading the evidence, dependent on how we understand the Zionistas' view on the origins of Zion. If they believe that Zion was founded by humans fleeing the machines at the outbreak of war (the impression I was left with), then the above account is correct in all essentials. If, however, the Zionistas understand the nature of Zion’s founding by the previous One and the Zionistas are accurate in estimating it to have occurred 100 years ago – another big if – then the account needs to be adjusted by an additional 35-45 years per iteration. Then and only then would the Councilor not be old enough to be one of the original 23 and the actual year would be closer to 2699. Does the Zionista self-understanding really strike you as being that accurate both with regard to origins and the time elapsed? They struck me typical of humans in general: fairly ignorant with regards to their origins and in the dark with respect to the timing of events that predate personal memory.... After all, they are "only human."]
11:24:09 AM 
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