By doing so, the two dozen or so scholars brought to an end nearly 15 years of debate about whether to declare that humans had transformed the natural world so thoroughly as to have sent the planet into a new epoch of geologic time called “the Anthropocene.”
The Anthropocene Epoch was a proposed geological epoch that dates from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth until now. It was characterised as the time in which the collective activities of human beings began to substantially alter Earth’s surface, atmosphere, oceans and systems of nutrient cycling. The name “Anthropocene” is derived from Greek and means the “recent age of man.”
The term Anthropocene was coined in the 1980s. Some argued that it should follow the Holocene Epoch, which began 11,700 years ago, and begin in the year 1952. The marker was radioactive fallout from hydrogen bomb tests.
The grandly named chapters of our planet’s history are governed by a body of scientists, the International Union of Geological Sciences (“IUGS”). The organisation uses rigorous criteria to decide when each chapter started and which characteristics defined it. The aim is to uphold common global standards for expressing the planet’s history.....<<<Read More>>>....
