Dating the Anthropocene

This fall, I am studying environmental history at Phillips Exeter Academy. For my first short-response paper in the course, Humans and the Environment, I wrote about humans' impact on stratigraphic history. Part of the assignment included following Chicago-style citation guidelines for footnotes and references. The blog format doesn’t support the footnote format, so I opted to post the writing without footnotes. The references are listed at the conclusion of the post. While this paper is written in an academic tone, I hope you can glimpse my life as a student exploring climate change through a historical lens!

To begin, let’s define Anthropocene. According to National Geographic “The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth's history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet's climate and ecosystems.

It is Worse Than You Think: Dating the Anthropocene

“It is, I promise, worse than you think,” Davis Wallace-Wells, a bestselling author and climate change columnist, opens his article, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” assuring readers not of their safety but of their impending doom. Since the evolution of the Homo genus 2.6 million years ago, the species has harnessed their advanced communication and cooperation skills to alter natural ecosystems. While Homo sapien populations initially survived as hunter-gathers, they transitioned to pastoralism and agriculture as recent as 11,000 years ago. Over time, empires rose, populations interacted, and trade networks expanded. Capitalistic attitudes evolved alongside monetization and became deeply rooted in society as commodity agriculture developed. Humans have had an indisputable effect on the Earth’s climate, and the marked shifts in Earth’s composition should receive a new label in Earth’s stratigraphic history.

The Anthropocene should be defined as a new epoch plagued by human-induced climate change beginning during The Great Acceleration.

The historical course of human action, since the evolution of Homo sapiens, has left a global impact on Earth’s environment. Humans' first relationship with Earth’s natural resources was rooted in survival. Like other species, humans needed food, water, and shelter, but what set humans apart, according to Stoll, was their “talent for extracting more sustenance from a region’s resources than any other animal.” The transition from foraging to farming marked humans’ first significant environmental change. They cleared land to make pasture, exposed soil to erosion, and released greenhouse gasses while raising cattle and harvesting rice. Rapid population growth snowballed into an even greater rearrangement of ecosystems while paving the way for early governments. The idea of monetization was coined when, around 560 BC, western Anatolia introduced the first coins. This shift paved the way for later models of imperial expansion, privatized colonization, plantation capitalism, industrial revolutions, and mass consumption habits. These developments occurred over thousands of years, but their effect on Earth’s geological composition is inextricable. It is time to acknowledge the magnitude of this change by renaming our current epoch from the Holocene to the Anthropocene.

However, stratigraphers and environmental historians are still debating when, in the history of human interactions with the environment, the damage became monumental enough to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene.

One proposed option is the Industrial Revolution, a period defined by accelerated fossil fuel use and rapid social change. In his book Profit, Stoll writes, “In 2000, Dutch Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer of the University of Michigan first suggested that we have been living in the “Anthropocene” epoch, which he dated to precisely 1784, the year Watt perfected his steam engine.” Watt’s steam engine catalyzed the Industrial Revolution because it utilized coal combustion to produce industrial power. Machinery powered mass production and rapid economic growth, but this innovation added 800 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Despite the far-reaching environmental impacts of Watt’s engine and the following Industrial Revolution, the official Anthropocene marker must apply to the global population and have an evident stratigraphic marker. Lewis and Maslin, authors of the Nature-published article, “Defining the Anthropocene,” explain, “The Industrial Revolution thus provides a number of markers spreading from northwest Europe to North America and expanding worldwide since about 1800, although none provides a clear global GSSP (Global Boundary Stratotype Sections and Points) marker.” As a result of the extensive period for this global industrial transition and the lack of a definitive GSSP boundary marker, the Industrial Revolution should not mark the start of the Anthropocene.

The framework set by the Industrial Revolution paved the way for the Great Acceleration, a period of increased resource consumption during the mid-1900s.

This period is a suitable time to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene because of the stratigraphic evidence from nuclear testing fallout, skyrocketing resource consumption, and the introduction of inorganic compounds. The Anthropocene Working Group designated “the base of the Anthropocene as the layer of Crawford Lake sediment laid down in 1952.” This piece of stratigraphic evidence accounts for the first H-bomb tests conducted by the US, which will permanently remain in Crawford Lake.16 Persistent industrial chemicals, such as SF6, were also observed in glacier ice dating to the Great Acceleration, another suitable marker. The Great Acceleration represented a period of transformation between humans and the environment, where humans' impact on the environment became too significant to reverse. Because of the clear evidence and distinct social, economic, and environmental changes, the Great Acceleration is an appropriate time to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene.

Human impact on the environment is deep-seated, beginning when Homo sapiens harnessed their skills to exploit natural resources.

According to Lewis and Maslin, “The impacts of human activity will probably be observable in the geological stratigraphic record for millions of years into the future.” The development of capitalism, as early as the introduction of coinage, reinforced the drive to capitalize on resources. The rise of technology, such as Watt’s steam engine during the Industrial Revolution, brought humans one step closer to the point of no return. The Great Acceleration transpired out of the systems put in place by these historical shifts. Humans have made a lasting impact on the Earth, and it is time to recognize humans’ role in devastating climate change by designating a new epoch. Not one defined by meteor strikes or continental collisions but by Homo sapiens and their interactions with the world.

Bibliography

Kolbert, Elizabeth. “The “Epic Row” Over a New Epoch.” The New Yorker, April 20, 2024.

Lavin. “David Wallace-Wells| Exclusive Lavin Climate Speaker,” accessed October 5, 2024. https://thelavinagency.com/speakers/david-wallace-wells/.

Lewis, Simon L., and Mark A. Maslin. “Defining the Anthropocene.” Nature 519, (2015): 171-178. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14258.

Stoll, Mark. Profit. Polity Press, 2023.

Wallace-Wells, David. “The Uninhabitable Earth.” New York Magazine, July 10, 2017.