Goodbye Holocene, welcome Anthropocene

Let’s see, how do I explain this piece of news.

The geological history of the Earth has been divided into four great periods, which are in turn divided into sub-periods and eras, spanning cycles of millions of years of geological activity. For those interested, there is the usual introduction on Wikipedia.

One of these divisions is the one that began 10,000 years ago, the Holocene, which started with the end of the last ice age and runs up to the present day.

Although for some geologists this era is already over, and they are proposing that we start talking about a new era, the ANTHROPOCENE, which would be something like the age of man1, all because we have affected our planet so much that our presence is leaving significant geological marks.

This geological impact of man would show up in:

• The transformation of erosion, sediment and deposition patterns all over the world.
• Major disturbances to the carbon cycle and to global temperature.
• Changes in the makeup of the world’s flora and fauna.
• Changes in the acidity of the oceans.

This idea of a change of era and the start of the Anthropocene had already been proposed in 2002 by the Nobel laureate in chemistry Paul Crutzen.

[1] for the politically correct, we’ll leave it at the age of man, unless women want to take their share of the blame too, which reminds me of a bit of dialogue from Jurassic Park:

– God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs.
– Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth.