[POLL] Anthropogenic Epoch?

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There is debate within the scientific community regarding the designation of the time when humans began to change the global environment.

Link to NPR Article: "When Did Humans Start Shaping Earth's Fate? An Epoch Debate."

Various dates have been forwarded for the beginning of this epoch. What are your thoughts?

Keep in mind that this is different from the "Human Era", which supposedly began some 12,015 years ago, at or near the end of the most recent glaciation.

http://static-content.springer.com/lookinside/chp%3A10.1007%2F978-94-015-1292-3_2/000.png

I don't think we have had any significant impact on the environment, yet. Perhaps in the future, but not anytime soon.

I chose "Other". It started the day I was born.

That's right. I'm solely responsible.

Suck it up.

I voted 'development of agriculture'. I wanted to vote 'when humans caused extinction of other species' because of humans hunting megafauna to extinction which would have happened prior. But so far it is just speculation that humans did that, based on timing of extinctions. Maybe we were innocent of that. Killing off all the Neaderthals would be that too but again the jury is still out. We may yet be acquited of that genocide if something else killed them.

Agriculture had us changing the landscape in pretty essential ways. Hunting left the landscape unchanged (unless we hunted to extinction) but agriculture caused changes as we created fields and diverted water for those fields. In addition to physically changing the landscape, agriculture allowed us to reproduce at much higher numbers- something which changed everything. That allowed us to take over a whole lot of real estate on the globe.

As other animals all influence the global environment, as long as we have existed.

Cyanobacteria and snowball earth, being an example.

Note that snowball earth is merely a hypothesis created to try to explain the existence of glaciers in the tropics.

Humans, however, are the only species to control fire, burn fossil fuels, and cause extinctions of entire species. How many forest and prairie fires were caused by humans since then?

Personally, I'd go with either "Humans First Learn How to Make Fire" (about 1,600,000 years ago), or "Humans Establish First Farming Community" (about 12,000 years ago).

The advantage to the second date is that we could declare that year as "Year Zero", and count forward to the present year (which becomes the year 12,015 H.E.), thus eliminating this whole B.C./A.D. nonsense and put historical events in an easier to learn and understand format.

The date for the founding of Rome, for example, would cease to be 753 B.C. and become the year 9,248 H.E. (for "Human Era") -- that's easy to calculate as 2,767 years ago. Makes more sense, right?

The advent of agriculture. Or more specifically, the advent of a methodical process of manipulating the reproductive processes of other creatures to yield offspring of marginally-increased utility for humans.

Here's something else to ponder: It took humans roughly 3,000 years from the founding of the first agricultural settlement to developing a written language, and another 16,045 years to develop a weapon that could incinerate every life-form on the planet. 14 years later, the first human rode a ballistic missile into space. About 10 years after that, three humans rode a similar missile to the Moon, and two of them left their foot prints there. 8 years later, the first home computers became available. 5 years after that, the first hand-held mobile phone became commercially available.

So, here we are, and after 12,000 years of civilization, the human species is still bound to just one single planet, with an increasing population, diminishing resources, and the only assurance we have is that we might be able to post selfies while dying of thirst, disease, and radioactive fallout from global thermonuclear war.

Have a nice day.

I'm rather lost on that timeline.

0000 H.E. - (10,000 BC) Humans establish their first communities, which are based on agriculture.
3000 H.E. - (7000 B.C.) Humans develop writing.
9248 H.E. - (753 B.C.) Founding of Rome.
11,945 H.E. - (1945 A.D.) Humans develop nuclear weapons.
11,961 H.E. - (1961 A.D.) First human in space (I was off by two years above).
11,969 H.E. - (1969 A.D.) First human on Moon.
11,977 H.E. - (1977 A.D.) First home computers.
11,982 H.E. - (1982 A.D.) First handheld mobile phone.

To convert B.C. years into H.E. years, subtract the B.C. year from 10,001.
To convert A.D. years into H.E. years, add the A.D. year to 10,000.

I've been working on a chronology of the Human Era (or Historical Era) for a couple of years now. Verifying all of that data is tedious work; but it will be my (simple) contribution to historical knowledge.

Sometimes I think people perceive the B.C. years as "magical", and only the A.D. years as real. Dividing the past into Historical and Pre-historical categories might make learning human history a little easier, and eliminates the delusion of "magic" from historical accounts.

Agree, and finally found the 12000 years' logic also, (lol) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuxi

But where did the 16,045 years come from? That's what I'm confused about.

humans are merely an inevitable result of a process that started with the big bang (or before), and they are simply an infinitesimal step in the progression of a sequence of events that is just a thread in the fabric of the universe.

humans did not cause their own existence arising from the cosmic dust. they are just an inevitable manifestation of the process from infinite energy (the beginning) to eternal void (the end).

if an avalanche is caused by a falling leaf on top of a snow covered hill, then is the snow to blame for the destruction, or is it the leaf, or the tree it fell from responsible? is it the dirt the tree grew in that is to blame? is it the rocks the dirt came from?

and what of the eventuality of the destruction caused by the avalanche? in time it will be buried and forgotten and folded back into the crust, and the crust will ebb and flow until it is still after the earth goes cold in the fulness of time after the sun's demise.

the very energy that binds the atoms of the substance of the cold dormant crust will be frittered away over time and in the end, nothing will be.

humans are a step on the way through time and they are deluded into believing that their region of space and time is the most important, and they fail to see how insignificant their existence is in the grand scheme of reality.

humans are merely an inevitable result of a process that started with the big bang (or before), and they are simply an infinitesimal step in the progression of a sequence of events that is just a thread in the fabric of the universe.

humans did not cause their own existence arising from the cosmic dust. they are just an inevitable manifestation of the process from infinite energy (the beginning) to eternal void (the end).

if an avalanche is caused by a falling leaf on top of a snow covered hill, then is the snow to blame for the destruction, or is it the leaf, or the tree it fell from? is it the dirt the tree grew in that is to blame for the existence of the tree from which the leaf fell? is it the rocks the dirt came from that gave rise to the tree that ...etc?

and what of the eventuality of the destruction caused by the avalanche? in time it will be buried and forgotten and folded back into the crust, and the crust will ebb and flow until it is still after the earth goes cold in the fulness of time after the sun's demise.

the very energy that binds the atoms of the substance of the cold dormant crust will be frittered away over time and in the end, nothing will be.

humans are a step on the way through time and they are deluded into believing that their region of space and time is the most important, and they fail to see how insignificant their existence is in the grand scheme of reality.