The Anthropocene. Christian Schwägerl

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The Anthropocene - Christian Schwägerl

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the shapers of our habitat.27

      Our biological constitution is, for the most part, an echo from the past three million years when the earth was significantly colder than it is today. A factor that contributed to this cooling process was the formation of the Isthmus of Panama three million years ago, which connected North and South America and interrupted the flow of warm water from the Pacific Ocean over to Africa. Atlantic currents were forced northwards, eventually leading to the formation of today’s Gulf Stream. The Himalayan mountain range also continued to rise, which rerouted Asian rivers to flow northward rather than south. Flowing into northern seas diluted their salt concentration: water that is low in salt freezes more quickly, which led to the glaciation of the Arctic region. The sea level sank during these periods to an average of 426 feet because the water froze.

      That branch spread north two million years ago, from East Africa toward the Mediterranean and from there into Asia, even as far as present day Indonesia and China. These prehistoric peoples wandered only a few miles each generation, eventually reaching Europe where, as far as can be determined, they lit the first fires during the cold era that occurred about four hundred thousand years ago. Neanderthals were one of the first waves of this human expansion.

      The next decisive point in humanity’s ascent happened about twelve thousand years ago. The end of the last Ice Age and the beginning of a natural global warming created ideal conditions for a truly global expansion. Human ingenuity, fertile soil and a more favorable climate coalesced in a unique way. Independent of one another, human groups abandoned nomadic life and became agriculturalists, settling in fecund regions of the world, like the “Fertile Crescent,” the Andean Altiplano, Mesoamerica, China and New Guinea.

      Some of these early farmers settled in an area comprising modern-day Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. They discovered that grass seeds are not only edible but can also replicate. Precious calories could be gained from this food source, supplementing the hunting of gazelles and the gathering of nuts and berries. Once under way, the agricultural revolution could not be stopped.

      We have now arrived at a critical moment in our high-speed review of human history. The Holocene is the period of earth’s history in which we currently, officially live, based on geological calculations. Before modern humans were the children of the Holocene, our closest ancestors inhabited the Pliocene, a geological epoch that began 5.3 million years ago and ended 2.6 million years ago when the Pleistocene era began. If the Pleistocene Ice Age had simply continued, it is conceivable that humans would have remained hunters and gatherers. But something “new” happened, which is what “Holocene” means (from the Greek, holos, whole or entire and kainos, new). As far back as seventy thousand years ago, our ancient relatives had already produced paintings on the walls of South African caves, and thirty thousand years ago, they had fashioned pipes from bones, made sculptures, needles, and ceramics. In many places, such as the Chauvet cave in the south of France, they created paintings that would rival those by Picasso or Franz Marc. Humans are artists, masters at imagining, at creating, at reshaping their environment. Embedded in the favorable Holocene climate, these abilities have changed the world.

      The start of the warming after the last Ice Age, approximately eleven thousand seven hundred years ago, prepared the conditions for “modern”

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