{"id":49126,"date":"2019-10-24T06:27:28","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T11:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49126"},"modified":"2019-10-24T06:27:31","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T11:27:31","slug":"surveying-archaeologists-across-the-globe-reveals-deeper-and-more-widespread-roots-of-the-human-age-the-anthropocene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49126","title":{"rendered":"Surveying archaeologists across the globe reveals deeper and more widespread roots of the human age, the Anthropocene"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Surveying archaeologists across the globe reveals deeper and more widespread roots of the human age, the\u00a0Anthropocene<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Examples of how human societies are changing the planet abound \u2013 from building roads and houses, clearing forests for agriculture and digging train tunnels, to shrinking the ozone layer, driving species extinct, changing the climate and acidifying the oceans. Human impacts are everywhere. Our societies have changed Earth so much that it\u2019s\u00a0impossible to reverse many of these effects<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nuclear bomb testing left its mark in the geologic record. National Nuclear Security Administration\/Wikimedia Commons<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Some researchers believe these changes are so big that they mark the beginning of a new \u201chuman age\u201d of Earth history, the Anthropocene epoch<\/a>. A committee of geologists<\/a> has now proposed to mark the start of the Anthropocene in the mid-20th century, based on a striking indicator: the widely scattered radioactive dust<\/a> from nuclear bomb tests in the early 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is not the final word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not everyone<\/a> is sure that today\u2019s industrialized, globalized societies will be around long enough to define a new geological epoch. Perhaps we are just a flash in the pan \u2013 an event \u2013 rather than a long, enduring epoch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others debate<\/a>\u00a0the utility of picking a single thin line in Earth\u2019s geological record to mark the start of human impacts in the geological record. Maybe the Anthropocene\u00a0began at different times<\/a>\u00a0in different parts of the world. For example, the first instances of agriculture emerged at different places at different times, and resulted in huge impacts on the environment, through land clearing, habitat losses, extinctions, erosion and\u00a0carbon emissions<\/a>, forever\u00a0changing the global climate<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Surveying archaeologists across the globe reveals deeper and more widespread roots of the human age, the\u00a0Anthropocene Examples of how human societies are changing the planet abound \u2013 from building roads and houses, clearing forests for agriculture and digging train tunnels, to shrinking the ozone layer, driving species extinct, changing the climate and acidifying the oceans. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27417,31,140,4548,5321,922,736,8487],"class_list":["post-49126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-antrhopocene","tag-archaeology","tag-climate","tag-geology","tag-nuclear-age","tag-ocean-acidification","tag-society","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49127,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49126\/revisions\/49127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}