Early anthropocene

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The Early Anthropocene Hypothesis (sometimes referred to as 'Early Anthropogenic' or 'Ruddiman Hypothesis') is a stance concerning the beginning of the Anthropocene first proposed by William Ruddiman in 2003. [1] It posits that the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch coinciding with the most recent period in Earth's history when the activities of the human race first began to have a significant global impact on Earth's climate and ecosystems, did not begin during European colonization of the Americas, as numerous scholars posit, [2] [3] [4] nor the eighteenth century with advent of coal-burning factories and power plants of the industrial era, as originally argued by Paul Crutzen (who popularized the word 'Anthropocene' in 2000), nor in the 1950s as claimed by the Anthropocene Working Group (a geological research program working on the Anthropocene as a geological time unit), but dates back to 8,000 years ago, triggered by intense farming activities after agriculture became widespread. It was at that time that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations stopped following the periodic pattern of rises and falls that had accurately characterized their past long-term behavior, a pattern that is explained by natural variations in Earth's orbit known as Milankovitch cycles.

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Overdue-glaciation hypothesis

In his overdue-glaciation hypothesis, Ruddiman claims that an incipient ice age would have begun several thousand years ago, but that scheduled ice age was forestalled by intense farming and deforestation by early farmers that began raising the level of greenhouse gases eight thousand years ago.

The overdue-glaciation hypothesis has been challenged on the grounds that comparison with an earlier interglaciation (MIS 11, 400,000 years ago) suggest that 16,000 more years must elapse before the current Holocene interglaciation comes to an end. Data from even earlier ice-cores going as far back as 800,000 years ago suggest probable cyclicity of interglacial length and an inverse correlation with the maximum temperature of each interglacial, but Ruddiman argues that this results from a false alignment of recent insolation maxima with insolation minima from the past, among other irregularities that invalidate the criticism. [5]

Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution, or agricultural revolution, was a wide-scale demographic transition in the Neolithic. Historically verifiable, many human cultures changed from hunter-gatherers to agriculture and settlement that supported an increase in population. [6] Archaeological data indicates that various forms of plants and animal domestication evolved in separate locations worldwide, starting in the geological epoch of the Holocene [7] around 12,000 14C years ago (12,000–7,000 BP). [8]

Criticism

Ruddiman's proposed start-date has been met with criticism from scholars in a variety of fields. A group of geographers led by Jan Zalasiewicz and Will Steffen argued that the Neolithic Revolution does not show the wide-scale environmental change necessary for epochal designation that other starting points, such as the Anthropocene Working Group's 1950 marker, does. [9]

Other criticism of the Early Anthropocene Hypothesis stems from its representation of American Indian societies. Humanities scholar Elizabeth DeLoughrey has posited that while the Early Anthropocene Hypothesis "traces out an eight-thousand-year history of deforestation," it "never contextualizes the histories of human violence. Consequently, in explaining those eras in which CO2 did not rise due to a significant drop in the production of agriculture caused by death, [Ruddiman] likens the plague in Medieval Europe to the decimation of 90 percent of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, referring to it simply as a 'pandemic' rather than genocide. Accordingly, the unprecedented drop in CO2 levels from 1550 to 1800—due to a population collapse of more than fifty million people with causal links to colonization, slavery, war, displacement, containment, and outright ethnic cleansing—is attributed to smallpox." [10]

Environmental scholars have also argued that while the Early Anthropocene Hypothesis accounts for land change and rising greenhouse gas production resulting from changing farming practices in Europe and Asia during the Neolithic revolution, it does not account for relational agriculture practiced in the Americas during the same period. Once Native American agriculture is studied alongside the Early Anthropocene Hypothesis, it becomes clear that such land change and greenhouse gas emissions take place in the Americas only after European colonization. Thus, colonialism should be seen as the main driver of environmental change responsible for the Anthropocene rather than agriculture. [11]

Scholars have also disputed Ruddiman's claim that the land change and greenhouse gas emissions caused by Neolithic farming practices account for a large enough systems change to denote new epochal designation. [12] These scholars claim that an early date for the proposed Anthropocene term does not account for a substantial human footprint on Earth. [13] [14] Others have argued that the Early Anthropocene Hypothesis only provides a cursory view of Native American farming practices prior to European colonization, which did not result in the same land change or greenhouse gas emissions as European and Asian agriculture of the same period. They argue that if precolonial Native American farming was studied in relation to European and Asian agriculture of the same period, the European colonization of the Americas would be seen as the epoch's starting point. [11] [15]

Related Research Articles

The Holocene is the current geological epoch, beginning approximately 11,700 years ago. It follows the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene together form the Quaternary period. The Holocene is an interglacial period within the ongoing glacial cycles of the Quaternary, and is equivalent to Marine Isotope Stage 1.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holocene extinction</span> Ongoing extinction event caused by human activity

The Holocene extinction, or Anthropocene extinction, is the ongoing extinction event caused by humans during the Holocene epoch. These extinctions span numerous families of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, and affecting not just terrestrial species but also large sectors of marine life. With widespread degradation of biodiversity hotspots, such as coral reefs and rainforests, as well as other areas, the vast majority of these extinctions are thought to be undocumented, as the species are undiscovered at the time of their extinction, which goes unrecorded. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates and is increasing. During the past 100–200 years, biodiversity loss and species extinction have accelerated, to the point that most conservation biologists now believe that human activity has either produced a period of mass extinction, or is on the cusp of doing so. As such, after the "Big Five" mass extinctions, the Holocene extinction event has also been referred to as the sixth mass extinction or sixth extinction; given the recent recognition of the Capitanian mass extinction, the term seventh mass extinction has also been proposed for the Holocene extinction event.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quaternary</span> Third and current period of the Cenozoic Era, from 2.58 million years ago to the present

The Quaternary is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ago to the present. As of 2023, the Quaternary Period is divided into two epochs: the Pleistocene and the Holocene ; a third epoch, the Anthropocene, has recently been proposed, but it is not officially recognised by the ICS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate variability and change</span> Change in the statistical distribution of climate elements for an extended period

Climate variability includes all the variations in the climate that last longer than individual weather events, whereas the term climate change only refers to those variations that persist for a longer period of time, typically decades or more. Climate change may refer to any time in Earth's history, but the term is now commonly used to describe contemporary climate change, often popularly referred to as global warming. Since the Industrial Revolution, the climate has increasingly been affected by human activities.

The 10th millennium BC spanned the years 10,000 BC to 9001 BC. It marks the beginning of the transition from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic via the interim Mesolithic and Epipaleolithic periods, which together form the first part of the Holocene epoch that is generally believed to have begun c. 9700 BC and is the current geological epoch. It is impossible to precisely date events that happened around the time of this millennium, and all dates mentioned here are estimates mostly based on geological analysis, anthropological analysis, and radiometric dating.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthropocene</span> Proposed geologic epoch for present time

The Anthropocene ( ) is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth until now. It affects Earth's geology, landscape, limnology, ecosystems and climate. The effects of human activities on Earth can be seen for example in biodiversity loss and climate change. Various start dates for the Anthropocene have been proposed, ranging from the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution, to as recently as the 1960s as a starting date.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neolithic Revolution</span> Transition in human history from hunter-gatherer to settled peoples

The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period in Afro-Eurasia from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an increasingly large population possible. These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants, learning how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants into crops.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Sea deluge hypothesis</span> Hypothetical flood scenario

The Black Sea deluge is the best known of three hypothetical flood scenarios proposed for the Late Quaternary history of the Black Sea. One other flood scenario proposes a rapid, even catastrophic, rise in sea level of the Black Sea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Founder crops</span> Original agricultural crops

The founder crops or primary domesticates are a group of flowering plants that were domesticated by early farming communities in Southwest Asia and went on to form the basis of agricultural economies across Eurasia. As originally defined by Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf, they consisted of three cereals, four pulses, and flax. Subsequent research has indicated that many other species could be considered founder crops. These species were amongst the first domesticated plants in the world.

The Flandrian interglacial or stage is the regional name given by geologists and archaeologists in the British Isles to the period from around 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last glacial period, to the present day. As such, it is in practice identical in span to the Holocene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Ruddiman</span> American palaeoclimatologist and professor

William F. Ruddiman is a palaeoclimatologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia. Ruddiman earned an undergraduate degree in geology in 1964 at Williams College, and a Ph.D. in marine geology from Columbia University in 1969. Ruddiman worked at the US Naval Oceanographic Office from 1969 to 1976, and at Columbia's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory from 1976 to 1991. He moved to Virginia in 1991, serving as a professor in Environmental Sciences. Ruddiman's research interests center on climate change over several time scales. He is a Fellow of both the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union. Ruddiman has participated in 15 oceanographic cruises, and was co-chief of two deep-sea drilling cruises.

Plows, Plagues and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate is a 2005 book published by Princeton University Press and written by William Ruddiman, a paleoclimatologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He has authored and co-authored several books and academic papers on the subject of climate change. Scientists often refer to this period as the "Anthropocene" and define it as the era in which humans first began to alter the Earth's climate and ecosystems. Ruddiman contends that human induced climate change began as a result of the advent of agriculture thousands of years ago and resulted in warmer temperatures that could have possibly averted another ice age; this is the early anthropocene hypothesis.

Throughout Earth's climate history (Paleoclimate) its climate has fluctuated between two primary states: greenhouse and icehouse Earth. Both climate states last for millions of years and should not be confused with glacial and interglacial periods, which occur as alternate phases within an icehouse period and tend to last less than 1 million years. There are five known Icehouse periods in Earth's climate history, which are known as the Huronian, Cryogenian, Andean-Saharan, Late Paleozoic, and Late Cenozoic glaciations. The main factors involved in changes of the paleoclimate are believed to be the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, changes in Earth's orbit, long-term changes in the solar constant, and oceanic and orogenic changes from tectonic plate dynamics. Greenhouse and icehouse periods have played key roles in the evolution of life on Earth by directly and indirectly forcing biotic adaptation and turnover at various spatial scales across time.

The Subatlantic is the current climatic age of the Holocene epoch. It started about 2,500 years BP and is still ongoing. Its average temperatures are slightly lower than during the preceding Subboreal and Atlantic. During its course, the temperature underwent several oscillations, which had a strong influence on fauna and flora and thus indirectly on the evolution of human civilizations. With intensifying industrialisation, human society started to stress the natural climatic cycles with increased greenhouse gas emissions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Planetary boundaries</span> Limits not to be exceeded if humanity wants to survive in a safe ecosystem

Planetary boundaries are a framework to describe limits to the impacts of human activities on the Earth system. Beyond these limits, the environment may not be able to self-regulate anymore. This would mean the Earth system would leave the period of stability of the Holocene, in which human society developed. The framework is based on scientific evidence that human actions, especially those of industrialized societies since the Industrial Revolution, have become the main driver of global environmental change. According to the framework, "transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental-scale to planetary-scale systems."

John E. Kutzbach was a climate scientist who pioneered the use of climate models to investigate the causes and effects of large changes of climate of the past. 

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Late Cenozoic Ice Age</span> Ice age of the last 34 million years, in particular in Antarctica

The Late Cenozoic Ice Age, or Antarctic Glaciation, began 34 million years ago at the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary and is ongoing. It is Earth's current ice age or icehouse period. Its beginning is marked by the formation of the Antarctic ice sheets.

The means by which agriculture expanded into the Philippines is argued by many different anthropologists and an exact date of its origin is unknown. However, there are proxy indicators and other pieces of evidence that allow anthropologists to get an idea of when different crops reached the Philippines and how they may have gotten there. Rice is an important agricultural crop today in the Philippines and many countries throughout the world import rice and other products from the Philippines.

The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) is an interdisciplinary research group dedicated to the study of the Anthropocene as a geological time unit. It was established in 2009 as part of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS), a constituent body of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). As of 2021, the research group features 37 members, with the physical geographer Simon Turner as Secretary and the geologist Colin Neil Waters as chair of the group. The late Nobel Prize-winning Paul Crutzen, who popularized the word 'Anthropocene' in 2000, had also been a member of the group until he died on January 28, 2021. The main goal of the AWG is providing scientific evidence robust enough for the Anthropocene to be formally ratified by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) as an epoch within the Geologic time scale.

The Grindelwald Fluctuation was a period of cooling that occurred from the 13th to the mid 19th century ; characterised by the expansion of glaciers in many parts of the world, including the Alps in Europe. It produced some of the lowest temperatures known to this holocene.

References

  1. ↑ Ruddiman, William F. (2003). "The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago" (PDF). Climatic Change. 61 (3): 261–293. doi:10.1023/B:CLIM.0000004577.17928.fa. S2CID   2501894 . Retrieved 23 April 2023.
  2. ↑ Lewis, Simon L. (2018). Human planet : how we created the anthropocene. Mark A. Maslin. UK. ISBN   978-0-241-28088-1. OCLC   1038430807.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. ↑ Davis, Heather; Todd, Zoe (2017-12-20). "On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene". ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. 16 (4): 761–780. ISSN   1492-9732.
  4. ↑ Keeler, Kyle (2020-09-08). "Colonial Theft and Indigenous Resistance in the Kleptocene". Edge Effects. Retrieved 2021-09-08.
  5. ↑ Ruddiman, William F. (31 October 2007). "The early anthropogenic hypothesis: Challenges and responses" (PDF). Reviews of Geophysics. 45 (4). American Geophysical Union (AGU). Bibcode:2007RvGeo..45.4001R. doi:10.1029/2006rg000207. ISSN   8755-1209. S2CID   129451880 . Retrieved 23 April 2023.
  6. ↑ Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel (July 29, 2011). "When the World's Population Took Off: The Springboard of the Neolithic Demographic Transition". Science. 333 (6042): 560–561. Bibcode:2011Sci...333..560B. doi:10.1126/science.1208880. PMID   21798934. S2CID   29655920.
  7. ↑ "International Stratigraphic Chart". International Commission on Stratigraphy. Archived from the original on 2013-02-12. Retrieved 2012-12-06.
  8. ↑ Graeme Barker (25 March 2009). The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory: Why did Foragers become Farmers?. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-955995-4 . Retrieved 15 August 2012.
  9. ↑ Zalasiewicz, Jan; Waters, Colin N; Head, Martin J; Poirier, Clément; Summerhayes, Colin P; Leinfelder, Reinhold; Grinevald, Jacques; Steffen, Will; Syvitski, Jaia; Haff, Peter; McNeill, John R (June 2019). "A formal Anthropocene is compatible with but distinct from its diachronous anthropogenic counterparts: a response to W.F. Ruddiman's 'three flaws in defining a formal Anthropocene'". Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment. 43 (3): 319–333. Bibcode:2019PrPG...43..319Z. doi:10.1177/0309133319832607. hdl: 11250/2608779 . ISSN   0309-1333. S2CID   146737824.
  10. ↑ DeLoughrey, Elizabeth M. (2019). Allegories of the Anthropocene. Duke University Press. p. 23. ISBN   978-1-4780-0410-3. OCLC   1048935653.
  11. 1 2 Keeler, Kyle (9 August 2021). "Before colonization (BC) and after decolonization (AD): The Early Anthropocene, the Biblical Fall, and relational pasts, presents, and futures". Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. 5 (3): 1341–1360. doi:10.1177/25148486211033087. ISSN   2514-8486. S2CID   238671275.
  12. ↑ Boyle, J.F.; Gaillard, M.-J.; Kaplan, J.O. & Dearing, J.A. (2011). "Modelling prehistoric land use and carbon budgets: A critical review". The Holocene. 21 (5): 715–722. Bibcode:2011Holoc..21..715B. doi:10.1177/0959683610386984. S2CID   129590170.
  13. ↑ Certini, G. & Scalenghe, R. (2015). "Holocene as Anthropocene". Science. 349 (6245): 246. doi:10.1126/science.349.6245.246-a. hdl: 2158/1006256 . PMID   26185234.
  14. ↑ Zalasiewicz, Jan; Waters, Colin N.; Head, Martin J.; Poirier, Clément; Summerhayes, Colin P.; Leinfelder, Reinhold; et al. (June 2019). "A formal Anthropocene is compatible with but distinct from its diachronous anthropogenic counterparts: A response to W.F. Ruddiman's 'three flaws in defining a formal Anthropocene'". Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment. 43 (3): 319–333. Bibcode:2019PrPG...43..319Z. doi:10.1177/0309133319832607. hdl: 11250/2608779 . ISSN   0309-1333. S2CID   146737824.
  15. ↑ DeLoughrey, Elizabeth M. (June 2019). Allegories of the Anthropocene. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN   978-1-4780-0558-2. OCLC   1081380012.
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