The dawn of the Anthropocene

The term Anthropocene is now used to designate a geological division that some scientists have called for, but which has not yet been officially accepted by the international commission in charge of stratigraphic revisions. This is the successor to the Holocene, which began at the end of the last Ice Age, 11,700 years ago. According to its proponents, the Anthropocene corresponds to the period of time during which human societies have profoundly affected the planet by releasing the products of their activities into the environment. High levels of greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide are causing accelerated global warming. A large number of living species are affected by what can only be described as a mass extinction, the sixth of Phanerozoic times (an eon covering the last 541 million years). One of the difficulties in accepting the Anthropocene lies in defining its limit. For some, it should be placed at the year 1950, a date marked by a sharp acceleration in the production of industrial waste and carbon dioxide. However, it has been argued that the development of agriculture since the middle of the Holocene had already affected the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. As for vertebrate extinctions linked to human predation, they began long before, with the expansion of our species outside Africa. These extinctions particularly affected Australia and the Americas, continents where there had been no human presence prior to the arrival ofHomo sapiens.