Should our epoch be named for humans?
(Credit: gomattolson. Some rights reserved.)
Some scientists are contemplating a new name for the current Earth epoch.
The idea stems from a 2002 suggestion by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen. The past 10,000 years on Earth are now officially called the Holocene, meaning “all that’s recent.” But Crutzen proposed the word ‘Anthropocene’ to describe our time on Earth. That means ‘the age of humans’.
Jan Zalasiewicz: There is now enough evidence which can be defended geologically.
That’s Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist, speaking to us from his office at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. He agrees with Crutzen’s idea and told us about examples, such as the movement of soil and sediments across Earth’s surface.
Jan Zalasiewicz: For instance, most soil has now been modified by humans through agriculture, through industry, through building. By some recent estimates, that now exceeds natural movement of sediment across the land’s surface.
Zalasiewicz told Earth & Sky that adopting the term “Anthropocene” is more than semantics.
Jan Zalasiewicz: If the term is adopted, then it will provide a measure of the extent of contemporary environmental change that may or may not act as a spur to further action in the sense of mitigation or adaptation.
Another geologist, endorsing the term Anthropocene – age of humans – for our time on Earth.
Copyright 2008 EarthSky Communications, Inc.
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