The evolution of the genus homo has been such a dizzying race that it constitutes an amazing event that is unmatched on our planet, as nothing like this has ever been seen on the evolutionary scale of any species. This rapid progress has been observed through measurements of the skulls found by paleo anthropologists. In a span of 2.5 million years the size of the brain of our gender has more than doubled, going from 650 cc to 1450 cc. This race was started by Homo skill, the first manufacturer of stone utensils, which started the Paleolithic and earned the title of Homo in the process.
However, for 40,000 years, the time when Homo sapiens arrived in Europe, this measurement has been rendered ineffective due to the short time elapsed, insufficient to appreciate any variation in the size of our brain mass. Since then, observation of the cultural evolution of our species has been used instead. So human progress is measured through their work, thought, beliefs, and response to the environment. That is to say, their weapons, utensils, painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, religion, philosophy, commerce, science, technology, and lately for their notorious responsibility in modifying the Earth system.
The Earth system is a science that encompasses chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics, and applied science that treats our planet as an integrated system and seeks to understand the physical, chemical, biological, and human interactions that determine past, present, and future states. from the earth.
We are currently in the Holocene, a geological epoch that started about 12 thousand years ago, at the end of the Würm glaciation, after 60,000 years of ice and snow. With the cancellation of the cold and monotonous white landscapes emerged a long spring that has lasted until our times, which took advantage of Homo sapiens to expand throughout the latitudes and heights of the planet. The handful of survivors of that bloody ice age was so successful that they managed to multiply their descendants up to 7.5 billion individuals, of which close to 6 billion were added just in the last 120 years, since at the beginning of the 20th century alone we were 1,600 million beings.
Some scientists and researchers argue that the Holocene has already ended and given way to Anthropocene, a name coined in 2000 by Paul Crutzen. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, specializing in atmospheric chemistry, marked the new era because human activities began to cause biological and geophysical changes on a planetary scale. Although the Anthropocene has not been officially accepted as a geological epoch, the concept circulates through innumerable means and it has become common to speak of it, especially in specialized media.
Scientists Johan Rockström from Sweden and Will Steffen from the United States pooled a series of data obtained by researchers in different countries and times. Using this material, in a joint work with scientists from the Stockholm Resilience Center, they made in 2009 and 2015 "a list with nine limits of the planet that would be extremely dangerous to cross, something that has already occurred in the case of four of them", as we read in a Unesco report. These four limits are: the climate, the alteration of the vegetal cover, the extinction of animal species and the alteration of the biogeochemical flows, in which the cycles of phosphorus and nitrogen play an essential role.
The other five borders of the Earth correspond to consumption of primary resources, energy use, population growth, economic activity and deterioration of the biosphere. According to the aforementioned report, since the Second World War these limits have shot up in such a way that some have called it "the time of the great acceleration". Others even speak of "hyper acceleration" started in the 1970s. All of these trends have been described as "unsustainable."
In 1946, none of the nine limits had yet been crossed, and “humanity consumed less than one planet. But the dynamics created did not stop and the situation worsened in the early 1970s. Scientific data was accumulating and warning signs multiplied. In those two moments it would have been possible to undertake another path, but today it is much more difficult to do it, ”indicates the aforementioned report.
Despite all this, geologists think that the Anthropocene designation does not yet comply with the traditional nomenclature of stratigraphy to be defined as a new geological epoch. For example, Stanley Finney, head of the International Committee on Stratigraphy, in an interview with El Tiempo newspaper in Bogotá in 2016, stated: “The geological time scale (frame of reference to calculate the ages of the Earth) is measured at from the records of the rocks, which give evidence of our history and time, either to speak of mass extinctions, climate change or the types of life on the planet. My concern regarding the Anthropocene is that it is not documented with rock bodies. ”
To maintain that the Anthropocene does correspond to a new geological epoch, a high-level team of researchers relied on the discovery of radioactive waste left behind by atomic bombs. Its specific location is located in Ría de Bilbao, Spain, in a strip of seven meters of sediment accumulated by industrialization. "We have already changed the Earth: the Anthropocene is the moment when humans manage to change the life cycle of the planet, when humans take the planet out of its natural variability", explains Alejandro Cearreta, Spanish scientist and member of the team, made up of 35 specialists. After seven years of investigations, the group agreed to consider the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch, included within the Quaternary period, information contained in an article published by the newspaper El País.
The population explosion and the dizzying advance of science and technology have not given time to meet the geological lapses of stratigraphy required to qualify that a change in geological epochs has occurred. It may be that the records found in the rocks or in the composition of the glacial ice are not conclusive, but this does not mean that our large-scale intervention has not happened and is on the way to a dangerous outcome. The human involvement of the planet has been a much faster process than the development of the size of the brain from Homo habbilis.
In our opinion, just as the growth of the human brain was no longer measured to establish its evolutionary line, and it was changed by observing its cultural advance, it would also be possible to change or complement the stratigraphy with other methods. There is plenty of measurable and quantifiable evidence. It is enough to know that the amount of parts per million CO2 (PPM) in the atmosphere was in the order of 300 PPM until the appearance of homo sapiens, which has increased to 400 PPM due to greenhouse gas emissions. An article by BBC Mundo, dated 10-24-2016, announced that for the first time 400 PPM had been reached. "The record of CO2 emissions that marks the beginning of a new era of climate change," reported its owner.
The widening of the so-called gaps in the ozone layer is also clear evidence, quantifiable by others, of the effect of human activities. The holes arose as a result of emissions of chlorofluorocarbon compounds into the atmosphere, used as fluids in refrigerators, air conditioners, and atomizers. By changing the components of these fluids, the ozone layer has begun to recede, but will not recover its natural level until 2080, unless this date is prolonged due to new events. They are footprints in the atmosphere as valid as those of rocks.
The difficulty of accepting the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch was expressed by a reader of Smithsonianmag, in a scathing comment referring to the article “The age of humans”:
“Esto es ridículo. Estamos en el medio de una extinción masiva causada por humanos, pero algunos geólogos quieren ver cambios en los estratos de la Tierra antes de unirse al Antropoceno. La ciencia es una herramienta imparcial, pero por supuesto está forjada con la parcialidad de los científicos. Todos somos humanos. Es como si los geólogos no estuvieran contentos de que este término no fuera propuesto desde dentro de la geología, que no es lo que ha caracterizado tradicionalmente a las épocas definidas por la geología. ¿Pero de qué sirve la ciencia si no puede movilizar los cambios necesarios para que la vida prospere en este planeta? La geología no tendrá la oportunidad de nombrar la próxima época si ya no estamos para verla.”
The level of 400 PPM of CO2 has increased the Earth's natural greenhouse effect. This means that more infrared rays are now trapped in the atmosphere and therefore the temperature increases, which has already exceeded its own record 17 times in the last two decades. Global warming has effects on living things on the planet, but also on abiotic components such as glaciers, polar ice and permafrost. It is also manifested with extraordinary and unpublished events such as the two hurricanes that acquired category five for the first time in the Atlantic, in 2017.
All these phenomena are evidence of human intervention in the environment. The corresponding question is: Would the situation improve somewhat just by changing its name?
More than the name of an era, what should interest us is stopping climate change and safeguarding what nature has had to build for hundreds of millions of years. However, defining an era with its own name, and more in this case, due to the importance and seriousness it involves, would have an appreciable value. The constant increase in temperature is a global reality, as is the increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Making the entry into a new geological epoch official would have an important psychological effect. Just imagine the impact that this headline would have on the main newspapers on the planet: "It is official, we are in Anthropocene." And this impact would not only be on the public but on many institutions, companies and legislative bodies around the world. Making a situation official increases your credibility. From that moment on, the Anthropocene would have a more frequent place in the media and would be subject to discussions and debates in universities, schools, assemblies, forums, opinion programs, squares, etc.
In conclusion, giving way to the recognition of the Anthropocene as the new geological epoch, would constitute a milestone in the fight against climate change. The faster the decision is made, the better for the preservation of life on the planet.
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Sources:
UNESCO. Anthropocene: the vital problem of a scientific debate. Recovered from
The country. Welcome to the Anthropocene: "We have already changed the natural cycle of the Earth". Recovered from
Time. Do we really live in the 'age of man'? Recovered from
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