With this research work I have proposed to obtain "vintage" information, early testimonies of human activities on Earth, which have led us to what began to be called the Anthropocene some time ago. In this first article I share some curious and rare stories from some travelers who, in those distant moments, were alarmed by the damage they encountered on their journeys.
Scientific agriculture had been implemented in the United States since the second half of the 18th century, just a few years after the declaration of independence. The progressive farmers adopted the new methods that came from England and brought other systems of their own initiative. By 1800 there were agricultural societies in each of the original thirteen states of the Union. In 1840, after the old fields of Virginia and Maryland had been devastated by the cultivation of tobacco, scientific agriculture began to spread, by private initiatives. Many lands were recovered with marl, a sediment composed mainly of limestone and clay, with which the acidification of the earth caused by a lack of calcium was neutralized.
The railroad played an important role in the distribution of material and information. By 1860, fifty agricultural publications were circulating in the United States. In 1889 the secretariat of agriculture was created and in 1930 this department had forty subdivisions that maintained experiment stations, worked side by side with farmers and induced them to try new crops, improve old ones and taught them to fight epidemics and pests. in addition to advising them on administration and sales.
But scientific agriculture initiatives were not always accepted by all, sometimes due to lack of patience, sometimes because some refused to make the necessary investments, which led to serious ecological problems. Even before the civil war, and still a few years later, in view of the abundance of land and labor scarcity, it was more economical for the farmer to abandon the sterile soils and move to virgin lands, than to cultivate with scientific methods. Something that takes us back to the method used by the first Neolithic farmers, ten thousand years ago.
Since the first half of the 20th century, some authors, such as Morison and Commager, from whom we have taken part of the information and data presented here, warned about the damage caused to ecosystems. The excessive extraction of products from the earth, the absence of soil rotation and the destruction of forests to create new agricultural spaces caused erosion, drought and flooding. About 40 million hectares, one sixth of the total area of the southern United States, had been lost or seriously damaged by erosion. By 1930, in some parts half of the arable land had disappeared, according to these authors.
There are interesting accounts from travelers or neighbors who since the 19th century have left their testimonies for posterity about early ecological damage in North America, such as some people who visited the south and reported their concern about these damages. One of them tells of the transparency of the river waters, and a few years later, on a new visit, he reports that they had changed to brown or red and dragged millions of tons of land into the ocean.
Another early warning of environmental destruction comes to us from Stuart Chase, another chronicler alarmed by the damage to ecosystems: “The primitive land has been burned, grazed, plowed and destroyed. When dry wheat cultivation has been practiced on the plains, dust has appeared. Wherever wheat has been planted on the slopes of the grassy plateaus, the waters have caused erosion. The hooves of excessive cattle and the consumption of grass by flocks of sheep have derailed pasture lands, removed good soil, and facilitated erosion by water and wind. In this way, more than 26 million hectares of pasture land have been significantly devalued ”.
Other evidence also comes to us, this time from Mary Sandoz, who in the early 1890s gave a dramatic description of the situation in western Nebraska: “The drought was beyond imagination. The grain did not grow. The grass of the buffaloes withered before the month of May. Even the lighter soils south of the river do not produce anything. The sandy hills only turned green in places near the groundwater. The beds of the lakes were parched and left offering harmonious drawings. Wild chickens were rare and their meat blackish. The rabbits grew thin and the coyotes raged, like gray animals with sunken ribs. The wagons of the farmers, who left their lands, wandered towards the East, and their occupants often had to live on public charity.
The aforementioned stories are just some historical news, prolegomena of the new geological time scale, the Anthropocene, coined by Paul Crutzen, Nobel Prize in chemistry, in 2000. But it was recently that a group of specialists gave impetus to the new denomination. Even though it has not been accepted, we believe that it is a good reference to the present stage of the Earth. Scientists agreed that this period has canceled the Holocene, placing the year 1950 as the psychological division between the two periods. The beginning of the Holocene, as we know, established the end of the Würm ice age, about twelve thousand years ago. The Anthropocene, according to the researchers, begins with the discovery of radioactive waste left behind by atomic bombs. «We have already changed the Earth:the Anthropocene is the time when humans manage to change the life cycle of the planet, when humans take the planet out of its natural variability, "explains Alejandro Cearreta, a Spanish scientist, a member of the aforementioned group, made up of 35 specialists, who after seven years Research agreed to consider the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch within the Quaternary period.
Without a doubt, there has never been a species like homo sapiens on our globe, a being that could evolve at such speed, being able to adapt to any climate on Earth, even the cosmos. The homo-sapiens took control of the planet and of life itself, yes, control of the immense variety of life that took advantage of the generosity of the Earth to expand throughout its latitudes, be these airs, seas or lands. The human being, thanks to his intelligence, skills and knowledge, more often than not achieved positive achievements, but in others his action was to the detriment of other species, extinguishing them or putting them in danger, even himself.
Sources
Morison, Samuel Eliot and Commager, Henry Steele History of the United States of America. 1st. English edition, 1930. 1st. Edition in Spanish, 1951. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Mexico - Buenos Aires.
Salas, Javier (2016, September 9). Welcome to the Anthropocene: We have already changed the Earth's natural cycle. El País newspaper, Spain.
elpais.com/elpais/2016/09/05/ciencia/1473092509_973513.html
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