Last week, co-host Brooke Gladstone of On the Media interviewed stratigrapher Jan Zalasiewicz. They discussed what aliens or future humans would find if they dug up our epoch for the Holocene Era (starts around 7000 BC) is definitely over. The period I think we live in, The Stupid Age, would only be a blip within this new epoch. What Zalasiewicz talked about is the debate over when does the Anthropocene really begin. The person who proposed it, Paul Crutzen, argues that it began around 1800 AD, when the Industrial Revolution really kicks into high gear. Contrary to poorly written History books, the Industrial Revolution actually began as early as the 17th Century with the changes in textiles. It was also a factor in the American Revolution.
As noticeable as our modifications to the atmosphere, landscape, trash and oceans are through fossil fuels, colonization and mining, I am in the camp saying it begins around 1945…when humans began detonating nuclear weapons. Through the “testing” and two attacks on Japan, we’ve released more abnormal elements into the environment with incredibly long half-lives. Future geologists and archaeologists could find Cesium, Americium and Plutonium with precision versus the spike in Carbon.
Check out the interview via here. I chuckled about chicken bones being a common find to puzzle the future.