In a few weeks, geologists will select a site that demonstrates most vividly how humans have changed the structure of our planet’s surface. They will choose a place they believe best illustrates when a new epoch – which they have dubbed the Anthropocene – was born and its predecessor, the Holocene, came to an end.
The Holocene began at the conclusion of the last ice age 11,700 years ago as the great glaciers that had previously covered the Earth began to retreat. In their wake, modern humans spread inexorably across the planet.
Homo sapiens flowered during the Holocene but our expansion had geological consequences. The minerals we mined, the gases we released by burning fossil fuels and the radioactive material we have produced have begun to make fundamental changes to Earth’s geology.
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