Humans have ushered in a new geological era of the Earth

Some researchers believe these changes are so great that they mark the beginning of a new "human era" in Earth's history, dubbed the Anthropocene era.

A committee of geological researchers worldwide has now proposed to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene era in the middle of the 20th century, based on a striking indicator: radioactive dust scattered widely from incidents. Nuclear bomb test in the early 1950s.

Not everyone is sure that today's globalized, industrialized society will be long enough to define a new geological era. Perhaps Anthropocene started at different times in different parts of the world.

For example, the first cases of agriculture appeared in different places at different times and led to major impacts on the environment, through land clearance, habitat loss, extinction. , eroding and carbon emissions, changing global climate.

Picture 1 of Humans have ushered in a new geological era of the Earth
Perhaps Anthropocene started at different times in different parts of the world.

If there are many beginnings, scientists need to answer more complex questions as to when agriculture began to transform the landscape in different parts of the world?

This is a difficult question because archaeologists tend to focus their research on a limited number of locations and areas, and give priority to sites where agriculture is thought to occur earliest.

To date, archaeologists have proved it is almost impossible to provide a global picture of land-use changes over time.

To address these questions, there is a need for collaborative research between archaeologists, anthropologists and geographers to survey archaeological knowledge of land use across the planet.

The team asked more than 1,300 archaeologists from around the world to contribute their knowledge of how the ancient people used the land in 146 areas stretching across continents except Antarctica from 10,000 the previous year until 1850.

More than 250 responses, representing the archaeological community project, have the largest experts ever done, although a number of previous projects have worked with amateur contributions.

The researchers' work now maps the current state of archeological knowledge of land use across the planet, including places around the world that have rarely been considered in previous studies.

Archaeologists have reported that nearly half of our regions had some form of agriculture as early as 6,000 years ago, highlighting the popularity of agricultural economies across the globe.

Moreover, these results indicate that the beginning of agriculture is earlier and more common than proposed in the most common global reconstruction of land use history. This is important because climate scientists often use a database of past conditions to estimate future climate change.

The team's research also revealed that hunting and foraging are often replaced by raising animals such as cows and sheep for food and other resources.