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One of the most enduring and stirring debates in archeology revolves around the role humans played in the extinction of large terrestrial mammals (megafauna) and other animals near the end of the Pleistocene. Rather than seeking a prime driver (e.g., climate change, human hunting, disease, or other causes) for Pleistocene extinctions, we focus on the process of human geographic expansion and accelerating technological developments over the last 50,000 years, changes that initiated an essentially continuous cascade of ecological changes and transformations of regional floral and faunal communities. Human hunting, population growth, economic intensification, domestication and translocation of plants and animals, and landscape burning and deforestation, all contributed to a growing human domination of earth's continental and oceanic ecosystems. We explore the deep history of anthropogenic extinctions, trace the accelerating loss of biodiversity around the globe, and argue that Late Pleistocene and Holocene extinctions can be seen as part of a single complex continuum increasingly driven by anthropogenic factors that continue today.
As acceptance of the Anthropocene grows among scientists and the public, decisions must be made on whether and how to define this geologic epoch. Designating a starting point for the Anthropocene may be less important than understanding the cultural processes that contributed to human domination of Earth's natural systems. Just as climate changes and their consequences often occur over centuries, millennia, or more, archaeological records show that humans have been active agents of environmental change for thousands of years. Their effects, often dramatic and cumulative, have grown from local, to regional, and now global phenomena. We discuss five options for defining the Anthropocene, most of which recognize a deeper history of widespread and measurable effects of human activities on the Earth's surficial biological and physical systems. A primary goal of debating and defining the Anthropocene should be to educate the public about the effects humans have had on natural systems for millennia, the compounding nature of such impacts, and the pressing need to reverse current trends.
Evidence for aquatic foraging, fishing, and scavenging by hominins dates back at least two million years, but aquatic resource use intensified with the appearance of Homo sapiens. The development of new fishing and seafaring technologies contributed to population growth and the spread of humans around the world. By the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, fishing peoples lived along coastlines, rivers, and lakes in Africa, Eurasia, Australia, and the Americas, creating shell midden soils marked by accumulations of mollusk shells, animal bones, artifacts, and other cultural debris. After global sea level rise slowed ∼8000 years ago, a proliferation of shell middens formed an increasingly prominent stratigraphic signature for identifying and defining an Anthropocene Epoch. The formation of these distinctive cultural soils, often marked by unique soil chemistry and biotic communities, is essentially contemporaneous with the development of agricultural economies and the widespread soil and landscape changes associated with them. Defined by these global and highly visible anthropogenic soil signatures, I propose that the Anthropocene began about 10,000 years ago and should replace or be merged with the Holocene.