The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.
Earth’s history is divided into a hierarchical series of smaller chunks of time, referred to as the geologic time scale. These divisions, in descending length of time, are called eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages.
These units are classified based on Earth’s rock layers, or strata, and the fossils found within them. From examining these fossils, scientists know that certain organisms are characteristic of certain parts of the geologic record. The study of this correlation is called stratigraphy.
Officially, the current epoch is called the Holocene, which began 11,700 years ago after the last major ice age. However, the Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. The word Anthropocene is derived from the Greek words anthropo, for “man,” and cene for “new,” coined and made popular by biologist Eugene Stormer and chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000.
Scientists still debate whether the Anthropocene is different from the Holocene, and the term has not been formally adopted by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), the international organization that names and defines epochs. The primary question that the IUGS needs to answer before declaring the Anthropocene an epoch is if humans have changed the Earth system to the point that it is reflected in the rock strata.
To those scientists who do think the Anthropocene describes a new geological time period, the next question is, when did it begin, which also has been widely debated. A popular theory is that it began at the start of the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, when human activity had a great impact on carbon and methane in Earth’s atmosphere. Others think that the beginning of the Anthropocene should be 1945. This is when humans tested the first atomic bomb, and then dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The resulting radioactive particles were detected in soil samples globally.
In 2016, the Anthropocene Working Group agreed that the Anthropocene is different from the Holocene, and began in the year 1950 when the Great Acceleration, a dramatic increase in human activity affecting the planet, took off.
Atomic bomb tests like this one at Bikini Atoll in 1946 not only reassured military personnel that the bomb worked, but also created a powerful new symbol of the destructive power of the human specis: the mushroom cloud.
Atomic Bomb Test, The US Navy
Where did the term come from?
It is impossible to pinpoint the beginning of the Anthropocene as scholars have been arguing the birth of it for years. Perhaps the most influential scholar and individual who is primarily known for coining the word “Anthropocene” is Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen. “We’re not in the Holocene anymore” Crutzen announces at a conference on earth system science outside Mexico City in 2000…”We’re in the...the...the Anthropocene” (Versions of the Anthropocene,2016). The Complexity of this term opens many conversations in the world of science and academics to such a level that they have not decided whether we are living in the epoch of the Anthropocene.
Crutzen realised that he was not the only person using the term as he learnt that Stoermer had been using it informally since the 1980s. Together they wrote the framework of the Anthropocene. “Mankind will remain a major geological force for many millennia, maybe millions of years to come. Thus, “ it seems to us more than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology by proposing to use the term ‘anthropocene’ for the current geological epoch”. They stated that the beginning of this epoch was in the late eighteenth century “when an appreciable rise in atmospheric methane and carbon dioxide levels began the season in which ‘the global effects of human activities have become clearly noticeable’ ” (Versions of the Anthropocene, 2016). This coincides with the industrial revolution, the acceleration of burning fossil fuels and extracting mass amount mineral from the land increased.
Crutzen and Stoermer are not the only academics to write papers on the Anthropocene and I am aware It is academically unfair to brush over the versatile entanglement of the origins of the term. However, for the narrative of this essay my enquiry constructs surrounding the visual documentation of human manipulation of planet Earth and the idea that it suggests that we are living in a dystopia.
Davies, Jeremy. 2016. “Versions of the Anthropocene.” In The Birth of the Anthropocene, 1st ed., 41–68. University of California Press. (24/03/2021) https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv1xxs47.6
The Anthropocene Project- Edward Burtynsky, Nicolas de Pencier and Jenifer Baichwal.
We have reached an unprecedented moment in planetary history. Humans now affect the Earth and its processes more than all other natural forces combined. The Anthropocene Project is a multidisciplinary body of work combining fine art photography, film, virtual reality, augmented reality, and scientific research to investigate human influence on the state, dynamic, and future of the Earth.
The Holocene epoch started 11,700 years ago as the glaciers of the last ice age receded. Geologists and other scientists from the Anthropocene Working Group believe that we have left the Holocene and entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. Their argument is that humans have become the single most defining force on the planet and that the evidence for this is overwhelming. Terraforming of the earth through mining, urbanization, industrialization and agriculture; the proliferation of dams and diverting of waterways; CO2 and acidification of oceans due to climate change; the pervasive presence around the globe of plastics, concrete, and other technofossils; unprecedented rates of deforestation and extinction: these human incursions, they argue, are so massive in scope that they have already entered, and will endure in, geological time.
Another collaboration from Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky, and Jennifer Baichwal, The Anthropocene Project is a multimedia exploration of the complex and indelible human signature on the Earth. Originally conceived as a photographic essay and the third in a trilogy of films including Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013), the project quickly evolved to include film installations, large-scale Burtynsky High-Resolution Murals enhanced by film extensions, 360° VR short films, and augmented reality installations. Embracing and developing innovative techniques, the trio embarked on an epic journey around the world (to every continent save Antarctica) to capture the most spectacular evidence of human influence, while taking time to reflect on the deeper meaning of what these profound transformations signify. The result is a collection of experiences that will immerse viewers in the new world of the Anthropocene epoch, delivering a sense of scale, gravity, and impact that both encompasses and moves beyond the scope of conventional screens and prints.
The project, which launched in September 2018, includes:
a major travelling museum exhibition that premiered simultaneously on September 28, 2018 at the Art Gallery of Ontario and National Gallery of Canada before travelling to its first European venue, Manifattura di Arti, Sperimentazione e Tecnologia (MAST) in Bologna in Spring 2019;
a new release of Edward Burtynsky photographs;
a feature documentary film;
immersive interactive experiences in augmented and virtual reality;
an art book published by Steidl;
a comprehensive educational program.
https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/the-anthropocene-project