Defining the Anthropocene:A Holistic and Pragmatic Approach

Oct 30

8 min read

By: Stormy Canning-Smith

The Industrial Revolution is often cited as a decisive starting point of the Anthropocene–an epoch defined by the impact of humans as a dominant force shaping the natural environment. The Industrial Revolution created a massive surge in fossil fuel use, migration and urbanization, mechanized and mass production, and other exploitative methods of resource extraction, all of which marked a shift in human impact on the planet, and our relationship to the environment and natural resources. However, marking the Industrial Revolution as the singular starting point of the Anthropocene oversimplifies a more complicated and longer history of humans’s exploitative relationship with the environment. While the Industrial Revolution does represent a significant period of flux in this history, it’s one of several important eras in a series of human developments, all of which have led to our current social and environmental state. The starting point of the Anthropocene is heavily debated, with suggested dates ranging throughout the entirety of human history, and some historians even suggesting that humans may have always had an exploitative capitalistic attitude, as an innately human reflex. It remains unclear where exactly in human history the Anthropocene began, but to assert the Industrial Revolution as the sole beginning of human environmental domination would be to discount the significant impacts humans had on the planet before industrialization, to ignore the capitalistic roots of human society that lay much deeper in the past, and let the permanent physical changes in Earth’s rock layers, caused by earlier human interaction with the environment, go unacknowledged.

Long before humans transitioned to industrial and mechanized forms of production and resource extraction, they did it by hand. Thirty-thousand years ago, the first usage of agricultural methods took place in the form of yam fields in the tropical Borneo highlands(1). For the first time, humans began to control nature, twisting and bending its will. They refashioned and rearranged entire ecosystems, moving different plants around the world, removing species, and introducing new ones. They reduced biodiversity and directly impacted species populations. They created artificial, simplified ecological systems dedicated to the efficient production of resources.(2) Their goal became not just to survive and prosper, but to support more humans in the same environment, a task which required new, innovative methods of resource extraction. Agricultural development symbolizes a shift in power, from humans being limited to the resources provided by their immediate natural surroundings, to manipulating those surroundings to produce more for them. For the very first time, humans were “[attempting] to control for human benefit the mysterious forces that rule the world.”(3)Agriculture and pastoralism took root, “completing the initial stages of anthropogenic environmental change.”(4)

But the development of agriculture meant much more than easier access to food. With it, came momentous social and economic progress. Stoll states, “Agriculture created surpluses that led to towns and cities. Literacy and literature developed. Power and wealth accumulated. Trade increased. Towns and then empires warred with each other. . . Moreover, they altered theclimate.”(5) Agriculture led to a complete restructuring of human society, beginning with migration and urbanization, and the growth of much larger communities of humans than before. Within these towns and cities, trade and economic activity burgeoned, beginning with commodity agriculture. Developments in agriculture continued, geared towards the ever-increasing efficiency of resource extraction. With these developments came greater social and political organization as well. Stoll writes, “To exploit the soil more fully, Mesopotamians and Egyptians expanded local irrigation systems into regional networks, which required administrative oversight–framework for a government.”(6) Privatization of resources began as well. Agriculture sprung to life a bustling mercantile economy as it promoted an increasingly capitalistic trade system which propelled greater exploitation of natural resources.(7) This ancient economic activity (identified as incipient, mercantile, and plantation capitalism) would lay the groundwork for future forms of capitalism and establish humans’ exploitative relationship to the environment.

These changes made a permanent mark on human society and economic culture, but they also permanently impacted the earth. Kolbert states that “Novel ecosystems that people have created by moving plants and animals around the world will produce novel fossil assemblages.”(8) Agricultural development therefore marks both a social, behavioral shift in human interaction with the environment, as well as a physical change in the earth’s ecology, visible in permanent markings in earth’s rock layers. This period is one of anthropogenic transformations, an example of critical change “irreversible across timescales both human and geological.”(9) It is crucial that we recognize its significance and the fact that “Agriculture and pastoralism changed the earth and its climate far more than anything Homo sapiens had done before.”(10)

After the rise of agriculture and ancient economies, humans continued to develop methods of resource extraction and economic growth. Trade and commerce grew to include markets for luxury and unnecessary goods, which had no practical use. “Groups mined and manufactured tools and exchanged them for articles they did not have to hunt or make themselves, presumably at an advantage to themselves (the first profits).”(11) A greater demand for previously less used resources, such as metal, began around 4,000 to 3,000 years ago.(12) This need created environmental “sacrifice zones” around the areas where metal was mined and smelted.(13) Cities became empires and smaller areas of land were home to larger, more condensed populations than ever seen before. This had immense environmental impacts. Everyday human activities required heavy resource use. “The vast number of cooking and baking fires, oil lamps, kilns and metal working fires, and furnaces for public baths in large cities put urban dwellers under perpetual clouds of pollution.”(14) These early stages of capitalism all contributed to an increasing, prosperous urban population, as well as the environmental degradation needed to maintain and expand it. This pre-industrial growth represents a series of capitalisticdevelopments, all of which had immense environmental impacts, and led into the next era of economic development: Industrial Capitalism.

When humans began to explore the vast globe, they carried their capitalist economies with them. Stoll writes, “European empires of mercantile capitalism and plantation capitalism encircled the globe and channelled immense profits and power to formerly marginal nations. Almost three centuries later, they fed the rise of industrial capitalism.”(15) Imperialism fueled the spread of the constantly growing capitalist economies, synthesized centuries before in ancient societies. Thus, when the Industrial Revolution came about, merely 300 years ago, it represented an amalgamation of much older capitalist ideas and systems. Since capitalism began, humans have been on an upward slope of technological, social advancements, and simultaneous environmental degradation. Stoll traces phases of capitalism that predate the industrial era, indicating that capitalistic, profit-driven resource extraction and the environmental degradation associated with it began before the Industrial Revolution. Both the social and physical environmental changes that come with capitalism were present before the revolution, on a scale less familiar to us than the industrial one reminiscent of today’s modern consumerist society, however, no less significant. Industrial capitalism represents one large step in the sequence of the development of capitalism, but not its birth. Stoll states in his introduction, “[Profit] presents incipient capitalism, mercantile capitalism, plantation capitalism, industrial capitalism, and consumer capitalism as stages in the long human endeavor to use resources more intensely.”(16) While he identifies that Industrial capitalism is one step humans took towards today’s consumerism, he emphasizes the critical importance that the scale of the Industrial Revolution exhibits. The period represents an unprecedented rise in greenhouse gas production, brought on largely by the adoption of fossil fuels as a staple resource, mass production of commodities, and the population growth, urbanization, and transportation associated with it. It was a massive acceleration of resource exploitation that created “a world far beyond” anything its instigators ever imagined was possible.(17) Nevertheless, it’s critical that we understand the Industrial revolution as an acceleration of already established human behaviors, so as not to disregard the human pre-industrial environmental impact.

In deciding what point in history marks the start of the Anthropocene, we must raise the question of why it matters. Both scientific and historical perspectives are important to understanding the answer. Scientifically, the beginning of the Anthropocene, as seen in the physical history of Earth’s rock layers, represents the exact moment when human behavior became a permanently visible, dominant force against nature. However, viewing the Anthropocene from a more socially and culturally focused lens can help us uncover what led humans to such destructive behaviors, identifying the shift from sustainable interaction with our surroundings, to an exploitative one. Understanding the social factors that created this shift is essential to our solution for the climate crisis moving forward. While scientific criteria are immensely important in identifying specific ecological issues, having a well-rounded understanding of the cause behind physical shifts is most important in learning how to adapt our behaviors for the future. In his book Profit, Stoll suggests that humans may have always been intrinsically capitalistic in some sense, and have viewed the environment as a resource to manipulate and exploit since their inception. He states, “anthropos changed environments and left a mark on thefossil record wherever they went.”(18) However, acceptance of this theory may prove just as problematic as ignoring humans’ preindustrial impact.What the parallel marking of the beginning of humans with the beginning of the Anthropocene does is inextricably link the development of humans to the development of climate change. Together, they are parallel lines on an upward slope of human development and worsening environmental conditions. This tie makes it difficult to see any way for humans to detach themselves from the perpetuating cycles of human social interaction and environmental degradation. It also largely removes the blame, and therefore responsibility, from human hands, as it asserts the development of capitalism, and other destructive systems as simply “human nature” and inevitable. It establishes a fixed and constant struggle between human and natural power that leaves little room to explore the possibility (and real examples) of a mutually beneficial relationship between the two forces. If we instead view the Anthropocene as the beginning of a series of social and behavioral developments, we can then see that there is room for change. The deconstruction of the idea that human development is only possible by simultaneous environmental harm is essential to moving forward in an environmentally conscious manner, and eventually, for humans to develop a mutually respectful and sustainable relationship with the environment.

When considering the definition and bounds of the Anthropocene, we must take a holistic and pragmatic approach. We must consider every step humans have taken towards environmental degradation, but resist falling into the trap of accepting all human behavior as “human nature”, as this is a dangerous and hopeless path. This means taking responsibility fully, and understanding that this crisis is one constructed by a series of choices we as humans have made, not a fateful path ordained by our evolutionary biology.

1 Stoll, Mark. 2022. Profit. John Wiley & Sons. 15

2 Stoll, Mark. 2022. Profit. John Wiley & Sons. 14

3 Stoll, Mark. 2022. Profit. John Wiley & Sons. 12

4 Stoll, Mark. 2022. Profit. John Wiley & Sons. 18

5 Stoll, Mark. 2022. Profit. John Wiley & Sons. 15

6 Stoll, Mark. 2022. Profit. John Wiley & Sons. 19

7 Stoll, Mark. 2022. Profit. John Wiley & Sons. 19

8 Kolbert, Elizabeth. 2024. The “Epic Row” Over a New Epoch. The Weekend Essay. 4

9 Kolbert, Elizabeth. 2024. The “Epic Row” Over a New Epoch. The Weekend Essay. 9

10 Stoll, Mark. 2022. Profit. John Wiley & Sons. 18

11 Stoll, Mark. 2022. Profit. John Wiley & Sons. 13

12 Stoll, Mark. 2022. Profit. John Wiley & Sons. 19