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The Anthropocene. Christian Schwägerl
Читать онлайн.Название The Anthropocene
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isbn 9780907791560
Автор произведения Christian Schwägerl
Жанр Зарубежная деловая литература
Издательство Ingram
That branch spread north two million years ago, from East Africa toward the Mediterranean and from there into Asia, even as far as present day Indonesia and China. These prehistoric peoples wandered only a few miles each generation, eventually reaching Europe where, as far as can be determined, they lit the first fires during the cold era that occurred about four hundred thousand years ago. Neanderthals were one of the first waves of this human expansion.
But a more significant revolution, a human “Big Bang,” also took place in Africa, about 220,000 years ago—a mere instant in geological terms—a lighter, more agile creature called Homo sapiens emerged. Everyone alive today is related to this “new kid on the block.” He is the most social yet egotistical, loving yet cruel, sensible yet emotional, far-sighted and narrow-minded, creative and destructive of all hominids. Our ancestors survived dangers and setbacks, and began a triumphal march out of Africa across the globe, the march Paul Salopek is following with his “Out of Eden Walk” project. A hundred thousand years ago, they settled in what is now the Middle East, seventy thousand years ago they arrived in Australia, about forty-four thousand years ago they came to Europe and entered the habitat of the Neanderthals and about thirty thousand years ago they came from the north, moving into the entire American landmass.30
The spread of Homo sapiens had disastrous consequences for Neanderthals, human beings with artistic, cultural and even religious sensitivities. In their competition for land and resources, Neanderthal humans drew the short straw. Early Homo sapiens had already wiped out countless other species of animals—mostly large predators and some species they most enjoyed eating—a mere foretaste of the Anthropocene wave of extinctions to come, perhaps. According to recent findings, our direct ancestors cannot be held responsible for the extinction of the Neanderthals since there are no signs of massacres or widespread slaughter.31 There are even strong indications that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had sex and that some Neanderthal genes persist today. But that didn‘t stop Neanderthals from going extinct. It may have been enough for our ancestors to be just a little more efficient at hunting and gathering in shared regions and in using up the resources that Neanderthals needed to survive. Thirty-seven thousand years ago, the trail of this fascinating alternate species of human disappears, whereas the spread of Homo sapiens truly kicked off.
The next decisive point in humanity’s ascent happened about twelve thousand years ago. The end of the last Ice Age and the beginning of a natural global warming created ideal conditions for a truly global expansion. Human ingenuity, fertile soil and a more favorable climate coalesced in a unique way. Independent of one another, human groups abandoned nomadic life and became agriculturalists, settling in fecund regions of the world, like the “Fertile Crescent,” the Andean Altiplano, Mesoamerica, China and New Guinea.
Some of these early farmers settled in an area comprising modern-day Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. They discovered that grass seeds are not only edible but can also replicate. Precious calories could be gained from this food source, supplementing the hunting of gazelles and the gathering of nuts and berries. Once under way, the agricultural revolution could not be stopped.
Farming had some grave disadvantages: each calorie yielded from the land took more time and effort compared to hunting for meat.32 Farmers had less free time than hunters and gatherers. Yet, farmers found it worthwhile to work the land since it enabled them to stock up food in case of hard times. Surplus food meant that more children survived their first few months of life but also there were now more mouths to feed.
Layer upon layer, this history is evident at the village of Abu Hureyra, an ancient settlement on the upper reaches of the Euphrates River, in present-day Syria. British archaeologist Andrew Moore examined the village before it disappeared under floodwaters caused by the construction of Syrian president Hafez al-Assad’s massive new dam.33 People of the Natufian culture lived here around twelve thousand years ago. Remains of hundreds of different plants have been discovered beside the residents’ simple homes. Einkorn and emmer wheats, rye, lentils and fava beans play a central role in life. These people were very innovative: they discovered ways of maintaining the fertility of the land, by planting pulses which return nitrogen to the soil, and they domesticated animals such as goats, sheep and later cattle, brought down from the nearby Zagros Mountains. The symbiosis between humans and farm animals had begun to develop.
We have now arrived at a critical moment in our high-speed review of human history. The Holocene is the period of earth’s history in which we currently, officially live, based on geological calculations. Before modern humans were the children of the Holocene, our closest ancestors inhabited the Pliocene, a geological epoch that began 5.3 million years ago and ended 2.6 million years ago when the Pleistocene era began. If the Pleistocene Ice Age had simply continued, it is conceivable that humans would have remained hunters and gatherers. But something “new” happened, which is what “Holocene” means (from the Greek, holos, whole or entire and kainos, new). As far back as seventy thousand years ago, our ancient relatives had already produced paintings on the walls of South African caves, and thirty thousand years ago, they had fashioned pipes from bones, made sculptures, needles, and ceramics. In many places, such as the Chauvet cave in the south of France, they created paintings that would rival those by Picasso or Franz Marc. Humans are artists, masters at imagining, at creating, at reshaping their environment. Embedded in the favorable Holocene climate, these abilities have changed the world.
The start of the warming after the last Ice Age, approximately eleven thousand seven hundred years ago, prepared the conditions for “modern” life. Since the Holocene began, our biological make-up has changed very little. What has changed radically is our social, economic and technological make-up.
A few hundred agricultural pioneers in the Middle East have become a billion farmers who produce an inconceivable assortment of edible crops. The first fields and pastures have changed into a gigantic agricultural area of approximately 20 million square miles, which is larger than the entire surface area of the whole American continent. From scattered herds of sheep, goats and cattle, a global herd of livestock has grown, consisting of more than 50 billion animals, making up 90 per cent of the biomass of all the mammals on the Earth.34
Where once there were small villages, megacities have now grown; from the simplest tools, there are now coal excavators, 3D printers and plasma screens; from characters and symbols scratched on tablets, the World Wide Web. However, spears have evolved into missiles and combat drones. In amongst our anthropogenic burgeonings some very dark flowers have also sprouted.
If we fast-forward past the first cities, the culture of Imperial China, the great empires of antiquity, the development of global trade routes, the European conquest of the world, scientific breakthroughs and medical and technological progress—then the Holocene appears to be one extended, magnificent gift to humanity.35
No matter how tough the Holocene may have been for many people, it was characterized by boundless natural resources that could be discovered, extracted and utilized. Despite thunderstorms and weather extremes, earth’s climate during the Holocene has been astonishingly stable, permitting us to build villages, towns and cities, and to farm. The last glaciation left behind wonderfully fertile soils like loess. Nature’s services, by the thousand, providing water, soil or the air we breathe, have been available free of charge, without requiring any favor in return. Imagine if we were merely the second intelligent primate species and had to earn our living and obtain our resources in fierce competition with an entire civilization of other