We measure geological epochs in millions of years. We just barely started the Holocene 12k years ago. While speaking about human impact makes sense in shorter timescale fields like sociology, I’m not sure we need to start a new geological timescale. Humanity is just a brief blip in the holocene that may not even survive to another epoch if whatever intelligence that follows us continues to use the same systems we developed.
Just as a counterpoint, brief moments of large meteor impacts are of great interest to geologists. I bring that up just to say that the brevity of the event isn’t a disqualifying factor, even for a science that usually has to think about the deepest of deep time.
We measure geological epochs in millions of years. We just barely started the Holocene 12k years ago. While speaking about human impact makes sense in shorter timescale fields like sociology, I’m not sure we need to start a new geological timescale. Humanity is just a brief blip in the holocene that may not even survive to another epoch if whatever intelligence that follows us continues to use the same systems we developed.
Just as a counterpoint, brief moments of large meteor impacts are of great interest to geologists. I bring that up just to say that the brevity of the event isn’t a disqualifying factor, even for a science that usually has to think about the deepest of deep time.