Abstract
This paper explains in some detail the poorly known proposal of Stoppani (1873) regarding the Anthropozoic era, whose beginning was defined by the first traces of human presence on Earth. This author set the stratigraphical bases for the definition of the ‘human era’, but the proposal had two main weaknesses: the dismissal of biological evolution and the lack of an absolute chronology. Further developments in radiometric/palaeomagnetic dating and the elucidation of the main trends and timing of human evolution have provided the necessary information to update the original Anthropocene proposal in chronological terms, maintaining Stoppani’s original definition and stratigraphic markers. This updated proposal follows the rules of the International Stratigraphic Guide and situates the beginning of the Anthropozoic era at the beginning of the Quaternary, the time at which the first human fossils, corresponding to the first species of the genus Homo and corresponding cultural manifestations have been identified and dated. Therefore, the new Anthropozoic era would follow the Cenozoic era, which ended with the Neogene period. Defined in this way, the Quaternary period and its Pleistocene and Holocene epochs would be situated in the new Anthropozoic era. The main strengths and weaknesses of the updated Anthropozoic version are discussed. It is suggested that the updated Anthropozoic proposal might be fully elaborated to evaluate whether it should be submitted to the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the International Union of Geological Sciences for formalization.
Highlights
A number of terms have been coined to label the time span characterized by the increasing human impact on the Earth. Some of these names have a merely historical meaning (e.g., Neolithic Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Great Acceleration, Atomic Age), but others bear evident stratigraphic connotations. This is the case of the terms that include the prefix anthropo, followed by terminations reserved the formal units of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart (ICC) (Cohen et al, 2013) corresponding to erathems/eras (“Anthropozoic”), systems/periods (“Anthropogene”) and series/epochs (“Anthropocene”)
These names are usually written in quotation marks because they are informal terms, that is, terms that have not been formalized by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), following the rules of the International Straigraphic Guide (ISG) (Murphy & Salvador, 1999)
The s Anthropozoic proposal (SAP) may be summarized in the following points: (i) there is enough evidence for the definition of the Anthropic era on the basis of the human footprint on Earth and its geological expressions; (ii) the Anthropozoic era succeeded the Neozoic era, characterized by the Quaternary glaciations, and occurred after the Tertiary era; (iii) the rocks representing the Anthropozoic era are recent superficial sediments and mostly terrestrial; (iv) in these sediments, the stratigraphic markers of the Anthropozoic era are human bones and/or tools, constructions and other manifestations of anthropogenic origin; (v) the onset of the Anthropozoic era is marked by the first appearance of anthropogenic markers of this type; and (vi) the Anthropozoic era is still in construction and its duration and end cannot be predicted
Summary
A number of terms have been coined to label the time span characterized by the increasing human impact on the Earth. According to Kutschera & Farmer (2020), the term “Anthropozoic” was of current use when Stoppani (1873) – likely influenced by Marsh, who lived in Italy for some time – proposed that the human impacts on Earth were evident, extensive and intensive enough to define a new geological era that he called the Anthropozoic era. Stoppani set the stage for a formal definition of the Anthropozoic in stratigraphic terms by identifying possible stratotypes and clearly defining the required stratigraphic markers This is a crucial development and is required to transform the idea of a new unit of Earth’s history based on human impacts into a new stratigraphic unit characterized by the geological manifestations of this anthropogenic influence. These future geologists, in their attempt to study the geology of our times, would end up narrating the history of human intelligence
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