Anthropocene
n.— «Exactly when such an Anthropocene should be seen to replace a truncated Holocene is a matter of debate.…Some would undoubtedly advocated AD 1000, which roughly equates with the beginning of the industrial cycle of global population growth.…, while others would prefer c. AD 1500, so as to conform to what Roberts (1998) refers to as the culmination of the “taming of nature” phase and the commencement of “the modern era.” However, there is likely to be even greater support for c. AD 1750, approximately corresponding to the start of the Industrial Revolution.» —by David K. C. Jones Geomorphological Processes and Landscape Change Dec., 2001. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...