Scientists have determined that humans started world domination in the year 1610 in a new geological epoch as opposed to the industrial or nuclear period.

This beginning is called "anthropocene" or human epoch. The epoch is also an issue in geology where scientists' suggestions as to its beginnings vary widely from the advent of farming culture some 10,000 years ago to the explosion of the first atomic bomb in 1945.

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Two scientists strongly claim that 1610 is the year when a "golden spike" occurred that can be seen in global geological records. This golden spike proves humans made an irreversible change to the planet's biology and ecosystems.

This particular event in which massive and irreversible change transformed life on Earth occurred during the developing trade and transport of animals and plants across the Atlantic Ocean that has divided the New and Old Worlds for millions of years.

According to Simon Lewis, an ecologist from University College London and geologist Mark Maslin from Leeds University, there were two global signatures from human activity that emerged in 1610.

The first one is the appearance of pollen, resulting in the importation of New World crops from Europe. The second one is the lowering of carbon dioxide levels caused by the decline of native farms across the Americas, where millions of indigenous people perished during the onslaught of European colonization.

Researchers call this the "Orbis Spike," which is Latin for "world," to represent this dramatic change felt all over the globe.

The colonization of the New World led to the deaths of 50 million Native Americans from disease and smallpox. This event led to a loss of agriculture, which also resulted in forest re-growth that ultimately led to a dip in carbon dioxide concentrations found in the atmosphere.

Scientists have gathered evidence from carbon dioxide locked inside Antarctic ice cores. During the same time, Europeans transferred animals and plants between Old and New Worlds, including maize that left the first evidence of new world pollen found in marine sediments in Europe.

In the next 100,000 years, Lewis believes scientists will look back and study the environmental record and realize these dramatic global changes to the Earth were caused by a new geological power: humans.

He adds the anthropecene epoch will be considered a time when species jumped continents and where the old world met with the new, marking the start of the modern world.

This study was published in the journal, Nature.  

TagsAnthropocene: The Age When Humans Began Dominating Earth, anthropocene, humans world domination, 1610 anthropocene humans epoch