Early anthropocene

The Early Anthropocene Hypothesis (sometimes referred to as 'Early Anthropogenic' or 'Ruddiman Hypothesis') is a stance concerning the beginning of the Anthropocene first proposed by William Ruddiman in 2003.^[1] It posits that the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch coinciding with the most recent period in Earth's history when the activities of the human race first began to have a significant global impact on Earth's climate and ecosystems, dates back to 8,000 years ago, triggered by intense farming activities after agriculture became widespread. It was at that time that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations stopped following the periodic pattern of rises and falls that had accurately characterized their past long-term behavior, a pattern that is explained by natural variations in Earth's orbit known as Milankovitch cycles. Ruddiman's proposed start-date has been met with criticism from scholars in a variety of fields.

The Early Anthropocene Hypothesis asserts that the Anthropocene did not begin during European colonization of the Americas, as numerous scholars posit,^[2][3][4] nor the eighteenth century with advent of coal-burning factories and power plants of the industrial era, as originally argued by Paul Crutzen (who popularized the word 'Anthropocene' in 2000), nor in the 1950s as claimed by the Anthropocene Working Group (a geological research program working on the Anthropocene as a geological time unit).