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FROM THE PLEISTOCENE TO THE ANTHROPOCENE: A story happening to the face of a planet called the Earth

By Catalina Giraldo

February 21, 2017

With this paper, I am exploring one chapter of the Earth history that took place during the Quaternary, the last 2.6 million years before the present. This era is divided between the Pleistocene and the Holocene and end with the last hundred years of our time, with a newborn period of time: the Anthropocene. This story was established through different disciplines and branches of natural and social sciences, but the last part has been built and retold in different ways and inter-crossing every kind of disciplines.

To draw this story on a linear timeline, the earth is 4.54 billion years old, since then she has been evolving and many changes on her surface and oceans have been sculpting to create the current shape she has. On her surfaces have hosted different climates, landscapes, species of plants and animals and other life forms. Between all of these species, we the homo sapiens are one of the most successful species with a history of just about 200.000 years, but our last civilization has emerged from industrialization to be almost completely separated from the natural systems of the planet in just hundred years. The Quaternary is the last geological era that was begun with a period of time named the Pleistocene. It was about 2.6 million years ago when started and finished just 10.000 years before present. The Pleistocene recorded different cycles of climate with a marked periodicity and it is very known that glacials and interglacials changed repeatedly and greatly the face of the earth, changes that also brought extinction, speciation and profound transformation in the geographical distribution of plants and animals everywhere (Van der Hammen, 1974). The Holocene instead is the latest part of the Quaternary, considered as well as the last and current interglacial period since 10.000 years ago until 1.950, when Anthropocene started as the current geological period (Waters et. al, 2016).

These glacial–interglacial cycles have been engraved in marine and terrestrial paleoclimate records from around the world. Projects like EPICA and VOSTOC amongst others have focused efforts drilling ice-cores in Greenland and Antartica to understand the global climate history. Thanks to these big pictures we know today that every 100.000 years a big change in temperature happens for about 90.000 years, as well as interglacial periods that last around 10.000 years. Some other cycles have been also determined each 40.000 and 20.000 years but more related to temperature and humidity, at least during the last part of the Pleistocene (NOOA 2017, Van der Hammen & Hoghiemstra, YR). As follows, climate change has been a carver giving shape to species and its distributions, for example, in mountains these cycles pushed species rhythmically along the slopes, opening temporary dispersal pathways or dividing populations of plants and animals into isolated remnants. Connected and disconnected populations of plants and animals created flickering connectivity systems that push species to evolve or disappear. Then, after all this time and transformations, the species of plants and animals that homo sapiens have been witnessing since its appearing about 195.000 years ago, is just a snapshot in time after million of years of change (Flantua & Hoghiemstra 2017; Hoogiemstra et.al. 2006; Scientific America 2005; Van der Hammen 1974).

But different to the Pleistocene and Holocene and the periods before, the Anthropocene describes a recent homo sapiens or modern human story and a new geological era where human actions have a drastic effect on the Earth like the current global warming (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000). The beginning of the Anthropocene is most generally considered to be at 1.800 after Christianity, around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Europe (Crutzen's original suggestion); other potential candidates for time boundaries have been suggested, at both earlier dates (within or even before the Holocene) or later (e.g. at the start of the nuclear age). However, it was published in Science by Waters et. al. (2016) that the Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene. They reviewed anthropogenic markers of functional changes in the Earth system through the stratigraphic record. The appearance of manufactured materials in sediments, including aluminum, plastics, and concrete, coincides with global spikes in fallout radionuclides and particulates from fossil fuel combustion. Carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles have been substantially modified over the past century. Rates of sea-level rise and the extent of human perturbation of the climate system exceed Late Holocene changes. Biotic changes include species invasions worldwide and accelerating rates of plants and animals extinction, since 1970, there has already been a 58% overall decline in the numbers of fish, mammals, birds and reptiles worldwide, according to the WWF's latest bi-annual Living Planet Index, what means that we are already losing species at a rate consistent with a sixth mass extinction event. These combined signals render the Anthropocene stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene and earlier epochs (WWF, 2016).

Furthermore, opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of earth's natural processes, global warming in the Anthropocene is a result of destroying natural landscapes, nature forests and releasing ancient stores of carbon. These alterations we have been making is causing changes in temperature, sea ice extent and carbon dioxide concentrations that can be quickly visualized in the climate time machine (NASA 2017). The oil extraction, hydroelectric construction, mono-agriculture and modern cities or jungle’s cement, can be seen as contributing factors, and a means towards our modern mutant creation. The global warming is not only a consequence of changes in the Earth’s long-range planetary motions but also a result of the land use transformations that we have been strongly accelerating in just a hundred years post-industrialization. As modern humans, our behaviors and habits have contributed to global warming through the carbon footprints, and this process is alerting us in ways that will make us change our habits to return to a balance with the earth and to remember our origins as one more species. As Davis et al. (2015) described: Critical Climate Change is oriented, in this general manner, toward the epistemo-political mutations that correspond to the temporalities of terrestrial mutation. As well, I believe that our civilization is crossing the line between the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. Perhaps, we are already living the ‘Quinary’, a new geological era after Quaternary starting with the Anthropocene, with our fingerprints already made on the layers of history deposited and eroded for million of years. In the Dickinson (2015) words: "Anthropocene is both a metaphysical concept and concrete reality: tomorrow's fossil record will reveal one story only, that on the rise and demise of the human race". In that way, the last years transdisciplinary research with its cross-pollination of art, science, design, media, ecology and different cultural disciplines are developing a critical discussion about the Anthropocene, where the arts and design are playing an active role as agents of communication and change (Anthropocene Agents 2017). As well as Alonso (2015) says: experimental artistic practice emphasizes a new combination of aesthetics and ethics and the ecological and the social can provide interesting models in helping societies adapt to this new territory of the Anthropocene.

There are many study cases about the current massive movement of artists exploring the metaphorical language of Anthropocene. Although, the same movement conceptually started in the 70's like Environmental Art, an expression coined as an umbrella term to encompass eco-art/ecological art, ecoventions, land art, earth art, earthworks, art in nature and even a few other less-common terms (Bower 2010), terms that definitely today are under Anthropocene umbrella concept. To bring some examples for Environmental Art, there are over 150 artists, and close to 22 Scientists & Art/Science collaborative projects, organizations, programs, and residencies focused on this Eco-Art movement (The Greenmuseum 2010), a number that is increasing with Anthropocene movement. Some of the most recent works are Taipei Bienal in 2014- The Great Acceleration: Art in the Anthropocene- where 52 artists participated. They followed the changing status of nature in the light of artificial materials and translates it into a three-act structure, turning the museum into an archeological dig (Dickinson 2015, Lin 2015). Seven billion in 2014, referring to the average population of human beings inhabiting the earth hosted at EACC in Valencia, Spain (Alonso 2015). Dark Ecology project (2014, 2015, 2016) inspired by Timothy Morton’s concept of ‘dark ecology’ and his philosophy of ‘ecology without Nature’. Morton offers a radical criticism of the modernist way of thinking about nature as something outside of us and instead proposes an interconnected ‘mesh’ of all living and non-living objects (Dark Ecology 2017).

Thus, the earth as an alive organism has been walking around the sun closer or further, grading the axes up and down and experiencing different glacial and interglacial periods with a signature marker by CO2, water, plants and animals prints amongst others. As well, the most recent human history has their own record already written on the earth’s surface. A question that follows now "it is how to write a new history with the knowledge and the need to change we have now but also the faster development of technologies to mend this broken balance between the earth and us?".

Cited Literature

Alonso C., 2015. Artistic Practices, Discursive Contexts and Environmental Humanities in the Age of the Anthropocene. Artnodes, no. 15 (2015) I ISSN 1695-5951

Bower, S. 2010. A Profusion of Terms. Greenmuseum.org. Web. Feb 21 2017. http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=306

Dark Ecology, 2014, 2015, 2016. Web. Feb 21 2017. http://www.darkecology.net/about

Davis H. & Turpin E. (eds.) 2015. Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics. Open Humanities Press, London

Dickinson, B. 2015. Pleistocene, Holocene, Anthropocene. Features 02, ART MONTHLY, Sep 15, 389 pg.

Flantua, S.G.A. & Hooghiemstra, H. (2017) Historical connectivity and mountain biodiversity. In: Hoorn, C., Perrigo, A., Antonelli, A. (eds). Mountains, Climate and Biodiversity. Chapter 13. Oxford, John Wiley & Sons.

Hooghiemstra H., Wijninga V.M., Cleef A. M., 2006. The Paleobotanical record of Colombia: Implications for Biogeography and Biodiversity. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 93(2):297-325. 2006. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3417/0026-6493(2006)93[297:TPROCI]2.0.CO;2 URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.3417/0026-6493%282006%2993%5B297%3ATPROCI %5D2.0.CO%3B2

Lin A. 2015, Taipei Biennial: The Great Acceleration. Art Review Issue. Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Jan & Feb 2015. Web. Feb 21 2017. https://artreview.com/reviews/jan_feb_2015_review_taipei_biennial/

NASA, 2017. NASA's Global Climate Change website. Design and programming by Moore Boeck. Concept and Research by Randal Jackson and Holly Shaftel. Animations by Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio, Moore Boeck, CReSIS. Web. Feb 21 2017. https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine

NOOA, 2017 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/abrupt-climate-change/Glacial-Interglacial%20Cycles. Web. Feb 21 2017.

Richmond, G.M.; Fullerton, D.S. (1986). "Summation of Quaternary glaciations in the United States of America". Quaternary Science Reviews. 5: 183–196. doi:10.1016/0277-3791(86)90184-8.

Scientific American 2005. Fossil Reanalysis Pushes Back Origin of Homo sapiens. Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. Feb 17, 2005. Web. Feb 21 2017. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossil-reanalysis-pushes/#

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Symposium Agents in the Anthropocene: Trans/disciplinary practices in art and design education today. 2017.Piet Zwart Institute / Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam. January 27-28, 2017. Web. Feb 21 2017. https://www.anthropoceneagents.nl

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From Biophilia to Anthropocene and Solastalgia, the last global concepts to give us a key about why we should search a Re-connection with Planet Earth: our Home

In this text I will investigate new concepts created for the last three decades and coined as Biophilia, Anthropocene and Solastalgia. These conceptions have been appearing from a variety of disciplines: Earth Sciences, Social Sciences, Technology and Arts, and imply studies in psychology, social justice, biology and ecology of conservation, geology, global climate change, urban planning and sustainability, between others. For this paper, I will describe the three concepts in a chronological order and then I will articulate them, but also I will attempt to answer the questions I have: Is it possible to remember our human origin as one more species on the Earth and assemble again a connection with the natural ecosystems under the use of visual arts as a tool?

In 1984 the American Biologist and Entomologist, Edward Wilson, coined the term "Biophilia" a hypothesis about how humankind, as a part of our species evolutionary heritage, has an innate need to be around living things and how we are naturally drawn to those places that in our pre-historic past, have best facilitated survival (Cleary et al., 2017). Although, “Biophilia” was first used in 1973 by the philosopher and social psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who described it as “the passionate love of life and of all that is alive”, Wilson described and popularized the hypothesis as "the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.” Since then many other researchers of different disciplines have been using the concept to design urban planning as well as to find psychological health benefits and well being for our society (Cleary et al., 2017).

Some years later, in 2000 a Dutch Atmospheric Chemist and Nobel Prize-winning, Paul Jozef Crutzen, popularized the concept of “Anthropocene” which describes and proposed a new geological era where human actions have a drastic effect on the Earth (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000). Since then a discussion between International Geological Agencies started and it is still under debate to officially accept if the Anthropocene is the new geological era. However, this year was published in Science by Waters et. al. (2016) that the Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene (officially recognized as the last geological era). They said:

The human activity is leaving a pervasive and persistent signature on Earth. Vigorous debate continues about whether this warrants recognition as a new geologic time unit known as the Anthropocene. We review anthropogenic markers of functional changes in the Earth system through the stratigraphic record. The appearance of manufactured materials in sediments, including aluminum, plastics, and concrete, coincides with global spikes in fallout radionuclides and particulates from fossil fuel combustion. Carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles have been substantially modified over the past century. Rates of sea-level rise and the extent of human perturbation of the climate system exceed Late Holocene changes. Biotic changes include species invasions worldwide and accelerating rates of extinction. These combined signals render the Anthropocene stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene and earlier epochs.

"Solastalgia" instead is even a more recent concept developed by the Australian Environmental Philosopher, Glenn Albrecht, and it was first introduced at the Ecohealth Conference in Montreal in May 2003 to give greater meaning and clarity to environmentally induced distress. As opposed to nostalgia, the melancholy or homesickness experienced by individuals when separated from a loved home, Solastalgia is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting people while they are directly connected to their home environment”. Albrecht (2006, 2007) coined this concept of 'Solastalgia' as a feeling of desolation or melancholia about the emplaced and lived experience of the chronic deterioration of a loved 'home' environment. In his words “Solastalgia” is a combination of the Latin word solascium: comfort and the Greek word algia: pain. Solastalgia is a somaterratic illness (soma: body, terratic: earth-related) that threatens physical wellbeing and is caused mainly by living in ecosystems that have been destroyed, transformed, and contaminated by pollutants and toxins. These landscapes and ecosystems have been altered by human machinery, exploited and changed on big scales through mining, oil extraction, hydroelectric construction, mono-agriculture, modern cities etc. As a new concept Albretch says:

I found that many traditional cultures and their indigenous languages have words for home-heart-environment relationships, however, it is interesting to note that modern English has very few. I created the concept of ‘solastalgia’ to fill this void and to give expression in the English language to a fundamentally important relationship between people, communities and their home environment. I also feel that we need many more new concepts that recapture the closeness that human animals have with their support environment or habitat. The realm of the ‘psychoterratic’ or positive and negative relationships between human mental health (psyche) and the earth (terra) has to be re-created in the twenty first century (Albretch 2016).

The three concepts are highly related in the way that our human species have the complete responsibility for all the global and extreme changes produced just over the last 66 years after industrialization and the highest technological development with a conspicuous establishment around the 1950’s. Our planet right now has an enormous transformation already shaped into the soils as traces of history deposited or as a new layer visible in the soil horizon and the atmosphere: the Anthropocene. As well, the consequences of the fast alteration evidenced by our fingerprints are imminent, thus our psyches and bodies are experimenting the breakdown of a natural subconsciously seek and connection with the rest of life: Biophilia, as well a lost of the support of a natural environment, habitat or ancestral home: Solastalgia.

That also means the concepts are plenty associated and interconnected with the actual global and environmental crisis and are crucial factors to make a better future for the generations coming. In Albretch words: All aspects of life - social, cultural, psychological, political, scientific and economic – we as humans need to redirect our energy and intelligence to an ethically inspired, urgent, practical response to overcoming the causes of Solastalgia (Albrecht 2007, 36). Likewise, Biophilia invites to incorporate and cultivate nature connection among urban communities to enhance psychological wellbeing through the cultivation of nature connection among urban populations (Cleary et al., 2017).

If our World right now needs to start making changes, it is urgent to help people understand and re-connect with nature in order to recover the lost memory about the need of being in touch with nature to have better quality of live. That is why I wonder if it is possible to remember our human origin as one more species on the Earth and assemble again a connection with the natural ecosystems under the use of visual arts as a tool?

First of all, I think it is a contradiction to say that visual images from technological tools as cameras, computers, projectors, robots will re-connect human species to the origin and home, I mean origin as the Nature and Home as the Earth. I think is a contradiction, because I hardly believe that never will be the same experience to embrace physically a tree that watch an image printed or digital projected on a screen about myself embracing the tree. There is something else that makes the physical experience magical and deep. However, I wonder how through the use of visual arts is possible to set ideas into the people unconscious mind at any age and background, with the final objective to awake and remember the importance of being in connection with nature, especially today that we are living the times of a global climate change and environmental crisis.

Thereby, Biophilia and Solastalgia imply a strong human need of nature and also a negative psychological consequence for disconnection caused by technological nature, extreme land transformation and Ecocide. According to studies made by Kahn et. al. (2009), about the Human Nature Relation with Techological Nature they found: two world trends are powerfully reshaping human existence: the degradation, if not destruction, of large parts of the natural world, and unprecedented technological development. At the nexus of these two trends lies technological Nature -technologies that in various ways mediates, augment, or simulate the natural world. Current examples of technological nature include videos and live webcams of nature, robot animals and immersive virtual environments. After different technological nature studies comparing human relationships with robots and virtual landscapes with natural landscapes and real animals in children of different ages and countries they found that interacting with technological nature provides some but not all the enjoyments an benefits of interacting with actual nature. Also they found that each new generation tends to take degraded environmental condition as no degraded condition, what involve an environmental generational amnesia. The same found Bjørn et al. (2009), they evidenced with studies on outdoor activities, therapeutic use of Nature and having a view of Nature (either actual Nature or in pictures), and adding plants to indoor environments will help to have better quality of life and wellbeing.

As a conclusion, there are some evidences that demonstrate the images have some impact and are able to generate benefits for better quality of live, however the benefits are less that the actual nature. I have not found yet studies that demonstrate the visual images will help to remember the origin and the need of connection, but it is still a lot research work to do in order to find answers that help to clarify the question.

Bibliography

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Albrecht G., & G. M. Sartore. 2007 Solastalgia: the distress caused by environmental change. Australasian Psychiatry. Vol 15 Supplement S97. 2007.

Albrecht G. 2016. Solastalgia, Soliphilia, Eutierria and Art. [online] Available at: glennaalbrecht.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/solastalgia-soliphilia-eutierria-and-art/ [Accessed 21 Nov. 2016].

Bjørn G. & G.G Patil. 2009. Biophilia: Does Visual Contact with Nature Impact on Health and Well-Being. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2009 Sep; 6(9):2332-43.

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