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The Deep Anthropocene

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Re: The Deep Anthropocene

#11

Post by xixo »

svrb wrote: post #10

TL;DR: TFA claims climate change don't real. Money quotes: "Recent popular conceptions of the Anthropocene risk making a similar mistake, drawing a thin bright line at 1950 and describing what comes after as a new, modern form of ecological disaster." (implying that what's happened after 1950 isn't an ecological disaster) "In the ‘pristine myth’ paradigm ... human societies are recent destroyers, or at the very least…

Those are key points in the article, but I didn't read them in the way you did. This article is largely about many research groups coming together to build a more nuanced understanding of our impact on the environment over the past thousands of years.

It also suggests the prevailing views of climate change are simplistic. We, even in much more "primitive" times, have been mucking up the earth to our benefit. It's bound to happen, of course. All that energy must come from somewhere.

I don't think the article suggests that the situation we're in now isn't happening. The article reads almost breathless—in on the knowledge that we're in a dire situation. Do we really need more reasons to illustrate our impact on the environment?

It also speaks to our strange compulsion to believe in the duality of human and nature. How do you get the public to recognize that there is no such thing, only one symbiotic whole? I hope we can figure out how to work together.

Re: The Deep Anthropocene

#12

Post by AlotOfReading »

wh1t3n01s3 wrote: post #8
sebmellen wrote: post #2

This is fascinating. Whenever something like this comes up, I think of people like Terence McKenna or Graham Hancock. People who, admittedly, had some very out there ideas, but maybe not completely unfounded. Do we really know how advanced ancient societies were, and what trade networks they had? Consider this: > Advances in the study of plant silica micro-fossils (phytoliths) have helped trace banana cultivation fro…

Fascinating indeed. Climate change goes far beyond CO2 levels. Another thing that we miss is our history before the last ice age, which still lies in complete mistery.

Complete is greatly overstating it. I've personally found stuff from approximately that time period and in general we have a decent idea how people lived and many of their technologies. There are issues pinning down details on specific groups, cultures and political organization, but nothing so unknown as to hide a large industrial society.

Re: The Deep Anthropocene

#13

Post by ta1234567890 »

sebmellen wrote: post #2

This is fascinating. Whenever something like this comes up, I think of people like Terence McKenna or Graham Hancock. People who, admittedly, had some very out there ideas, but maybe not completely unfounded. Do we really know how advanced ancient societies were, and what trade networks they had? Consider this: > Advances in the study of plant silica micro-fossils (phytoliths) have helped trace banana cultivation fro…

> banana cultivation from the Island of New Guinea

Super interesting. Reminded me that in Cuba there's a type of banana they call "guineo". I wonder if it's at all related to its origin.

Re: The Deep Anthropocene

#14

Post by sebmellen »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #13
sebmellen wrote: post #2

This is fascinating. Whenever something like this comes up, I think of people like Terence McKenna or Graham Hancock. People who, admittedly, had some very out there ideas, but maybe not completely unfounded. Do we really know how advanced ancient societies were, and what trade networks they had? Consider this: > Advances in the study of plant silica micro-fossils (phytoliths) have helped trace banana cultivation fro…

> banana cultivation from the Island of New Guinea Super interesting. Reminded me that in Cuba there's a type of banana they call "guineo". I wonder if it's at all related to its origin.

Hmm, seems so, though a different Guinea! Very interesting:

> Guineos (pronounced [ɡiˈneos]) usually refers to an unripe banana. The term guineo is sometimes used in reference to its ripened counterpart: the yellow (ripened) banana. Etymology of the word Guineo comes from Guinea, a country in the west of Africa, as it is one of the places from which bananas originate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guineo

Re: The Deep Anthropocene

#15

Post by user_ »

inglor_cz wrote: post #7
jbotz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's why I said "edible" bananas... those "mostly seed" ones aren't really edible, there's nothing to eat. The mutation / hybridization that resulted in seedless edible bananas must have preceded their being spread around by humans or we wouldn't have bothered.

Oh, anyone bothers if they get really hungry. Stone Age people were fairly resourceful when it came to food. A friend of mine who used to hike in the Pyrenees had incredible stories regarding hunger and eating.

Care to share any of the stories? I think you'll find a receptive audience :)

Re: The Deep Anthropocene

#16

Post by smhost »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #12
wh1t3n01s3 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating indeed. Climate change goes far beyond CO2 levels. Another thing that we miss is our history before the last ice age, which still lies in complete mistery.

Complete is greatly overstating it. I've personally found stuff from approximately that time period and in general we have a decent idea how people lived and many of their technologies. There are issues pinning down details on specific groups, cultures and political organization, but nothing so unknown as to hide a large industrial society.

What about a small industrial society?

Re: The Deep Anthropocene

#17

Post by AtlasBarfed »

wh1t3n01s3 wrote: post #8
sebmellen wrote: post #2

This is fascinating. Whenever something like this comes up, I think of people like Terence McKenna or Graham Hancock. People who, admittedly, had some very out there ideas, but maybe not completely unfounded. Do we really know how advanced ancient societies were, and what trade networks they had? Consider this: > Advances in the study of plant silica micro-fossils (phytoliths) have helped trace banana cultivation fro…

Fascinating indeed. Climate change goes far beyond CO2 levels. Another thing that we miss is our history before the last ice age, which still lies in complete mistery.

... like mass species extinction? Arguably as disturbing as global warming.

Re: The Deep Anthropocene

#18

Post by AtlasBarfed »

xixo wrote: post #11
svrb wrote: post #10

TL;DR: TFA claims climate change don't real. Money quotes: "Recent popular conceptions of the Anthropocene risk making a similar mistake, drawing a thin bright line at 1950 and describing what comes after as a new, modern form of ecological disaster." (implying that what's happened after 1950 isn't an ecological disaster) "In the ‘pristine myth’ paradigm ... human societies are recent destroyers, or at the very least…

Those are key points in the article, but I didn't read them in the way you did. This article is largely about many research groups coming together to build a more nuanced understanding of our impact on the environment over the past thousands of years. It also suggests the prevailing views of climate change are simplistic. We, even in much more "primitive" times, have been mucking up the earth to our benefit. It's bou…

Yes I would argue they aren't denying CO2. They are saying that humans have been doing massive changes to global-scale systems for a while now.

That mean they are trying to say that the simple chemical property of increased CO2 in the atmosphere increases heat retention isn't false, or that humans aren't doing it.

I'd say it's more akin to them warning there may be more insidious or less-well-understood dangers to human civilization and the Earth biome than just global warming.

Personally, mass extinction of species comes to mind. A wide variety of species enables equilibriums to be established with changing conditions, given a proper allowed rate of evolution.

Current anthropomorphic changes to the world are far faster than typical climate shifts, which occurred on the scale of 1000s of years, not decades.

Combined with humanity reducing the number of available species to adapt, mass extinctions seem akin to us playing russian roulette:

- did killing off this species collapse the entire system? No? - how about this one? No? - how about this one? Uhoh.

Re: The Deep Anthropocene

#20

Post by AlotOfReading »

smhost wrote: post #16
AlotOfReading wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete is greatly overstating it. I've personally found stuff from approximately that time period and in general we have a decent idea how people lived and many of their technologies. There are issues pinning down details on specific groups, cultures and political organization, but nothing so unknown as to hide a large industrial society.

What about a small industrial society?

When we start getting into hypotheticals, it's useful to reframe the discussion in more concrete terms. What would it mean to have a "small industrial society"? I can think of a number of "things" that would fit that term:

1) Ancient Aliens: Essentially similar to what a human martian colony would look like. In this case, resources, population, and knowledge are brought from off-world and there's little to no local exploitation. The only way to detect something like this is direct material evidence, which also means it's practically unverifiable. Not really a useful hypothesis.

2) the dystopia: an anomalously advanced human society surrounded by hunter-gatherers in the wastelands outside. As a twist, the population is small and in-line with contemporaneous HG populations. One problem with this scenario is that it just doesn't look like any human society ever discovered. There's libraries worth of work on how technological development happens and the two big accelerators we see across most of history are high (effective) populations and communication "density". The lower either of these are, the more likely that the information network breaks down over time. At the population levels we're talking, simply having enough people to do all the various jobs that need doing in a high-tech society is a problem, let alone redundancy and exploration of new ones.

3) Non-human societies: Something incredibly old, non-human, and lost in the mists of time. This is where you get into the silurian hypothesis and given enough technology/magic/moved goalposts, it gets difficult to say anything concrete. There would probably still be evidence in some form or fashion, but ultimately you have to define some model of what the society looks like it to actually say anything about it.

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