The 6,000-Year-Old Force Behind Dramatic Global Ecological Change

A ring of protected land around New Zealand's Mt. Taranaki is surrounded by pasture. Land use changes have likely been influencing species distributions for thousands of years, according to a new study. (Image: NASA/USGS) It’s hard to deny that humans are shaping planet Earth: from atmospheric composition to urban heat islands and widespread habitat loss, “before” and “after” comparisons reveal pervasive changes. These alterations are among the justifications for the proposed “Anthropocene” geologic epoch, which recongizes the dominant role of human activity on a number of planetary parameters. And while the most dramatic changes have occurred since the Industrial Revolution, a new study suggests that our ancestors’ activities were having dramatic effects on biodiversity thousands of years earlier, long before coal-fired power plants kicked the Anthropocene into overdrive. Kathleen Lyons, a Research Scientist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, led a small army of scientists in the study, ...