NEWS&ANALYSIS

Heavy footprint. Humans have been transforming

landscapes, such as these ancient Philippine rice fields,
for thousands of years.

rally just as the humans arrived, it’s still not

clear whether hunting, climate, or both killed
off the megafauna, Braje says. He noted 2011
work led by Eske Willerslev of the University
of Copenhagen, which concluded that climate
alone best explains some extinctions, but that
both climate and human hunting drove Eur-
asian steppe bison and wild horses extinct, for
example. Thus, human-caused extinctions go
back thousands of years.
Instead of focusing on the Anthropocene’s
measurable effects, which accumulated over
CREDIT: BY SHUBERT CIENCIA FROM NUEVA ECIJA, PHILIPPINES (NAGACADAN RICE TERRACES [KIANGAN, IFUGAO] (CC-BY-2.0 [HTTP://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/2.0]), VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

time, some archaeologists argued that per-

A R C H A E O LO G Y

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haps a more scientific way to define the epoch
is by the onset of the most important cause
Archaeologists Say the ‘Anthropocene’ of the global human footprint: agriculture.
“Rather than focus on greenhouse gases, we
Is Here—But It Began Long Ago should identify when in the archaeological
record humans first developed a significant
HONOLULU—A vocal group of geologists sought a clear time marker for the “golden ability to modify the Earth’s ecosystems,”
and other scientists are pushing to define a spike.” The most popular suggestion for a Smith said in a talk co-written with fellow
new geological epoch, marked by climatic time point to end the recognized Holocene NMNH archaeologist Melinda Zeder. Agri-
and environmental change caused by humans. epoch, which began 11,700 years ago after culture arose nearly simultaneously in the
They’ve got a catchy name—the Anthropo- the end of the last ice age, is the beginning Near East, Asia, and the Americas, and “is the
cene or “Age of Man”—plus an eponymous of the Industrial Revolution about 1750 C.E., lever that humans have used” to refashion the
journal starting up this month and an inter- when manufacturing began to take hold and planet, Smith said.
national working group considering whether human-caused global warming is thought to The origins of agriculture about
to make the designation official (Science, have begun. Only then, proponents argue, did 11,500 years ago coincide with the begin-
7 October 2011, p. 32). At a session at the humans begin to change the chemistry of the ning of the Holocene, which already has an
Society for American Archaeology* meet- atmosphere and oceans worldwide, alter the official golden spike—the end of the last ice
ings here, archaeologists argued that it’s high course of rivers, and transform the landscape, age. If the marker was early agriculture, no
time for their field, which studies humans and among other impacts. Others have suggested additional spike would be needed, and the
their activities over geological time, to have a fallout from nuclear bombs as a distinctive current epoch could be called the Holocene,
greater voice in the debate. Anthropocene signature. the Anthropocene, or both, Smith said.
Most all the speakers at the standing- But although the 23-member Working Support for using agriculture as a dividing
room-only session agreed that human impacts Group on the Anthropocene has no archae- line comes from the dramatic impacts made
on the Earth are dramatic enough to merit a ologists or anthropologists, those fields also by early farmers, described in the case of
new epoch name—and that drawing attention have bountiful data on major human impacts East Asia by archaeologist C. Melvin Aikens
to our changed relationship with the planet is on the planet, said session chair Todd Braje, of the University of Oregon. Beginning
a good idea. But all felt that such an epoch an archaeologist at Humboldt State Univer- about 9000 years ago, villages fed by millet,
should start thousands of years ago. Rather sity in Arcata, California. Those data show wheat, and barley fields began sprouting all
than focusing on a relatively sudden planet- that humans began making global and large- over China. This was much more than just a
wide change—a line in a sedimentary deposit scale transformations of the Earth long before few clearings in the forest: Early rice farm-
where one could plant a “golden spike” as the 18th century, panel members said. ers carved out landscapes and waterways,
is traditionally done to mark an epoch—the Jon Erlandson, an archaeologist at the and “over the millennia vast reaches of south-
archaeologists outlined an unbroken chain University of Oregon in Eugene, noted that ern China were wholly transformed by dams,
of human influence stretching far back into people began transforming continents about canals, and vast paddy fields,” Aikens said.
prehistory. “Humans have been modifying 60,000 years ago, when our ancestors began Even regions once thought to be relatively
ecosystems over a long period of time,” said to spread out from their ancestral home in untouched by humans, such as the Amazon,
archaeologist Bruce Smith of the Smithson- Africa. That’s when large-scale hunting, were radically changed by prehistoric peo-
ian Institution’s National Museum of Natural burning vegetation, and cutting down for- ples, who built extensive earthworks and
History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C. ests, etc., began, and “set the stage for human causeways at least 4000 years ago (Science,
Such a view of the Anthropocene contrasts domination of the earth,” Erlandson said. 29 August 2008, p. 1148), panelists noted.
with that of most geologists and ecologists Shortly after humans arrived in many Whatever agriculture’s impacts, using
behind the movement, many of whom have regions, including most islands and sev- it to define the Anthropocene may well
*Society for American Archaeology 78th Annual Meet- eral continents, many large mammals went encounter resistance from earth scientists.
ing, 3–7 April, Honolulu. extinct. Because the climate changed natu- Indeed, in a 2011 article in the Philosoph-

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 340 19 APRIL 2013 261

Published by AAAS
 NEWS&ANALYSIS

ical Transactions of the Royal Society A, tioning of the Earth system as a whole.” coming up with arbitrary markers, and ask-
a team led by climate change expert Will Would moving the start of the Anthropo- ing what are the human and environmental
Steffen of the Australian National Univer- cene back into prehistory blunt the epoch’s interactions that are driving it.”
sity in Canberra, argued that warming of impact? “When originally proposed, this Geologists are apparently willing to hear
the planet is a key feature of the Anthropo- was a strategy for getting the public to such ideas. The new journal, Anthropocene,
cene and that increases in greenhouse gases appreciate the extent to which humans were plans a special issue on archaeological per-
due to early farming were too small to trig- destroying the world,” Smith noted in the spectives, largely drawn from the Honolulu
ger climate change. The authors also argued question and answer session. But Zeder said talks, says editor-in-chief and geomorphol-
against tying the Anthropocene to megafau- that if the Anthropocene does become offi- ogist Anne Chin of the University of Colo-
nal extinctions, claiming that the megafauna cial in 2016 as proposed, it should be based rado, Denver.
had little “appreciable impact on the func- on solid science. “We are backing away from –MICHAEL BALTER

EXOPLANETS tances within which this greenhouse would

keep working—would extend from an outer

Kepler Snags Super-Earth-Size Planet boundary beyond which carbon dioxide

freezes out to an inner boundary within

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which the greenhouse would overheat, as
Squarely in a Habitable Zone may have happened on Venus.
In the case of the Kepler-62 system,
The Kepler spacecraft has achieved plenty of The planets range from half the size of Earth only Kepler-62f—super-Earth-size at 1.41
milestones in the 4 years and counting that to twice its size in terms of diameter. Their times the size of Earth—falls in this strictly
it’s been orbiting the sun. Kepler team mem- “years” range in length from 6 days—no defined habitable zone, but it is well within
bers have reported the discovery of ever- doubt making that planet too hot for life—to it. Kepler-62e, slightly closer to its star than
smaller exoplanets—down to Earth-size a more promising 9 months for the system’s 62f, falls outside the strictly defined habit-
and below—and more and more exoplanets outermost known planet, called Kepler-62f. able zone but inside a more loosely defined
that are in the habitable zone, where a solid, Although transit observations yield pre- one. Two other relatively small exoplanets
Earth-size planet could have liquid, life-sus- cise measures of an exoplanet’s size and in other systems fall in their stars’ habitable
taining water on its surface. orbital distance from its star, determining zones, but their sizes are not known, only
Now, the Kepler team is their minimum masses; they
reporting the discovery of could be super-Earth-size or
what could be the Holy Grail much larger.
of exoplanetology: a rocky Kepler’s discovery of this
planet enveloped by a nur- possibly habitable exoplanet
turing, warming atmosphere is another grand achievement
and sporting streams, lakes, for the mission, says exo-
and seas. Or maybe not. Team planet researcher Sara Seager
members point out in their of the Massachusetts Institute
paper, published online this of Technology in Cambridge.
week in Science (http://scim. But she’s worried about the
ag.WJBorucki), that they public’s perception of the dis-
don’t know whether their new covery. “Kepler has achieved
find has water, an atmosphere, great milestones,” she says,
or even a solid surface. Indeed, but its mission is “not to
no current, planned, or per- say ‘that’s habitable, let’s go
haps even conceivable mission Imagination run free. Exoplanet Kepler-62f’s rising star and neighboring planet there.’ Kepler’s stars are too
could show that this particular (bright point) are known; the presence of clouds, land, and sea are purely speculative. faint; the amount of informa-
exoplanet is habitable. tion will be too low to demon-
None of that is Kepler’s fault. The space- whether it actually falls in a star’s habitable strate habitability.”
craft’s only job, after all, is to determine how zone requires some big assumptions. Calcu- To characterize the atmospheres of poten-
often Earth-size planets orbit in the habit- lating how much of its star’s radiant energy tially habitable exoplanets, astronomers
able zone of sunlike stars. And it has already an exoplanet intercepts is straightforward need systems nearer Earth with brighter
discovered more than 100 new exoplanets enough. But what happens next to that energy stars. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Sat-
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/T. PYLE

down to the size of Earth’s moon. It has depends on a host of characteristics of the ellite (TESS) mission approved earlier this
done that by staring year after year at more exoplanet, none of which is usually known. month by NASA for a 2017 launch will find
than 100,000 stars, waiting for the few hun- The big unknown is the nature of an exo- those brighter systems, Seager notes. Still,
dredths of a percent dip in a star’s brightness planet’s atmosphere. The Kepler team fol- fully characterizing TESS’s exoplanets will
that signals that a planet is orbiting across lows convention and assumes that the exo- challenge even NASA’s next great orbiting
the star’s face. planet has a greenhouse atmosphere of observatory, the James Webb Space Tele-
Kepler’s latest find is a system of five nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water. The scope, scheduled for launch in 2018.
planets orbiting a star designated Kepler-62. habitable zone—the range of orbital dis- –RICHARD A. KERR

262 19 APRIL 2013 VOL 340 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

Published by AAAS
 Archaeologists Say the 'Anthropocene' Is Here−−But It Began
Long Ago
Michael Balter (April 18, 2013)
Science 340 (6130), 261-262. [doi: 10.1126/science.340.6130.261]

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