EXPLORING THE EARLY ANTHROPOCENE: IMPLICATIONS FROM THE LONG-TERM HUMAN– CLIMATE INTERACTIONS IN EARLY CHINA

Abstract

Because human modification has been significant enough to alter the atmospheric chemistry, some scholars argue that our planet Earth is going beyond the Holocene and coming into a new geological epoch, the An-thropocene. While the Anthropocene concept is widely acknowledged, some key issues, such as the starting point of this epoch and how humans influenced climate, are unclear. This paper provides an overview of the long-term, broad-scale interactions between climate evolution and increasingly intensive human activities (mainly farming) in Early China. It firstly reviews both the traditional “climate in charge” hypothesis and Ruddiman’s “anthropogenic greenhouse gases” hypothesis. Then pollen and isotope data on paleo-climate is summarized to shed light on the climatic history in China from ~3500 BCE to ~220 CE. It is followed by an overview of the cultural history within the same time span. Finally, by integrating these two lines of evidence, the dynamic process of the interplay of human activity (particularly farming) and climate is synthetically dis-cussed. Based on the evidence, I argue that the onset of the Anthropocene is a prolonged process with a notable mark in the early centuries CE.