Humanity – a mere speck of dust in the Earth's history

In an article for The Conversation, Dr Matthew Adams, Principal Lecturer in Psychology, challenged the notion of the Anthropocene period, which refers to the idea that the Earth’s geological record has been transformed by human activity and environmental breakdown.

Dr Adams said the Anthropocene is a “highly problematic way of framing our predicament”.

He added that humanity’s relatively short time on Earth meant our geological legacy would be akin to the comet dust of the mass extinction 66 million years ago that killed off three quarter of all species: “a slightly odd transition layer a quarter of an inch thick.”

As such, Dr Adams said we should be “wary” of the Anthropocene and the idea that humanity has had a major impact on the Earth in the context of the planet’s 4.45 billion year history.

While he admitted there is “plenty of evidence for human impact in the geological record,” he added that a “fuller appreciation of deep time should actually make us wary of the Anthropocene label, maybe even shift our image of ourselves and what it means to inhabit the Earth this time”.

Dr Matthew Adams

Introducing the concept of ‘geologic time’, the timescale on which major events in the Earth’s history are charted, Dr Adams said “we struggle to grasp the huge scale of a sense of time is so deep”.

He added: “In the context of deep time, the Earth will continue to meander on without us, and it will hardly notice we’re gone, just as it hardly knew we were here.”

If Earth’s history took place on the scale of a 24 hour clock, humans would only appear in the last 19 seconds.

You can read Dr Matthew Adams’ full article at The Conversation.