Culture in the Anthropocene

Catalog description

Welcome to the Anthropocene! It is defined as the most recent and current geological period in which human impact on the earth’s system from climate to soil to water have become measurable. It has become subject to scientific inquiry and to scientific debate. Did the current geological age, the recent age of humans, begin 200 years ago with industrialization in Europe and America? Or did it begin 10,000 years ago with the emergence of agriculture and the state in regions around the world? We know that cows, crops, and carbon all contributed to climate change and environmental change, as did culture. It is the contribution of culture that anthropologists and archeologists seek to understand. This course is a journey into archeology and literature. We will examine artifacts and documents to understand how human-environment relations changed in the last six million years of human evolution and human history.