Geographic Evidence of the Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis
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Anthropocene 20 (2017) 4–14 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Anthropocene journa l homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ancene Viewpoint Geographic evidence of the early anthropogenic hypothesis William Ruddiman Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, United States A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history: Received 5 October 2016 The early anthropogenic hypothesis claims that millennia ago farming began to transform landscapes Received in revised form 25 October 2017 sufficiently to emit greenhouse gases and extend the natural warmth of the current interglaciation that Accepted 14 November 2017 had been initiated by orbital variations. Part of the debate over the hypothesis during the last dozen years Available online 22 November 2017 has centered on determining the best orbital analog to the Holocene among prior interglaciations, all of which must have been natural (non-anthropogenic) in origin. Since 2009, dozens of papers have Keywords: assembled physical geographic evidence that points to the kind of large early agricultural impacts posed Holocene by the early anthropogenic hypothesis. These new findings include: pollen and archaeological evidence Anthropogenic of carbon dioxide (CO2)-emitting early forest clearance in Europe and China, along with archaeobotanical Greenhouse gases and archaeological evidence of methane (CH4)-emitting rice irrigation and livestock tending across Deforestation 14 12 southern Asia. In addition, mapping of C-dated peat deposits has revealed an important CO2 sink of C- Rice cultivation 13 enriched terrestrial carbon during the last 7000 years that countered the d CO2 imprint of emissions from early deforestation. This viewpoint article provides a current perspective on this ongoing debate in the context of these recent findings. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction 2. Historical context The central focus of this paper is the ongoing debate that has 2.1. 1900s consensus favoring natural holocene warmth been underway for a dozen years over the size of pre-industrial 0 human impacts on landscapes and climate. More extensive reviews In the 1900 s, the warmth of the current interglaciation was are available in Ruddiman et al. (2016) and Ruddiman (2016). thought to have been natural in origin up until the start of Section 1 describes how the debate originated, starting with the greenhouse-gas emissions during the industrial era. In this view, widely prevailing scientific view throughout the 1900s that pre- natural orbital variations had ended the previous glaciation and industrial humans had no large-scale impacts on either the produced a warmer interglacial climate, but they had not yet environment or Earth’s climate. Countering this view was the early brought it to an end, despite decreasing summer insolation at high anthropogenic hypothesis of Ruddiman (2003) that large environ- northern latitudes over the last 10,000 years. The evidence for the mental impacts had occurred many millennia earlier, in agreement previous cold glacial climate, the subsequent deglacial warming, with a small subset of earlier environmentally based studies, and and the continuing Holocene interglacial warmth came mainly that these alterations were large enough to alter atmospheric from glacial geology and paleoecology. The possibility of a human greenhouse-gas concentrations. Section 2 reviews the subsequent role in the stable climate of the late Holocene was generally not emergence of pertinent evidence on early anthropogenic influen- considered. ces from 2004 to 2016, including arguments both for and against a Among the social sciences, historians constrained to the time large early human role. Section 3 takes a long-range view of where spanned by written records have mostly concentrated on urban the debate is now headed. areas, wars, and political upheavals during the last 2000 years or less. With a few exceptions, their focus on the ruling classes largely ignored the activities of the ‘common people’, despite the fact that farming was transforming previously natural landscapes on a large scale. Archaeology has much in common with history but adds access to pre-historical time. Like historians, most archaeologists E-mail address: [email protected] (W. Ruddiman). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2017.11.003 2213-3054/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. W. Ruddiman / Anthropocene 20 (2017) 4–14 5 during the 1900s focused on the lives of the elite: urban who used archaeobotanical information from hundreds of well- constructions (especially monumental ones) and the possessions dated lake and bog sites in Europe to map the first arrival of the of wealthy people recovered from tombs and other sites. fertile-crescent package of crops and livestock from southwest Asia By the late 1900s and very early 2000s, however, several between 10,000 and 5000 years ago. This spread of agriculture archaeologists and paleoecologists had begun to explore large- across Europe bracketed the anomalous reversal of the falling scale changes in early landscapes resulting from the spread of trend in CO2 near 7000 years ago (initially dated to 8000 years ago, agriculture. Key publications included Zohary and Hopf (1993), but later revised). Limited evidence available at that time also Diamond (1997), Roberts (1998), Berglund (2003), Williams suggested that rice irrigation began in China some 5000 years ago, (2003), and Bellwood (2005). These efforts built on earlier work coincident with the reversal of the downward trend in methane by several environmental scientists, including: Marsh (1874); (Fig. 1). Rackam (1980); Turner et al. (1990); Smith (1995); and historians (McNeil, 1963). 3. Debating a natural versus anthropogenic late holocene (2004–2016) 2.2. 1999–2003: Ice-core data ignite a debate This section provides an overview of the ongoing debate about The current debate over the size of early anthropogenic changes the cause of the increases in late Holocene greenhouse gas began with publication of atmospheric greenhouse-gas trends between 2004 and 2016. Fig. 2 summarizes relevant papers from Vostok Station in Antarctica (Monnin et al., 2001; Petit et al., published during this interval. Publications that took part in the 1999). The debate focuses on the cause of rising trends of methane debate over the early anthropogenic hypothesis are grouped as (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) during the middle and late strongly opposed (red), basically favorable (blue), and middle of Holocene (Fig. 1). the road (purple), based on an assessment by the author of this Two hypotheses accepted the prevailing view of the 1900s by paper. The interval 2004–2009 was characterized by numerous interpreting the late-Holocene CO2 increases as natural. Broecker challenges to the early anthropogenic hypothesis, while the years et al. (1999, 2001) suggested that the increase was a delayed from 2009 to 2016 have seen a wide variety of papers providing rebound from an imbalance in ocean chemistry created earlier in relevant ground-truth evidence from archaeology, archaeobotany, the Holocene. Ridgwell et al. (2003) attributed it to excess and paleoecology. The subtitles of this section describe the major deposition of coral reefs as sea level stabilized in the middle questions posed by critics, followed by evidence addressing those Holocene. criticisms. In contrast, Ruddiman (2003) proposed that the late-Holocene CH4 and CO2 increases were anthropogenic in origin. This ‘early 3.1. Are the rising holocene CO2 and CH4 trends anomalous? anthropogenic hypothesis’ was mainly based on the fact that the rising Holocene trends were opposite in direction from the Trends in CO2 and CH4 during previous interglaciations are downward trends during the three previous interglaciations highly variable because of wide variations in orbital forcing during reached by Vostok drilling. Because previous interglaciations the preceding deglaciations and early in the interglaciations. The could not have been significantly affected by human activities, he main orbital differences lie in the amplitudes and relative timing of argued that those downward gas trends must have been natural, the obliquity and eccentricity-modulated precession (esinv) and thus the late Holocene increases were anthropogenic. signals. These variations complicate attempts to evaluate whether Ruddiman (2003) also summarized the scant available evidence the late Holocene gas trends are truly unique. about the extent of human activities during recent millennia. This To circumvent this complication, Ruddiman et al. (2011) used evidence included the pioneering effort of Zohary and Hopf (1993), new data from the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica Fig. 1. Rising late Holocene concentrations of CH4 and CO2 from Monnin et al. (2001), compared to projected downward trends similar to those observed in previous interglaciations. 6 W. Ruddiman / Anthropocene 20 (2017) 4–14 Fig. 2. Timeline of publications relevant to the early anthropogenic hypothesis. Papers in red support the hypothesis (with italics indicating Ruddiman as a co-author). Papers in blue oppose the hypothesis, and papers in purple fall somewhere in between. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.) (EPICA) Dome C ice core to compare Holocene gas trends (Monnin current interglaciation, it was at one point considered the best et al., 2001) to stacked and averaged gas trends from seven