Talk:Anthropocene

Etymology of Homogenocene

I think the etymology offered for Homogenocene must be wrong. There is no way that "homo" Latin for man would be used in this way. "Homo" appears in compounds as "homini-," not "homo," which form is only used as an independent word ("Homo sapiens"). Homogenocene probably is constructed from the word "homogeneous" + "cene"; the article in which the term first occurred was referring to the homogenization of life across the planet because of transfers of organisms by humans. Homogeneous comes from "homo" "same" and "gen" "kind" in Greek. Metrodorus (talk)

I was thinking, do we need a whole section for this? Wikipedia is not a dictionary, so we should probably merge that into the beginning paragraph or omit it entirely. EtalonGlapfh (talk) 00:55, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

That's all, folks!

And so the proposed era has been put in the rubbish bin: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/climate/anthropocene-vote-upheld.html 182.239.146.143 (talk) 05:02, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

yes, look like that. Good to see that someone has already updated the Wikipedia article accordingly. EMsmile (talk) 12:01, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Call me again in 30 years; I'm fairly confident this isn't the final word on the topic. Newimpartial (talk) 14:17, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

That's assuming that we are here in 30 years Pikachubob3 (talk) 01:18, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

It isn't, I have some of these researchers for professors and they intend to propose it again in a few years once "conditions are more favourable" i.e. there are people more sympathetic to them in the committee. 139.57.217.252 (talk) 16:57, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Also they only are not including it at this point, if we continue the route we are currently going down I would not be surprised like @Newimpartial said, that vote has not closed the book on this. Pikachubob3 (talk) 01:20, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Great Acceleration

The Great Acceleration appears to be a subtopic of the Anthropocene. It currently has a section here as well as its own article, but the article is short and overlaps with this one. Should the article be merged into the section here? WeyerStudentOfAgrippa (talk) 12:56, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

It appears that the Great Acceleration subtopic still has a link to the "main article". Seeing that said article no longer exists, clicking said link just loads the Anthropocene article again. Should it still be there? CzechMapping (talk) 16:45, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

Well spotted. I've removed the wikilink from the text but couldn't figure out how to remove it from the infobox? EMsmile (talk) 21:31, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Chronology in the infobox

1. The timespan beginning with 0,000076 is not in compliance with the final proposal of the Anthropocene Working Group, postponing the GSSP from 1950 to 1952: "The GSSP for the Anthropocene series/epoch and Crawfordian age/stage is proposed at 17.0 cm in core CRA23-BC-1F-B at the base of the dark lamina in a varve deposited in 1952 CE, at the level where the primary marker shows a rapid increase in ^239+240Pu concentrations." (BTW, the figure in the box presents the correct beginning in 1952)
2. It is common to date the GPPS in years b2k ("present" = year 2000 CE), then the GSSPs have fixed timing without need to change it each year (see the edit from 3 March 2026). This is applied in the infoboxes of other geological ages (see Meghalayan), why not here?
3. To avoid misleading, the timespan should presented in all such infoboxes in units "Ma b2k (before 2000 CE)"
4. The lower boundary definition in the box is not in compliance with the timing - its origin is in another proposal of the anthropocene definition with dating 1592 (not a misprint).

Petr Karel (talk) 07:54, 4 March 2026 (UTC) corrected --Petr Karel (talk) 07:47, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Item #1 was blatantly wrong, so I have cleared the start_date= parameter from the infobox because it is uncited and uncitable. (There no firm start date as the proposal has not been accepted.)

I don't have the expertise to be bold with your other three points so if you are confident, go ahead and change them on 18 May unless someone else intervenes in the meantime. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:02, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

Holocene start? Debate or merely another proposal

A few weeks ago I added a new item to the list of proposed start times for the Anthropocene, added at Anthropocene#Start_of_the_Holocene.

Just today, I realized that the Holocene proposal was already mentioned in the article here: Anthropocene#"Early_anthropocene"_model. This is a subsection within the Anthropocene#Debates section.

So, there is now some duplicated material in the article. While working on another article (Historical human impacts on the environment) I encountered at least four solid WP:RS that suggest Holocene (or even earlier) should be the start time of Anthropocene. Note that the early Anthropocene has its own article Early anthropocene.

It seems odd that only one of the proposed Anthropocene start times has a subsection within "Debates". They all are valid proposals, all supported by multiple RSs.

To resolve the duplicated material, perhaps the Anthropocene#"Early_anthropocene"_model should be merged with the Anthropocene#Start_of_the_Holocene section (outside the Debate section). The new material can and should be concise, because all the details are in the other Early anthropocene article. Thoughts? Noleander (talk) 22:09, 27 October 2026 (UTC)