ANALYSISPart 1: The Sixth Extinction and the Anthropocene’s Pleistocene origins

Tens of thousands of years ago, the first wave of a worldwide tsunami now known as the “Sixth Extinction” swept across the planet as Homo sapiens, preceded in some cases by its kin, journeyed from the Cradle of Humankind in Africa and wiped out numerous species of mostly large mammals. This prehistoric removal of megafauna – keystone species that play an outsized ecological role – by human hunters would have an earth-shattering environmental impact. These ecological consequences, in turn, would have historical consequences, including the rise of the Anthropocene.

Yet awareness of the ecological legacy of these extinctions hardly extends beyond a small band of trailblazing scientists and barely registers in the wider public discourse around the Anthropocene – Earth’s current geological epoch, which bluntly speaks to humanity’s effects on the environment. Exceptions include the recent and excellent book, Nature’s Ghosts, by Sophie Yeo. It’s also the case that while a growing number of scientists in this field embrace the notion of human “overkill” as the most compelling explanation for the prehistoric megafaunal extinctions, surprisingly little attention has been paid to answering why this occurred.

I have previously raised the possibility – if one accepts the overkill hypothesis – that human/wildlife conflict may at least have been a contributing factor. In all the scientific literature that I have reviewed, no one has made this link. Recent debates about the Anthropocene’s origins – and an emerging field of historical enquiry that looks at the role that animals, and animal agency, have played in history – provide fresh and revealing ways to reframe this issue, bringing it sharply into focus.

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Human/wildlife conflict suggests agency on both sides. The term “conflict” implies more than one protagonist. It takes two to tangle in the bush. And out of such entanglements, the multispecies origin story – red in tooth, tusk, claw, club and spear – of the Anthropocene would emerge.

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