The Year Humans Started to Ruin the World
A provocative analysis in Nature suggests that humans changed the whole world—and the future, forever—in either 1610 or 1964
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Astronomers have been telling us for nearly 500 years that humanity is not the most important thing in the universe. Evolutionary biologists established long ago that we're not even the greatest show on earth.
Now, geologists—the scientists who literally decide what on earth is going on—may reach the opposite conclusion: Humanity is the most powerful force on the planet, shaping the environment more than water, wind, or plate tectonics.