3 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2023
  2. www.jstor.org www.jstor.org
    j.ctv1bvnfk9.4.pdf
    3
    1. rschultz9 12 Sep 2023
      While the thick Anthropocene is judged by some tohave begun with worldwide deposit of radioactivity follow-ing the dropping of the first atomic bomb, there is what I havetermed a “thin” Anthropocene that dates from the use of fireby Homo erectus roughly half a million years ago and extendsup through clearances for agriculture and grazing and the re-sulting deforestation, and siltation.

      Although, I mentioned dating in another response, I still find the process fascinating and it's a method that was easily noticeable in the writing. The fact that archaeologists have the ability to trace step by step back in time and compare the artifact or culture to another that is similar and that process brings them to the point where they figure out when and even where the certain object came from is crazy to think about. In this example, Scott talks about what he calls a "thin" Anthropocene that is from 500,000 years ago.

    2. rschultz9 11 Sep 2023
      Hunters and gathers have, in fact, never looked so good—interms of their diet, their health, and their leisure. Agricultur-alists, on the contrary, have never looked so bad—in terms oftheir diet, their health, and their leisure.

      This part of the text referring to the "Ascent of man" story made me think about how different ethics are now from then. The author makes it out to seem that the hunters and gatherers were healthy and strong compared to the agriculturalists. In that time period, ethically speaking, killing animals for the town or village was what made you a man or what made you manly, and the author shines a negative light on the agriculturalists because maybe they are not out doing the "dirty work"? Although somewhat historically incorrect, hunters and gatherers were made out to be savage and wild and that makes me wonder if people then thought that way of acquiring food was wrong, or if that was even a thought back then.

    3. rschultz9 11 Sep 2023
      Thefirst evidence of cultivated plants and of sedentary commu-nities appears roughly 12,000 years ago. Until then—that isto say for ninety-five percent of the human experience onearth—we lived in small, mobile, dispersed, relatively egali-tarian, hunting-and-gathering bands.

      The fact that the first evidence of life in communities was 12,000 years ago blows my mind. It is so crazy to me for two reasons. One being the way we are able to figure out, and date this back to that period. The process of dating old artifacts and finding out information about what the environment was like in these old communities is amazing. This part of the text also makes me question my understanding on the human past because when I think about time in the grand scheme of things , 12,000 years is an extremely long time. When I look back in time, 200 maybe even 100 years ago, everything is just so different, the way people acted, the way things were. I just can't wrap my head around how and what human life was like then.

    Visit annotations in context

    Annotators

    URL

    jstor.org/stable/pdf/j.ctv1bvnfk9.4.pdf