Among the baselines considered by the group have been the first use of fire by hominins around 1.8 million years ago, the start of agriculture around 8,000 years ago, the Industrial Revolution, and the so-called ‘Great Acceleration’ of the mid twentieth century, when the nuclear age dawned, massive increases occurred in terms of resource extraction, population growth, carbon emissions, species invasions and extinctions, and when the production and discard of metals, concrete and plastics boomed.
