Back in the 1980s, the idea of calling the geological period from 1950 onward by a new name began to take root. In 2000, atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen and diatom researcher Eugene F. Stoermer popularized the name “Anthropocene” and their turn-of-the-millennium timing was certainly good.

In itself, the idea was hardly new. To mark the human influence on the planet’s history, we already have the Holocene epoch:

Holocene Epoch, younger of the two formally recognized epochs that constitute the Quaternary Period and the latest interval of geologic time, covering approximately the last 11,700 years of Earth’s history. The sediments of the Holocene, both continental and marine, cover the largest area of the globe of any epoch in the geologic record, but the Holocene is unique because it is coincident with the late and post-Stone Age history of humankind. The influence of humans is of world extent and is so profound that it seems appropriate to have a special geologic name for this time. – Britannica

According to Britannica, Holocene was proposed in 1867 and officially endorsed in 1969 by the U.S. Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature.

Image Credit: Ayman Alakhras - Adobe Stock

The Anthropocene (“recent age of man”) epoch would begin with rock n’ roll

It would have been the only epoch in geology with a calendar year beginning. No more of this vague “The Cretaceous is a geological period that began 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago” with the extinction of the dinosaurs and a large proportion of other life on Earth.

Now we have… 1950. The New York Yankees won the World Series in 1950. And people would be free to obsess about everything we’ve heard about in modern media since then as part of what’s “destroying the planet.”

Ironically, in a world where pundits regularly accuse us all of being too anthropocentric, too concerned only with human events, the naming of a new geological epoch would enshrine that view forever in science. Maybe the next epoch could begin on July 1, 2060, to commemorate an important global climate or peace initiative…

Well, the geologists weren’t having it.

At Aeon, Ville Lähde explains,

In early March 2024, an expert panel of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) had a vote to settle a question that had vexed geologists for years: are we living in the Anthropocene, ‘the human age’? The result of the vote was a clear negative. In the realm of geological disciplines, the debate that endured for decades is basically over.

“Are you Confusedocene?,” November 6, 2025

Lähde regrets the decision. But, readers be warned, he also mentions “Capitalocene,” “Anglocene,” and “Plantationocene,” which were awaiting their chance in the wings. The geologists had likely suspected that…