Hunting and gathering was humanity’s original and most enduring successful competitive adaptation in the natural world, occupying at least 90 percent of human history.[3] Following the invention of agriculture, hunter-gatherers who did not change were displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in most parts of the world.[4] –Th’Wiki
“Displaced” = economic warfare
“Conquered” = regular warfare
‘Hunting and gathering was humanity’s … most enduring successful competitive adaptation’.
Which is kind of amusing in light of the fact that settlement and agriculture are typically painted as exactly that.
Civilization and progress, versus the poor benighted anonymes of dark pre-history.
Maybe it will prove so. The jury is still very much out and the verdict is far from written.
“The Anthropocene Era” is usually said to have begun around 2000 A.D., and I used to say that too.
Now I believe nothing special happened in 2000. We just started to notice that the adaptation of civilization was perhaps not nearly as enduring, or successful, as previously believed.
In that sense the dawn of the Anthropocene can be seen as precisely The Beginning of the End.
Nothing more and nothing less.