The Middle Ground Journal

The Anthropocene and World History Periodization

By Edward Simmons, Ph.D., Georgia Gwinnett College

Abstract: By accepting the designation of a new geological period, the Anthropocene, into world history periodization, three historical works have begun to reshape our understanding of world history to demonstrate the environmental impact of human culture as a key to periodization and call for new social and economic values to guide present and future human impacts on Earth systems. The books are: J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene Since 1945; Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin, The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene; and Carolyn Merchant, The Anthropocene and the Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of Sustainability. These books also reflect ways that world history has become involved in interdisciplinary debates with geologists and Earth scientists over the role of human agency in planetary history.

Keywords: Anthropocene, Great Acceleration, environmental history, world history, periodization, Holocene, globalization, Earth systems

Edited by Birgit Schneider

Special thanks to the anonymous peer reviewers.

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© 2023 The Middle Ground Journal (ISSN: 2155-1103) Number 26, Fall 2023 http://TheMiddleGroundJournal.org. See Submission Guidelines page for the journal’s not-for-profit educational open-access policy.