From Pleistocene to Pyrocene: Fire Replaces Ice | Zendy

Pyne S. J. | Zendy

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From Pleistocene to Pyrocene: Fire Replaces Ice

Author(s) -

Pyne S. J.

Publication year - 2020

Publication title -

earth's future

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 2.641

H-Index - 39

ISSN - 2328-4277

DOI - 10.1029/2020ef001722

Subject(s) - pleistocene , fire history , homo erectus , climate change , ecology , earth science , environmental science , geography , physical geography , geology , archaeology , biology

Fire offers a special perspective by which to understand the Earth being remade by humans. Fire is integrative, so intrinsically interdisciplinary. Fire use is unique to humans, so a tracer of humanity's ecological impacts. Anthropogenic fire history shows the long influence of humans on Earth and even climate; in particular, it tracks the continuities between the burning of living landscapes and the transition to burning lithic (fossil) ones, an inflection so immense that climate history is now a subnarrative of fire history. Through our varied burnings, humans are driving out all the relics of the Pleistocene and replacing them with fire equivalents, or in short, creating a Pyrocene.

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