Holocene Epoch

The Holocene Epoch is the formal title given to the geological period that follows the Pleistocene, or in other words it is the name given to approximately the last 12,000 years of Earth’s history. This coincides with the period since the end of the last Ice Age and would just about include the time of Plato’s Atlantis, if we accept the 9,000 years referred to by him at face value.

Steven Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading, has provided^[390] us with a worthwhile global overview of man’s development during the earlier part of the Holocene.

Mithen has also been involved in important excavations at Jordan’s Wadi Faynan, where he and his colleagues uncovered very early complex structures, after which along with evidence from other sites suggest that the earliest permanent buildings functioned as community centres rather than habitations^(a). Stonehenge might fit this perception!

Anthropocene is an informal term often used for the period of major human impact on Earth systems.

^(a) https://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php?topic=28116.0;wap2 (also see New Scientist 5/10/13)