The wars of the past few years have shown how effective humans are at killing each other. But we’re also adept at killing other species, so much so that many scientists are claiming we’ve entered a new epoch, dubbed the Anthropocene. This would mark a separation from the Holocene, meaning “whole new”, which broke the ice almost 12,000 years ago, and was the eighth epoch since the extinction of the dinosaurs. The advent of the inter-glacial period saw a dramatic and rapid rise in global temperatures, which melted the icesheets that had covered much of North America and northern Europe for two and a half million years, during a previously stable epoch known as the Pleistocene. It proved too much for those unfortunate creatures acclimatised to the old era, such as the woolly mammoth and the sabre tooth tiger, just two victims of a mass extinction event. Homo sapiens, however, was able to survive, and even thrive in the new conditions. Developments in agriculture meant there was less reliance on hunting for game, so we began cultivating plant species such as barley and wheat on a large scale and keeping livestock such as cattle and sheep. More stable lifestyles also led to technological advancements that helped humans avoid the fate of other species, and our prosperity led to an exponential growth in world population. By the year 1800, one billion people had spread across Earth; now there are almost eight billion. There’s been much argument about when exactly the Anthropocene began, but the industrial revolution is agreed on by many. The new era is principally defined by the ongoing sixth mass extinction event, domination of Earth by a single species, and the loss of ecosystems on a grand scale. As the first epoch created by species intervention, it’s a unique and unsettling prospect. Especially as we are that species, and the changes we’ve wrought might prove suicidal as well as ecocidal. Regardless of whether humans survive the Anthropocene, this new age named after us has already taken its toll.