Excerpts from Introduction to Third Phase Transition: Solving The Anthropocene Crisis
On the first metabolic phase
“Restricting
the phase concept to Homo sapiens,
and to several contemporary and closely related species now gone extinct,
the phase of harvesting metabolism spans a few hundred thousand years. The
exact dating, socio-genetic causation chain, crossbreeding of species,
socio-ecological feedback loops, indicative set of species-specific features,
cultural breakthroughs, et cetera remain open to conflicting interpretations,
which in turn have varied over time. These issues, however, are not essential
to the basic conceptualisations proposed here. The period from the emergence of
modern humans and up until the Holocene, which roughly corresponds to the
Penultimate and Last Glacial Periods, would then be considered the phase of
human harvesting metabolism.
The nomadic
mode of living, and the migrating tendency, bear witness to human developments
still being a restlessly embedded part within natural evolution and, at the
same time, its tendency to increasingly segregate through cooperation. The
hunters and gatherers were still following the food to harvest, fleeing
unhospitable conditions of rapid and radical climate change and more short-term
natural devastation, et cetera, just like during the first phase transition. In
this respect, the humans of the first phase might be perceived as still bearing
some external resemblance to foraging and hunting animals. But in their
internally combined type of struggle for survival they had become radically
different. Natural evolutionary they were already our equals, although still
socially hindered by more scarce means of cooperation.”
“For most part of this first phase, an unknown number of hominin species had coexisted evolutionarily. Recent findings show that Neanderthals, Denisovans, and others were to partially become assimilated into Homo sapiens through interbreeding. Gene sequencing has also shown that all humans living today have their common dominant genetic ancestry in a small endangered population. The epic drama of our species seems to have started out by a near extinction-experience…”
“At the interface of humans and surrounding nature, sapiens, as well as other human species, had conquered one decisive natural force – the control of fire. After the human fire regime had evolved, from preserving embers of wildfire, to proper making of fire, an artificial regularity had been introduced into the circular processes of natural ecology. Human society’s fire regime had become an ecocycle in the earth system. Human needs for shelter, hunting, cooking, and clearing of ground, had benefitted plant and animal species adapting to regular fires. Savanna had spread, and with it the grass eating mammals, suitable as human prey. Thus, human cooperativity had begun changing the ecology of Planet Earth. Finally, burn beating would become a forerunner of agriculture.”
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