Geologists have this time scale that breaks down the history of the earth into defined eons, eras, periods, epochs and so on…

and while I was glancing through The Economist I came across an article related to a time period labeled “The Anthropocene,” or The Time Of Man.

The thought is that we are now living in a “new era,” so to speak, past the Holocene, currently the most recently recognized geologic time period…

It certainly seems to have merit from the point of view of how we are impacting the world we live in.

The track we leave behind is more complicated than just a “cast,” or fossilized impression of a footprint, at least when we think about our “breadcrumbs” from a geological perspective. Geologic time units are defined primarily in two ways… by significant events that can be observed in the evidence of the past (i.e., the “Golden Spike” that represents a specific point in time as defined in the rock record), or by assigning a reference standard according to  a specific number of years (the beginning of the Holocene is defined as 10,000 years before 1950).

The scientific community is looking at distinct changes in geochemical, sedimentary and biotic signatures through time… and finding the changes are significant enough to create a new epoch, the Anthropocene. Now we just need to define at what point in time the new epoch began.

This impression, if you will, has the potential to transform the thinking of mankind…

to bring together the scientific and christian communities to common ground…

I’m Just Thinkin’ out loud here…

So what if we’re really referring to the time period since God’s creation?

The scientific thought is “in the ballpark” with the age of the earth as defined within the Bible…

How cool would it be for the scientific community to come up with this definition of the impact of mankind here on earth… that actually coincided with the creation of our existence… by our God?