The Anthropocene: a story in bones and plastics

By Graeme Addison

Take a walk around town. What do you see, or see that upsets you? It may be impoverished street dwellers, or piles of litter, or engine oil running in the street gutters. These are signs of a failing human ecology.

When future archaeologists sift through the remains of our time, they may find two strange markers that capture the human condition in the twenty-first century. One is the sheer abundance of chicken bones. Chickens are the most numerous bird on the planet, bred in their billions, and their remains will form a strange fossil layer that speaks to human appetite and industrial farming.

Plastic waste along the Amadi River in River State, Nigeria. Wikimedia Commons.

The other is plastic. Durable, cheap, and endlessly versatile, it now litters rivers, oceans, and soils, embedding itself as a permanent geological layer. Plastic strata (a new geological layer created by bottles, bags, packaging, and microbeads) that now encases riverbanks, coastlines, and ocean floors.

These relics tell us that human activity has become the dominant force shaping earth systems. But it is increasingly destructive. The world needs a dash of the African philosophy of ubuntu – or shared existence.

South Africa

South Africa continues to burn and export coal, generating economic growth while imposing social and environmental costs on all of us. Rural communities, however, draw on social capital (cooperation, trust, shared labour, and traditional ecological knowledge) to manage resources sustainably.

Ubuntu, the philosophy of “I am because you are, you are because we are,” exemplifies the social and ecological interdependence that human ecology emphasises.

People and planet

Human ecology is the study of the interactions between people and their environments. It recognises that we are not outside nature but woven into it through a web of interdependence. Its main principles can be distilled as follows:

Interdependence: Humans and natural systems rely on one another. We depend on the water cycle, soils, pollinators, and stable climate systems just as those systems are now deeply shaped by human actions.

Limits and scale: Natural systems have thresholds that cannot be exceeded without collapse. The idea that “small is beautiful” has inspired ecological thinking, yet homogenisation, mass production, and industrial farming continue to dominate, erasing local variation.

Energy and entropy: Human systems rely on the conversion of energy, historically from fossil fuels. The steam age marked the beginning of the Anthropocene by unleashing coal, oil, and gas, binding our economies to global warming.

Culture and behaviour: Ecology is not only biological but also social and ethical. Values, institutions, and cultural practices determine whether societies live sustainably or destructively.

Time and change

Ecological change happens at different speeds. Past extinctions unfolded over millennia, but the sixth extinction is being compressed into decades by industrialisation, deforestation, and climate change.

The Anthropocene label was rejected because some critics said the time scale was too short. But where extinctions previously occurred over millennia, it is now happening within decades. The scale of the catastrophe, rather than its time frame, should determine that the Anthropocene is a new age.

Anthropocene layer in a landfill in England. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Africa

Africa embodies the contradictions of the Anthropocene. On one hand, South Africa continues to mine and burn coal, exporting vast amounts that drive climate change far beyond its borders.

On the other, Africa’s people have long drawn on traditions of resilience, making do with limited resources and finding ways to balance use with renewal.In rural communities, practices such as rainwater harvesting, rotational grazing, and collective farming illustrate ecological wisdom born of necessity. Yet pressures from global markets, population growth, and the lure of quick profits have pushed many societies towards unsustainable paths.

The tension between inherited knowledge and imported industrial systems is starkly visible in Africa’s landscapes.

Social cost versus social capital

Economists speak of social cost when the real impacts of production are borne not by corporations or consumers but by communities and ecosystems. Coal plants may generate electricity and profits, yet they leave behind air pollution, degraded health, and climate instability. These costs are rarely captured in GDP, which still treats economic growth as a positive without accounting for damage.

Mainstream economics has often ignored what it calls social costs, the unpaid bill left behind by extractive capitalism. Air pollution, health crises, degraded rivers, and collapsing fisheries are all “externalities” passed onto communities and ecosystems rather than counted in GDP.

South Africa’s reliance on coal illustrates this: GDP records the revenues from mining and exports but not the social costs of asthma, poisoned rivers, and rising carbon emissions. Human ecology demands that these costs be brought back into the accounting of progress.

By contrast, social capital reflects the value of cooperation, trust, and shared effort. In African communities, the principle of ubuntu, expressed as “I am because you are, you are because we are,” reminds us that well-being is collective.

Social capital adds resilience to human and ecological systems by combining knowledge and agency to solve problems for the common good. It is visible in farmers pooling labour, neighbours sharing scarce water, and grassroots groups resisting destructive mining projects.Social capital is not only about goodwill but about resilience. Communities that pool knowledge, care for common resources, and act collectively are better able to withstand shocks (be they drought, economic crisis, or political instability).

In South Africa, grassroots organisations that monitor river health or manage communal grazing lands exemplify how social capital underpins both environmental care and social wellbeing.

The Arnot Power Station outside Middelburg in Mpumalanga … South Africa still burns coal for most of its electricity. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Industrialism

The Anthropocene (the human-shaped epoch) did not arrive overnight. It began, arguably, with the Industrial Revolution and the invention of steam power, which launched the era of fossil fuels. Coal, oil, and gas provided the energy for unprecedented economic growth but also locked humanity into a path of carbon dependency.

South Africa, with its massive coal reserves, illustrates the dilemma: it still burns coal for most of its electricity and exports it abroad, feeding global warming even as it faces droughts, floods, and biodiversity loss.

The sixth extinction is unfolding in fast-forward. Where past extinctions stretched across thousands of years, ours can be measured in the lifespans of our grandparents. Industrial agriculture, urbanisation, deforestation, and climate change are driving species loss at rates unseen since the meteor strike that ended the age of dinosaurs.

Ethics

Human ecology teaches that survival is not only a matter of managing resources but also of shaping behaviours and values. To recognise our dependence on the biosphere is to accept responsibility for it.

The Anthropocene challenges us to rethink progress, not as endless consumption but as the art of living well within limits.

Chicken bones and plastic remind us that future archaeologists will judge our civilisation by its appetite and its waste. Whether they also find evidence of wisdom, of restraint, and of care for one another and for the planet, will depend on the choices we make now.

Winning drawing in a school contest dedicated to World Environment Day, Uzbekistan. Source: UNDP in Europe on Flickr.

Critical ecology

Human ecology insists that sustainability is not just about technologies (solar panels, carbon credits, electric cars) but about rethinking behaviour, values, and governance. It is about recognising the web of interdependence in which all lives are woven.

Ecology encompasses not only the biophysical cycles of air, water, and carbon but also the ethical cycles of justice, reciprocity, and responsibility. In this vision, the Anthropocene is not simply an epoch of human domination; it can become an epoch of human accountability. But that will depend on whether societies acknowledge social costs, invest in social capital, and embrace an ecological ethic that honours interdependence.

FEATURED IMAGE: Bales of compressed plastic waste prior to incineration, Wandsworth recycling facility. Maggie Jones on Flickr.