Although the similarities between island systems are remarkable, with most islands showing at least some human Tofacitinib clinical trial impact, another key lesson from island archeology is the variability in human occupation and environmental interactions through time. The cases of Tikopia and Mangaia currently provide the best examples of this (Kirch, 1997), where differences in island physical characteristics (island size, age, and productivity) coupled with human decision making and cultural changes (e.g., banishing pigs, instituting a highly managed system of aboriculture, and enforcing

population control measures on Tikopia) led to similar initial patterns of environmental degradation, but dramatically different end results for both island ecosystems and human sociocultural development. A key lesson from islands is that the record of extinction and declining biodiversity, invasive species dynamics, habitat degradation, and alteration that define many island (and continental) ecosystems today extend deep into the past and blur the divisions between natural

and anthropogenic changes. In most cases, archeological and paleoecological records on islands around the world contain evidence for significant anthropogenic change well before Selleck PFI-2 the beginning of the industrial era. In some cases (e.g., California’s Channel Islands and some Caribbean islands), they also document an acceleration through time in human influence on island ecology, with more DNA ligase recent historical changes, like the global fur and oil trade, often much sharper and more dramatic than those of prehistoric times. These deep historical records raise the question: from a global islands perspective, when did the Anthropocene begin? Debate continues on when (if at all) the Anthropocene era should begin, with estimates ranging from relatively

recent nuclear testing, pesticide use, etc. to as early as the Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions (Doughty et al., 2010 and Zalasiewicz et al., 2011b). In many ways, setting the onset of the Anthropocene is somewhat arbitrary, with most researchers offering compelling events (Industrial Revolution, megafaunal extinction, the development of agriculture, global erosion and sedimentation, etc.) that mark major human induced alterations on a global scale. In our view, all of these events are a continuum in the same process of human transformation of Earth’s ecosystems that began millennia ago, at least by the onset of the Holocene. During the Holocene, initial domestication of plants and animals, massive human migrations to virtually all parts of the planet, growing human populations, and widespread environmental impacts are discernible on a global scale (see Smith and Zeder, 2013).