The Anthropocene: upper stage of anthropogenic impact. The case of the Rio Nuevo in the Province of San Luis, Argentina

Abstract

The link between humanity and nature dates back to Paleolithic but the terms with which this relation was developed started to change since the Neolithic Revolution with the farming's discover and early societies formation. A second historical moment of change in the humanity-nature interaction was, without any doubt, the Industrial Revolution, when nature was absolutely mercantilised by economy. The third great change it's the most intense, known as "great acceleration", started in the middle of the XX century and it continues nowadays. This last change is subject to the use of technologies that endow with genetic tools the extractivist and capitalist economy; the result is: excessive acceleration of production and consumption, demographic growth -also excessive- and a ruptured natural earth cycle. The contrast with the period called Holocene is quite significant, because of that some scientifics suggest to denominate this period "Anthropocene". This change of geo historical periodization pretends to focus the problematic of anthropogenic impact, fact that could help to transform that situation. A revision of an anthropogenic impact case tries to give signification in the fabric of Anthropocene, we are talking about the Río Nuevo. That river was born in the province of San Luis in 1985 from an imbalance caused by deforestation and soil mismanagement.