Drowning of paleo-sand ridge sets and their transformation into barrier systems can provide additional though temporary protection to the remaining inland delta plain. Our long running project in the Danube delta is supported by multiple sources in the US (including NSF and WHOI) and Romania and supplemented by our pocket money. We thank all friends who helped us in the field (special thanks to Dan Urcan and Jenica Hanganu), shared ideas and inspired us (Jeff Donnelly, James Syvitski, John Day, Rudy Slingerland, Chris

Paola and Andrew Ashton), and scientists from Sunitinib the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility for radiocarbon dating. The paper benefited from the editorial advice of Jon Harbor and the constructive comments of two anonymous reviewers. “
“In a landmark paper published in the journal Science near the turn of the 21st century, this website “Human Domination of Earth’s Ecosystems,” Vitousek et al. (1997) conducted a meta-analysis and found that humans had reached a historical watershed in transforming our planet—atmospherically, hydrologically, pedologically, geochemically, biologically, ecologically, and more (

Fig. 1). A few 4 years later, Jackson et al. (2001) argued that the recent collapse of marine fisheries and ecosystems had deeper roots in a gradual intensification of coastal fisheries and the development of sophisticated maritime technologies by Homo sapiens sapiens (anatomically modern humans, a.k.a. AMH). Ecological and cultural changes intensified with the development of European colonialism and a globalized economy, beginning in the late 15th Endonuclease century AD with Christopher Columbus’

‘discovery’ of the Americas and the mapping of remote continents and islands that ensued in the decades or centuries that followed. These and other studies proposed that humans have had significant impacts on earth’s ecosystems for centuries or even millennia (e.g., Alroy, 2001, Erlandson and Rick, 2010, Foley et al., 2013, Goudie, 2000, Kirch, 2005, Kirch and Hunt, 1997, Martin, 1973, Martin and Steadman, 1999 and Redman, 1999; Redman et al., 2004; Rick and Erlandson, 2008 and Steadman, 2006). At the turn of the millennium, not coincidentally, another idea proposed earlier gained significant traction. This was the idea that humans had reached a level of domination of the Earth that was both measurable and of comparable scale to those of previous transitions between geological epochs. This proposed new epoch, known as the Anthropocene (human era), recognizes the widespread effects humans have had on Earth’s climate, atmosphere, oceans, rivers, estuaries, terrestrial landscapes, and the biodiversity of floral and faunal communities. The concept of an Anthropocene epoch has generated considerable debate, some about the value of the idea itself, and some about where the temporal boundary between the Holocene and the Anthropocene should be drawn.