The Anthropocene started on July 14 at 2 in the afternoon, 1610

                  The Dawning of the Age of the Anthropocene

Several British scientists have published a paper in the journal Nature proposing that the Anthropocene started on July 14 at 2 in the afternoon, in the year 1610.  They suggest that this is the precise moment when humans caused irreversible damage to the earth, and a new geologic age ---named the Anthropocene----got its start.

They picked the year 1610 because Columbus discovered America in 1492.  Another reason for picking the year 1610 was that after the year 1492 new kinds of crops were exchanged between Europe and the Americas.  For instance corn was brought from the Americas to Spain and Portugal in the 1500s.  Tomatoes, Potatoes, Manioc and other foods also came from the Americas to Europe during the 1500s.  Diseases were also exchanged between the old war and the new, with Smallpox being introduced by the Spanish into Hispaniola in 1509, and then to the mainland in Mexico by 1520.  Yellow Fever came from Africa to the Americas, and some evidence suggest syphillis travelled from the Americas to Europe.  Finally, the British scientists claim that 1610 marks the end of the Little Ice Age and the last global cold interval, even though most scientists believe the Little Ice Age actually lasted another 240 years, ending only in 1850. 

Dr. Simon Lewis, one of authors of the report, said

'In a hundred thousand years scientists will look at the environmental record and know something remarkable happened in the second half of the second millennium.  They will be in no doubt that these global changes to Earth were caused by their own species.  Today we can say when those changes began and why."

So apparently we can say with confidence that even though nothing specifically happened on July 14 at 2 in the afternoon in the year 1610, that definitively marks the beginning of the Anthropocene. Absolutely positively. No doubt about it.