Soil is the best testifier of the diachronous dawn of the Anthropocene

Humans act at worldwide scale as a growing geomorphic agent since mid-Holocene (8,200–4,200 y BP) through the pervasive impacts of domestication, deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, and mining. The concept of Anthropocene has been introduced exactly to indicate the timespan in which humans have joined with other natural forces in impacting the outermost shell of the planet and the biosphere. Soils, which are the Earth's skin, are sensitive archives of any major human-induced local to global change. Especially when buried, soils can permanently preserve the primordial traces of a significant impact of man on the environment, which occurred at different times and rates in different areas. As a result, we assert that the oldest “anthropogenic” soils from all around the world collectively are an appropriate marker for the diachronous dawn of an early Anthropocene.