Earthlings in the Capitalocene

Taken together, our evidence indicates that the cultural natures of millennia and centuries ago are highly associated with and may have shaped current global patterns of KBAs, vertebrate species richness, and threatened species (Fig. 4B). There is also some indication that after 1500 CE, the strength of this association declines in multiple regions, indicating a potential shift in relations between anthromes and biodiversity following the Columbian Exchange and European colonial expansion. Either way, the current extinction crisis is better explained by the displacement of species-rich cultural natures sustained by past societies than the recent conversion and use of uninhabited Wildlands (17, 22).