Anthropization

In geography and ecology, anthropization is the conversion of open spaces, landscapes, and natural environments by human action.

It can be difficult to determine how much a site has been anthropized in the case of urbanization because one must be able to estimate the state of the landscape before significant human action.

[citation needed] The earliest known stages of anthropization can be found as early as the Neolithic era and the basic farmland created in that time.

Land has been appropriated for many different reasons, but ultimately the outcome is typically a short-term benefit for humans.

An area is anthropized is some way to make land available for housing, to harvest the resources, to create space for some anthropological reason, or many other possibilities.

To cultivate food or breed animals, humans must alter land—till soil or build structures—to facilitate agriculture.

Especially with approximately 7.5 Billion humans inhabiting the Earth,[3] this typically aligns with an increase in residences worldwide.

To safely dispose of this even low-level waste can take hundreds of years, ranging upwards with increased radioactivity.

For examples, the great pyramids in Egypt were not constructed by some large machine, but instead by thousands of humans.

This shows that the environmental effect of modern anthropization is generally greater, not just because of the increase in population.

Pollution and loss of biodiversity in Egypt was largely natural, not man-made, and anthropization existed on a much lower level.