Table of Contents
WELCOME TO THE MEGHALAYAN AGE!
What is the Meghalayan Age?
Geologists divide up the Earth’s existence into slices of time and have classified a distinct age
in Earth’s history
PHANEROZOIC
The Phanerozoic Eon is the current geologic eon in the geologic time scale, and the one during
which abundant animal and plant life has existed.
•It covers 541 million years to the present
NOTES
• Eons are divided into Eras, Eras into Periods, Periods into Epochs, and Epochs into Ages.
•We are currently in the Holocene Epoch, Meghalayan Age
WHICH IS THE ‘SLICE’ THAT WE LIVE IN?
•We currently live in what is called the Holocene, which reflects everything that has happened over the past 11,700 years.
• Further, the Holocene is subdivided into three parts, the Greenlandian, the Northgrippian, and the youngest addition, the Meghalayan. The Greenlandian runs from 11,700 to 8,200 years ago; the Northgrippan runs from 8,200 to 4,200 years ago, and finally, the Meghalayan runs from 4,200 years ago to present.
IS IT OFFICIAL?
•Yes, Indeed. The International Commission on Stratigraphy has a famous diagram called the
International Chronostratigraphic Chart, that depicts the timeline for Earth’s history, and it has been updated.
•The commission is the official keeper of geologic time. They had tweeted about the newly named age via an image of the chart.
MEGHALYA
‘Meghalayan Age’ makes the state a part of geologic history Meghalaya is now part of geologic history thanks to a stalagmite found in the Mawmluh cave in the northeastern
state. Located at an elevation of 1,290 metres, Mawmluh cave is one of the longest and deepest caves in India, and conditions here were suitable for preserving chemical signs
of the transition in ages that an analysis of the stalagmite has now highlighted.
STALAGMITE
•A stalagmite is a type of a rock formation that forms on the floor of a cave due to the
accumulation from ceiling drippings.
MEGHALAYAN AGE
• It began with mega global drought that devastated ancient agricultural civilisations from Egypt to China. This age is unique because it is first interval in Earth’s geological history that
coincided with major cultural event, as agricultural societies struggled to recover from shift in climate.
• The droughts over 200-year period had resulted in human migrations in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Greece, Indus valley and Yangtze river valley. The change in global climate during Meghalayan Age was likely triggered by shifts in ocean and
atmospheric circulation
WHAT IT TEACHES US
•It offers evidence of the cataclysmic social and political events that climate change can wreak, whatever its origin.
•It is clear that whole civilisations can be wiped out, and migrations unleashed on a scale that we, grappling with puny inconveniences like boat people and the outsourcing of jobs, cannot even imagine.
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