"Long before the 20th century, the trajectory was set. Mesopotamia formalized private property and profit. Rome industrialized deforestation, mining, and overfishing. Every civilization reshaped ecosystems to sustain its growth and eventually collapsed when the foundations that supported it were exhausted. Deep time offers an even harder truth: humans began erasing biodiversity more than two million years ago. Civilization didn’t invent destruction; it scaled it. What changed in the last century was the speed, the technology, and the reach of decision-makers who could alter entire biomes with a single signature."