> Before that [Holocene], for hundreds of thousands of years in the Pleistocene era, humans (and our hominid ancestors) spent most of their time running from dr

> Before that [Holocene], for hundreds of thousands of years in the Pleistocene era, humans (and our hominid ancestors) spent most of their time running from drought, fires, floods, extreme cold and heat, predators, and each other. The population was likely no more than a few million people spread across the whole planet. At one point we may have almost gone extinct, with just 10,000 Homo sapiens clinging to life. But after the advent of the Holocene and its remarkably stable climate, in only 100 centuries the world population has risen to 8 billion. This is extremely misleading. The "remarkably stable" climate didn't bring the world's population up to 8 billion, it was abundant energy from fossil fuels (7 out of 8 of all of the humans that have ever lived have done so in the industrial era). The Holocene isn't some serene stable climate period - there are still natural disasters at about the same rate they have been occurring throughout the past 11k years - but the difference is that we're much less likely to be killed by them due to abundant energy and technology. The transition from the Pleistocene into the Holocene definitely made life easier, mostly because of the natural warming.