DAMERY, J. 2021. CASE OF THE ANTHROPOCENE. ARNOLDIA, 78(3): 42-43 
Case of the 
Anthropocene 
Jonathan Damery 
Luke Keogh. The Wardian 
Case: How a Simple Box 
Moved Plants and Changed 
the World. The University 
of Chicago Press and the 
Royal Botanic Gardens, 
Kew, 2020. 
n December 18, 1994, 
three cave explor- 
ers squeezed into an 
opening of a cliff overlooking 
the Ardéche River in south- 
ern France. At the back, a 
whisper of cool air prompted 
them to prize stones from 
a narrow passage and worm forward headfirst. 
After ten feet, they encountered a thirty-foot 
drop into a large chamber. Beneath them, as it 
turned out, the cave walls were covered with 
paintings. Some appeared almost fresh. First, 
the explorers found a mammoth drawn in red 
pigment, then woolly rhinoceroses, cave lions, 
and compositions made entirely of human 
handprints. 
Researchers would later determine that a land- 
slide sealed the main entrance to the cave, now 
known as Chauvet Cave, twenty-eight thou- 
sand years ago, safeguarding hundreds of paint- 
ings and wall engravings. Eighteen thousand 
years later, glaciers had retreated from much 
of Europe, and many of the animals depicted 
in Chauvet Cave had gone extinct. Humans in 
Mesopotamia were domesticating wheat and 
barley. Fast forward another nine thousand years 
to the completion of the first recorded circum- 
navigation of the globe in 1522. 
Eventually, in the summer of 1833, an Eng- 
lish sailing ship departed London, bound for 
Australia. On the upper deck, the captain dili- 
gently monitored two sealed glass cases planted 
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4 a ; 
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Wardian cases moved plants around the world, along with insects and other organisms. 
with ferns, grasses, and mosses. About six 
months later, the ship arrived in Sydney with 
all but three of the plants still alive. The case 
was opened only once; moisture cycled natu- 
rally inside the enclosure. On the return trip, 
the cases were packed with ferns that survived 
air temperatures fluctuating between twenty 
and more than ninety degrees Fahrenheit. In 
fact, the cases were so effective that stowaway 
seeds germinated in the soil. 
A shipment of plants between the antipodes 
might seem like a minor historical footnote, 
but in a new book, The Wardian Case: How 
a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the 
World, historian Luke Keogh describes the ship- 
ment as a profound inflection point in the his- 
tory of the Earth. Keogh first became interested 
in these enclosed glass cases while curating an 
exhibit at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. 
The exhibit opened in 2014 and focused on the 
Anthropocene, a term for our current geologic 
era that acknowledges the enormity of human- 
caused environmental change. Millions of years 
from now, our present moment will appear in 
the geologic record as an abrupt transition char- 
BIODIVERSITY HERITAGE LIBRARY/FROM US BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY (1913) BULLETIN NO. 120 
