What a load of rubbish we humans are | Sam Leith

We love dumping litter so much, we've accidentally launched a new geological epoch. Isn't that just a little sublime?

What is it, we're sometimes asked, that makes us human? What is it that marks our species out among all the others on this big ole blue space-marble we call Earth? Tool use? No, any number of other creatures use tools; corvids especially well. Is it that we have sex face-to-face? Bonobos do that and, for all I can tell, so do earthworms. That we laugh? Hyenas and orangutans have that covered, and judging by the look it gave me when I fell down the stairs in my dressing gown, so does my cat. That we know we're going to die? Whales surely have a hunch, or they wouldn't sing like that.

No: the one thing we do like no other species on the face of the Earth is dump rubbish. At that, we have always been planetary champions. And in the last nanosecond of the geological timeline, we've really found form. We are true galactic contenders. Bring it on, green men of Alpha Centauri: the Homo sapiens has evolved into Homo fly-tippus.