 We are currently living in the Meghalayan Age. This time age has been named after the state of Meghalaya in India. It started around 4,200 years ago. The Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago. To make the history of the planet easier to understand, geologists divide time into different slices. This is called the geologic timescale and the Meghalayan Age is the most recent sliver on this scale. The start and end of any time age is defined by the occurrence of major climatic events. The Pleistocene Epoch began 2.5 million years ago with the start of an Ice Age. The Holocene Epoch began when this Ice Age ended and continues till today. The Meghalayan Age, the most recent chapter of Earth's history, is a part of the Holocene. It is marked by the beginning of a drought that lasted longer than 200 years. Many ancient civilizations fell during this period because of this long dry spell. This includes the ancient Egyptian civilization, Yangtze River Valley civilization, Mesopotamian civilization and the effects of this drought also impacted the Indus Valley civilization. How do we know what changes occurred in the Earth's climate thousands or millions or even billions of years ago? Geologists find evidence of these changes preserved in layers of rocks. The evidence that marked the beginning of the Meghalayan Age comes from a stalagmite in a cave in Meghalaya. This cave is located in the east Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya. It is more than 7 km long and it is almost completely hidden behind a semen factory. Geologists studied a section of a stalagmite sample taken from here and analyzed the oxygen levels in the rock. These levels give information about rainfall. More amounts of oxygen mean less rainfall. The Holocene Epoch, the one in which we currently live, has been broken down into three ages and the Meghalayan Age is the last of the three. The first two stages have been named Greenlandian and North Caribbean. Evidence of these was found in ice cores in Greenland. Many in the scientific community are criticising these newly defined time divisions. They are asking, what about the Anthropocene? As many years, discussions have been going on about defining a new epoch which marks the beginning of the time when humans started significantly impacting the conditions of our planet. Deciding the beginning of the Anthropocene is still under heated debate. But it is clear we are living in a time where human activity largely decides the current state of the planet.