Abstract: Keywords: PROMETHEUS IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN. ESSAYS ON THE ANTHROPOCENE © 2022 James Williams. Tis is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology Vol. 16, no. 2, December 2022, pp. 16-29 10.2478/host-2022-0013 thematic dossier nature; technology; anthropogenic; Anthropocene; Plantacionocene techjunc@gmail.com Humankind’s relationship with nature has been evolutionary. Nature’s agency initially overpowered human agency, limiting what people could do in their quest for survival. Ever so slowly people domesticated material things, such as fre and wood, and they made tools to assist them from bones, wood, and stone that gradually became more sophisticated. Tese tools became the principal link between humankind and the material world, and as human communities became more complex, people produced sophisticated tools worthy of being called technologies. Ships, mills, weapons, buildings—each invention and innovation increased human agency, and nature slowly gave way before it, a process visible through landscapes. Tis essay focuses on North America, where between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, human commodifcation of nature and the side efects of their technologies ultimately became so complex and complete that they ate away at the planetary ecosystem on which their own existence depends. Today, the Anthropocene encapsulates the idea of the age of humans, and nature’s agency seems to crumble as an independent force in the face of human actions. De Anza College, California USA 1 ICOHTEC 2 1 Professor Emeritus. 2 Past President. James Williams Has Humankind Overwhelmed Nature’s Agency?