It could be argued that the anthropocene epoch and the holocene epochs are the same epoch. It looks more and more like human beings changed the earth by adopting agriculture and hunting large mammals to extinction at the end of the last ice age, traditionally the beginning of the holocene epoch about 11,700 years ago. Before that change the earth had been subject to a series of long ice ages and short warming perods and the large mega fauna had expanded and shrunk in numbers as the mammoth steppes had expanded and shrunk. The human population had remained relatively insignificant on the landscape. The only thing that changed 11,700 years ago was the human population. When the modern human population first dramatically increased between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago the world began to change first by the extinction of large mega fauna and then later by increasing extinctions as human agriculture completely changed habitats for millions of species.
All of the talk about the Anthropocene epoch beginning in 1952 AD or 1610 AD is over 10,000 years too late. By the time of Christ humans had exploited nearly every environment on the planet. There were numerous cities with over a million inhabitants and there had been large cities for thousands of years.
If human beings were to go extinct today, evolution would eventually replace the wooley mammoths,giant sloths, dodo birds, saber tooth cats, etc with animals to fill those niches. That would take a long time but to quote the Jeff Goldblum line “life finds a way.”
The best we humans can hope for is to be good stewards of the world we have created. We first need to acknowledge that we have created the world we live in and owe it to the remaining survivors to keep them alive.
I am not sure the 11,700 year ago date is the right date, but in the history of life on earth whether it is 9,000 BCE or 30,000 BCE when man began to change the earth permanently is of little importance.