This is the first of a new series of articles on the BBC World site by Gaia Vince on global transformers. In this first article he focuses on moments that transformed the world.

When we try to imagine the future, we tend to look to the past for clues and extrapolate forwards. But we are living at a time of planetary change. Over the past century, humans have utterly transformed the planet on such a scale that many believe we are entering a new geological era, the Anthropocene. In recent decades we have been polluting the atmosphere and changing global climates, reducing biodiversity, re-plumbing rivers and other waterways, raising sea levels and acidifying the oceans, depleting the world’s mineral and natural resources, among many other things.

Will we continue on this trajectory? Or will something happen to shift us onto a new course?