stressed? Grab a shovel and dig a hole.

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Scientists have argued for years about the start of the Anthropocene, the unofficial epoch when humans began to really change the way the world looked.

Some say it was with the Agricultural Revolution when forests were cleared for farmland. Or with the first nuclear tests in the 1940s.

stressed Grab a shovel and dig a hole

Others say it started when we started digging holes. Sometimes deep. Sometimes not. Sometimes for no particular reason.

“It’s just relaxing,” said Charlie Mone, a student here in this college town on Scotland’s east coast, one Saturday afternoon, shovel in hand and behind him a pit on the beach already taking shape.

He first started digging holes during a holiday with his friends in the Canary Islands during the autumn break last year. “We were there on the beach and we were like, ‘What else are you going to do?’ he said. “So we started digging.”

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Charlie Mone at work on a beach in St Andrews, Scotland.

Photo: James Hookway/The Wall Street Journal

When Mr Mone returned to Scotland he went further and found that other people wanted to get involved. Every few weeks or so now he cycles around town with a sack full of shovels and they see how far they can dig before the tide comes in or the passing gusts get too much.

People all over the world have discovered the joy of digging holes. TikTok is peppered with people showing off the holes they’ve dug, often five or more feet deep. The video clips they upload often show men – sometimes students on spring break – stripping down to their waists and tucking their backs into a physical, real thing for an extended period of time.

Artists and scientists are touting the benefits of digging holes for the raw focus it offers in a world full of distractions.

Leanne Wijnsma, a Dutch graphic designer and director, would dig holes when she got stuck with a problem. She later made films in which she unearthed the stories behind other people’s holes.

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Supercomputer pioneer Seymour Cray dug a tunnel under his house.

Photo: Marlin Levison/Star Tribune/Zuma Press

Seymour Cray, a pioneer in the field of supercomputers, was working on a tunnel under his house whenever he encountered a stumbling block. “While I’m digging in the tunnel, the elves often come to me with solutions to my problem,” he told Time magazine in 1988.

Pioneering entomologist Harrison Dyar Jr. suggested that the compulsion to dig was deeply rooted in the human psyche when attempting to explain his own digs. He said it all started when he was digging a flower bed in his Washington, DC home in 1906.

“I was gripped by an undeniable desire to keep going,” he told the Washington Star after nearly 20 years later, a truck drove through the sidewalk, exposing a network of tunnels radiating from his home.

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A 2012 satellite image of the Chuquicamata copper mine in Chile.

Photo: DigitalGlobe/Getty Images

Jan Zalasiewicz, a prominent paleobiologist at England’s Leicester University, posits that the really big holes and tunnels that humans have been digging since around the 1950s could prove to be our enduring heritage and a suitable starting point for the Anthropocene. “No other species has dug such extensive tunnels on such a large scale as we have,” he wrote in a seminal article.

Oil wells and mines go deep into the earth to extract minerals and fuel. In Japan, teams compete in an annual competition to see who can dig the deepest hole in 30 minutes. Some players in the Minecraft game, which involves a lot of digging, ignore the urge to explore their digital worlds and turn to digging instead. A player named “Minthical” has spent over four years turning his world into a big hole.

“A lot of people might think that undertaking these big projects is a waste of time, but they don’t understand that once they’re done, they will be remembered,” Minthical said on his Patreon page.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States competed to see who could dig the deepest hole.

The American attempt in the 1960s was known as Project Mohole and involved drilling through the seafloor to obtain samples of the Mohorovicic Discontinuity – or the Moho – where the Earth’s crust meets the mantle. Led by an informal group called the American Miscellaneous Society, it was subsequently defunded by Congress after blowing its budget.

The Soviets advanced. The Kola Superdeep Borehole in the Arctic Circle near Norway reached 40,230 feet underground before funds ran out in the 1990s. It went so deep that it inspired joke reports that engineers had entered Hell and recorded the screams of tormented souls. The entrance has since been welded shut.

But not everyone digs holes.

This summer, beach communities in North Carolina asked people to fill in their holes to prevent bystanders from tripping and injuring themselves and not to dig them so deep that there is a risk of collapse. Community leaders in Kill Devil Hills joined other communities along the Outer Banks in organizing a large press conference to get their point across.

“We’re talking about beachgoers keeping the beach safe for each other and for us too,” said David Elder, supervisor of marine rescue.

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Kill Devil Hills, NC Marine Rescue Director David Elder estimated that this hole in the beach was seven feet deep.

Photo: City of Kill Devil Hills/Associated Press

Here in St Andrews, home to an old golf course and some even older ruins, Mr Mone makes sure his holes are properly filled when he’s done. “The local game warden once asked what we were up to, but when he saw us filling them out he agreed,” he said.

He doesn’t mind having to undo his work. The social aspect is almost as important, he says. On a good day, up to 30 people gather on the beach to dig, some making new friends as passers-by stop to watch.

“It’s good in that it’s something physical, but not competitive. It’s a random thing anyone can do,” said Lucy Hindle, another student who participated in the dig.

“I had been thinking about going to the gym,” said Estelle Woodrow, who was digging nearby.

“But gym memberships are expensive,” Ms Hindle said.

“Yes, digging holes is free,” Ms. Woodrow said.

write to James Hookway at [email protected]

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