The term "visible life" refers to multicellular from before people knew there was life in the proterozoic.
This period is similar to the Quaternary, but it also includes tool usage by close relatives of humans which were not humans yet.
It ends together with the pleistocene.
Agriculture is not the official definition of the age. But it is good enough. Likely related to the official end of glaciations thing.
No life, earth too hot, until formation of water.