Question

What was the relationship among human foragers and the environment/nature, and how was it different from our relationships to other humans today and to our environment?

Answer 1

Why exactly do we humans have such an incredibly large influence on other species and the natural world? We are unique among animal species in that we survive and reproduce in a wide variety of environments through cultural adaptations (Richerson et al. 1996). In contrast, other species are primarily able to survive and reproduce due to biological adaptations that result from eons of natural selection and biological evolution. The cultural adaptations of humans have allowed them to colonize nearly every ecosystem type on Earth. In addition, cultural innovations have allowed the human population to grow exponentially for millennia. Such sustained population growth is unparalleled by any other species on the planet. The population of a typical species grows until it reaches the carrying capacity of its environment, then levels off or declines. In other words, it grows until it is fully utilizing the available resources, such as food and space. At this point mechanisms such as disease and starvation keep the population from continuing to grow. However, we humans have responded to resource scarcity with cultural practices and technologies that increase the availability of resources. We raise our food on farms and live in multi-story apartment buildings, increasing the carrying capacity of the environment for humans. This growth eventually requires yet more cultural adaptations to increase resources, and the alteration of the natural environment and the rate of cultural evolution is accelerated. Currently the global human population is large enough and the technologies that allow humans to manipulate the environment are potent enough that human-caused alterations to the biosphere are causing the extinction of innumerable wildlife species. If present trends continue, there will be an eventual crash in the human population that will bring great suffering and cause widespread environmental damage. This is the root cause of the modern environmental crisis. This chapter deals with how we got into the present situation from the perspective of cultural interactions with wildlife and wild lands.