ABSTRACT
Looking back over our journey through the history of humankind’s changing role in the community of life, and our glimpses of particular places and periods of time, we may ask what this historical experience offers in understanding what is happening today. What has really been going on, ecologically speaking, during human history? Humans have related in multiple ways to the Earth’s systems; some of these ways promise a sustainable balance with them, while others are destructive. Experience could teach us which are which.
