ABSTRACT
A society with little material technology, living in a difficult landscape, may show a range of social adaptations to the demands of its environment. The relationship is not static, since environment and culture evolve both autonomously and in reaction to each other. The cultural complex may also be conservative, and slow to respond to changed environmental conditions, leading to lags in adaptation, environmental chances missed, or cultural practices persisting when they no longer make sense or have even become harmful. And within an adaptive cultural system individuals behave in a variety of ways, because there may be a difference between rational individual behaviour and adaptive cultural behaviour.
