ABSTRACT
As soon as he became man…he began to alter the face of the natural world as it was until then. While he remained a hunter-foodgatherer he was little more than another indigenous animal. But as soon as he burned wood to keep warm he was consuming it in a different way from natural decay, with different consequences. When he used fire as an aid to driving wild animals into places where he could kill them more easily, and burned bush to encourage hoofed animals to graze on the young grass which followed, he had begun his ceaseless attrition of the natural wilderness.
