ABSTRACT
Human beings made changes in land-use depending on the particular stage of economic formation and invention of the forces (means) of production. The early human beings did not know the technology of food production through agriculture and, therefore, they had to depend solely on hunting and gathering (possibly in both the pre-hominid mode of individual gathering and the hominid mode of collective gathering). In the archaic human society, the economic system had strong dependency on nature. The degree of dependency on nature, however, varied from place to place corresponding to the innovations of the means of production at different times. Throughout the Stone Age men lived entirely on the products of chase; they produced no food and the technological level also was too low. People gradually learnt to use stone for fabricating tools and equipment for food procurement. Throughout this age, human beings could make no fundamental change in use of land and natural resources. But with progressive reduction of nature’s gift, the absolute dependency on hunting-gathering economy also started to reduce. This led them to vigorously search for alternative sources of food. This happened again at different times in different parts of the world. This marked the beginning of change in the archaic land use and a shift from the procurement to the production economy when mankind learnt to transform the things-in-itself to the things-for-us. In the process, the emerging production economy de-captivated the human beings from absolute dependency on nature and procurement economy. Land was converted to a space for production and agricultural economy emerged as a result produced, in turn, the complex economic and social organisations, social relations and structured institutional frames.
