ABSTRACT
Our remotest ancestors were so close to their environment that they would have found it hard to think of it as separate from themselves. When you live as hunters or fisherfolk, snatching your living directly from the wild, building your shelters from whatever the wild provides, and travelling afoot or in small boats you yourself have fashioned from branches, skins or tree trunks, your dependence on the environment is absolute, and knowledge of it is the key to survival. In such a setting, ‘caring for the Earth is born when you are born’. 1
