ABSTRACT
Archaeological discovery and Darwinist evolutionary theory will probably have convinced most readers that early hominids evolved from apes between five and ten million years ago and that the human genus (homo) appeared in Africa about two million years ago. At about this time, humans first employed technology, in the form of rudimentary stone cutting tools (Goudie, 1990); The emergence of ‘modern’ society, as characterized by the diminishing authority of religious hierarchies and a gradual acceptance of scientific authority, is associated with a comparably modest duration, occupying the last 500 years. Indeed, if the history of human occupation of the Earth were analogized to a hundred-metre sprint, the race through modernity would only involve the final couple of centimetres. This chapter examines premodern relationships with nature, considering the connection between different productive regimes and their accompanying cultural developments. Understanding the respective roles of nature, culture and technology in both gradual and revolutionary changes to human environments is a fascinating area of enquiry, one which has gripped the imagination of generations of geographers, environmentalists and anthropologists.
