Environment and Human: Past and present

The changing relationship of man with the natural environment from prehistoric to modern periods may be divided into four stages as follows:
Period of hunting and food; This period is related to most primitive man when he was basically a part of natural environment and his functions was based on forest like other animals. Thus the primitive man was functionally a biological man or physical man because his basic requirements were limited food only which he could collect from his surroundings. Thus, the primitive man used to satisfy his hunger by fruits which were easily obtained from plants and trees and he spent his nights in the caves or on the trees. With the march of time man learned to hunt animals for his food. Even the hunting of animals by early man did not make any change in the natural environmental system because of his limited requirements and very low population and uncivilized society. The discovery of fire made a significant change in the altitude of man because now he learned to cook animal flesh before eating. This practice requires wood which he used to derive easily from the forest. The demand of wood for burning purposes to roast animals made another significant change in the starting point in the technology as the man had invent some devices to cut and chop trees and their branches to get firewood. He also invented some tools to kill animals. The first destruction of environment started with the careless burning of forests due to carelessness of man which cooking and roasting the animals with fire. This led to a chain of effects by man on his environment. He might have seen the destruction and clearing of dense forests and running of animals away due to inadvertent man-induced fire.
Period of animal domestication and pastoralism: With the march of time early man learned to domesticate animals for his own benefits. He might have domesticated some milch cattle and some animals for meat in the beginning. Slowly and slowly his herd of domesticated animals might have substantially increased. With the march of time the early peoples might have gathered larger herds of domesticated animals. They still stuck to nomadic way of as they had to move from one place to another place In search of water and fodder for their animals and food for themselves. Thus increase in the population of domesticated animals also led to increase in the population of early peoples which ultimately led to meaningful exploitation of environmental resources but this could not change the natural state of environment because the population of early peoples and their domesticated animals was still under manageable size and the changes brought in by human activities in the environment were well within the limit of self-regulatory mechanism of the natural environmental ecosystem.
Period of plant domestication and agriculture: Domestication of plants for food was a hallmark in the development of human skill of taming and controlling the biotic component of the natural environmental system or ecosystem. Domestication of plants initiated primitive type of agriculture and sedentary settled life of people who previously were nomads and wanders. But still many of the people use to live nomadic life. With the march of time man developed his own environment known as “the cultural environment” by building houses and thus creating villages, towns and cities, by building social institutions like schools and colleges, by building places of workshops like temples, churches, mosques, etc. by constructing roads, railroad, bridges, canals, etc. It may be pointed out that all these and many more elements of cultural environment were evolved through various stages of agricultural development up to 1860 or say before industrial revolution.
Period of science, technology and industrialization: The dawn of industrial revolution in late nineteenth century with the emergency of science and development of more efficient and sophisticated technology initiated the hostile relationship between man and his natural environment. Extreme concept of the western world, advanced technological man led to reckless and indiscriminate rapacious exploitation of natural resources for industrial expansion and urban growth which have altogether created most of the present day environmental and ecological problems of global dimension. With the rapid increase in human population and the onset of industrial revolution, the demand of natural raw material and sources of energy is increasing day to day.