Our Environment Contents

3. Revolutions

The relationship between people and their environment has changed with successive revolutions in human history.

There has not merely been a change in the physical relationship between people and their environments. There has also been a change in the dominant social paradigm - the collection of norms, beliefs, values, habits and survival rules that provide a frame of reference for members of a society. The dominant social paradigm of most hunting and gathering societies did not have much in common with that which evolved with the neolithic revolution. Similarly, the industrial revolution brought massive social and political, as well as environmental, change. It was a source of military and transportation technology which aided the transformation of loosely knit confederations into contemporary, integrated nation states - a new social order.

  1. Fishing systems
  2. Planting systems
  3. Ploughing systems
  4. Harvesting systems
  5. Water transfer systems
  6. Irrigation systems

What changes in social paradigm have accompanied changes in human-environment relationships?