hunter-gatherer societies altering their environments - intentional or not
August 23, 2009
Archaeologists who study early hunter-gatherer societies are discovering that even the simplest cultures altered their environments, whether they meant to or not.
For example, aboriginal people in Australia burned huge areas to change the landscape so they could hunt animals more easily. Perhaps the most famous example is the way mastodons and giant sloth and other ice-age animals were killed off by roving bands of hungry humans...
[National Public Radio, npr.org]
article on coastal exploitation appears in the journal Science