Changing the Face of the Earth

This book is a history of the human impact on the biophysical systems of the earth from the earliest times to the post-industrial world. Access to energy sources determines the way in which human beings use the natural environment and the degree of access to the forces of energy conditions the rate of environmental change. This concept provides the framework for this work. The book opens with a consideration of the impact of primitive mankind in Africa and the early impact of fire. The author then examines advanced hunter societies in all parts of the earth and their management of animal resources. It was agriculture, however that produced the first major impact on nature; Professor Simmons considers the origins of agriculture and its spread from region to region. Throughout this section of the work he compares contemporary primitive societies with those reconstructed through arachaeological evidence. The second half of the book is concerned with the impact of industrialization, the use of fossil-fuel energy, and of the population explosion and the impact of related changed in agriculture, forestry, urbanization, fishing and, most recently, tourism.
The author concludes with an assessment of current environmental change and of work to assess and to control the effects of human activities on the climate and surface of the earth.