THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT & HUMAN CIVILIZATION

IN WORLD HISTORY

The natural environment is all around us. It is the air we breathe, the water we drink, the

food we eat, the resources we mine, the energy we harness, and the animals we keep. It is inside

us, too; it is the bacteria in our gut. In sources as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh, people have

understood the struggle between human civilization and the natural environment as the one of the

most important of their lives. For millennia, the natural environment shaped and set limits to the

growth and integration of human populations. Advances in technology in the last few hundred

years have enabled human civilization to overcome many of these limits and to shape their natural

environment in turn. Has world history seen the triumph of human civilization over the natural

environment? Or will the natural environment have the last laugh when we finally eat and pollute

ourselves out of a home? These questions are too big and too speculative to take on directly in

your paper, but they can and should inspire your thinking.