Man’s Relationship to His Environment 
and the environmental heritage can be misunderstood, 
forgotten or rejected by new generations. Though the two 
processes make up the changing human constitution, we can 
discern in man no direct connexion between biological and 
cultural evolution. However, through man’s environmental 
relationship, an indirect connexion between them is esta- 
blished: first, through the impact of cultural evolution on the 
biology of man’s environment, effecting both qualitative 
changes in and distribution of plants, animals, water, air, soil, 
micro-climate, materials, etc.; next, through the decisive in- 
fluence of these changes in their turn on the total psycho- 
physical position and function of man in life. 
By observing and interpreting the evolution of man’s relation- 
ship to environment, we gain important clues to the profound 
significance of cultural evolution for the human constitution. 
In environmental change, cultural facts are converted into 
biotic realities, while biological conditions mould human 
culture in their turn; human and environmental evolution 
become interacting processes of change, constituting a whole 
life-system. To comprehend the system, we must study alter- 
nately its human and environmental components, consider 
both biological and cultural aspects of evolution, and note their 
interconnexions whenever they appear. 
ENVIRONMENTAL EVOLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE 
When observing the human environment, we are always 
confronted with its dual determination. It is conditioned by 
human life, and it conditions man’s functions and development. 
But the evolution of the human environment appears as a se- 
quence of stations, on each of which a high degree of integration 
of community and environment is realized and maintained over 
long stretches of time. Communities may come close to identi- 
fying themselves with their environment. In various ancient 
farming societies, such as the South-American Ayllu and the 
widespread Asian Savah, community and environment were 
named by the same term. Such knowledge can help us to 
understand past environmental orders; it can also give us 
has 
