STS 11

PEOPLE AND THE EARTH’S

ECOSYSTEM
Module 1

Cover Image: Pristine tropical forest of the country. The remaining track of tropical forest in Leyte Island along the
headwaters of Marabong River, Burauen, Leyte.
Course Title STS 11 PEOPLE AND EARTH’S ECOSYSTEM
Course Description This course looks into the impacts of human activities on the
environment and analyze the consequences of environmental
modification on human activity.
Units / Credit Equivalent 3 units
Course Outcomes 1. Introduce the students to the ways that humans have altered
and modified the natural environment throughout history.
2. Trace the causes of environmental degradation.

3. Determine the impacts of various anthropogenic activities

to different aspects of the natural environment.
4. Analyze the impacts of human-modified environments to
human activities.
5. Project future scenarios for various aspects of the natural
environment.

Module No. and Title Module 1 Introduction

Module Overview Welcome to the first module of STS 11. This module will let you
travel and live the past up to where and what humanity has
achieved today. This will also help you understand and assess the
consequences of the desire of human for comfort and convenience.

Module Objectives/Outcomes 1) Discuss the development of ideas about the relationship

between humans and the environment
2) Discuss the development of ideas about how humans have
changed their environment
3) Analyze briefly the changes in human societies from
prehistoric times onwards

Lessons in the Module Lesson 1. The development of human population

 The Lesson Structure
Module 1 Introduction- People and Earth’s Ecosystem
Lesson 1 The Development of Human Population
Learning Outcomes:
1. Discuss the development of ideas about the relationship between humans and the environment.
2. Discuss the development of ideas about the relationship between humans and the environment.
3. Discuss the development of ideas about how humans have changed their environment.
4. Analyze briefly the changes in human societies from prehistoric times onwards.
Time Frame: Maximum of 3 hours
Introduction
You will learn in this module the history of the development of human population- from hunting and
gathering using pebbles and stones to a more sedentary livelihood in the period of agriculture and
industrialization. It is also highlighted in this module how and where settlement and civilization
emerged from various part of the worlds until communities’ agglomerate and become more deliberate
and invasive in natural resource use. Today, you are part of the modern community in a world of
urbanization which favor and desire ultimate comfort and convenience at the expense of making earth’s
natural system ugly and imbalance because of pollution and intense destruction. Learn more and think
big as you go along in this module!
Activity

EFFECTS

Based on the above

image, kindly make a
problem tree analysis.
Identify the problem,
causes of the problem,
and its effect. Put your
PROBLEMS
answer on a tree like
structure following the
sequence on the right
side

CAUSES

Analysis
1. Kindly describe the above image.
2. What do you think are the reasons of the differences of the period?
3. What do you think is the relationship of the image to the human population?
4. To what extent humans transformed the natural environment?
Abstraction
 A. The Development of Human
Currently, we are in a New epoch in Earth’s history, the Anthropocene. This is an epoch when human
activities have ‘become so profound and pervasive that they rival, or exceed the great forces of Nature in
influencing the functioning of the Earth System’. There are three stages of Anthropocene period:
industrial era during1800-1945; The Great Appreciation during 1945-2015; and stewardship at the
present. The industrial era is also called the Holocene epoch. This period is characterized by sudden
increase of carbon emissions causing anthropogenic climate change causing adverse effects to the
environment, biodiversity and trends in evolution. Along these period, humans become the major driver
of changes in the landscape of the Earth. These changes have become more prevalent that it eventually
exceeds the normal biogeochemical cycles leading to global environmental change. Nonetheless,
recognizing the share of human population to global environmental changes is a way to better
understand the interaction of physical, chemical and biological processes that regulate the Earth system
to support life and how this system is altered by human activities.
But how does human completely dominate the Earth? To understand this event, let us start with the
evolutionary development of human.
Early hominids or the primitive human like organisms appear in fossil record at around 6 million years
ago (Fig.1). The first recorded hominid was the remains of a small, bipedal hominim, Sahelanthropus
tchadensis, which was found in Chad. There were also remains recovered as transitional early hominins
such as the Ardipithecus sp. and Australopithecus sp. The first recognizable human evolved about 2.5
million years ago, the Homo habilis, probably during the development of Pleistocene ice ages in mid-
latitudes. Remains of this hominid were found in rift1. valleys
Figure Geologicoftimescale
East Africa or in cave
of Hominid depositshuman.
to modern in South
Africa. There brain sizes were smaller than modern or premodern humans but the cranial capacities were
greater than earlier hominins. Some of their morphological features closely resemble to modern humans.
Homo ergaster and H. erectus which may have arisen around 2 million years ago, have started to
expand their distribution, first reached the areas of Asia. Thereafter, they expanded to Europe based on
the stone tools found in Italy that was associated to Homo dated 1.3–1.7 million years ago. The modern
humans, H. sapiens, appeared in Africa around 160,000 years ago and eventually spread out of Africa
and to other parts of the world.
Humans have also arrived in Australia around 150,000 to 40,000 years ago. It was also believed that the
arrival of human in Americas occurred around 12,000 years ago using the Bering land bridge from Asia.
They were equipped with Clovis spears.
Before 10,000 years ago, humans were thought to live by means of hunting and gathering. The
population during this time was also very small at around 5 million. Hence, there optimum territory for
hunting and gathering was huge at around 300 to 500 km2 and may expand to 500 to 2000km2 during
drier period.
When humans started to cultivate and settle to one location, the population also started to increase
(Fig.2). From the time of agricultural revolution up to the birth of Christ, the population rose to over 200
to 300 million. By 1650 AD, the population reached over 500 million. This was also the birth of medical
and industrial revolution and the development of agricultural and colonization.
 Figure 2. The human population since 500 million years ago. Adopted from Goudie 2013.
Human population eventually exploded reaching about 1 billion by 1850, 2 billion by 1930 and 4 billion
by 1974. Currently, human population is close to reaching 8 billion. Despite of the many pandemic
diseases in the past such as malaria, cholera and small pox, human population remained victorious
leading to enormous mismatch of death-rate control with the birth control resulting to the growth of
population.
A.1. Hunting and Gathering
Pebble tools are the oldest records of human
activity and technology. These are crude stone tools
which consist of a pebble with one end chipped into
a rough cutting edge. These were found with human
bone remains in Africa. At Dikika in Ethiopia,
stone-tools used for consumption of meat dating
around 3.42–3.24 million years ago were found.
There were also evidences found in Lake Turkana
in northern Kenya and the Omo Valley in southern
Ethiopia dating at 2.6 million years ago, in Gona in
the north-east of Ethiopia around 2.5 million years
ago and in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania at 1.75 Ma.
The tools became more sophisticated as stone age developed. During Palaeolithic Age, human started to
use wood for ladders, fire, pigment (charcoal), and as digging sticks. As Palaeolithic Age progressed,
clothing and shelters were becoming permanent. Humans also began to eat wide variety of food, mostly
meat, but generally distinguished omnivorous. However, this prompted human to explore wide areas.
Humans also developed communicative skills like speech. Aside from that, they also discovered how to
use fire. Human may have started fire around 1.4 million years ago. But a more compelling evidence
showed that human used fire around 400,000 years ago. Overall, humans may be active and effective
 period. Adapted from Goudie 2013.

hunters, but they could also be dedicated scavengers of carcasses either naturally dead or has been killed
by carnivores.
B. Human as Cultivators, Keepers, and Metal Workers

At the end of Pleistocene period, humans started to make major changes for living. For instance, the
hunting folk “Natufians” in the Middle Eastern region which includes Jordan, Syria, Israel, Palestine and
Lebanon around 14,000–15,000 years ago started to build houses of stone and wood. They also buried
their dead with rituals, gathered along like communities, ground up cereals with mortar and pestle, and
made arts from animal bones. The possible development that occurred after the Pleistocene period is
summarized on Table 1.
Beginning Holocene period (10,000 years ago), the Natufians together with various part of the world
started to domesticate rather than gather plants and hunt animals. The space they required were reduced
but their population started to increase. The first major settlement emerged in the Middle East. The
controlled breeding of animals and plants able to provide humans a more reliable and readily expandable
source of food which creates a solid and secure basis for cultural advance including civilization and the
‘urban revolution. In general, domestication is the most important intervention man made in the
environment (Fig.3). It created genetic differences from wild plants due to conscious and unconscious
human selection.
The origin of agriculture is still controversial. Some believed it was a religious reasons and others
pursued the idea of changes in climatic conditions. Sauer (1952) on the other hand believed that plant
domestication was initiated in Southeast Asia by fishing folk, who found that lacustrine and riverine
resources would enable stable economy or semi-sedentary lifestyle.
The first evidence of domestication occurred in
Mediterranean lands and the Hilly Flanks of the
Middle East around 12,000 years ago.
Domestication of millet in China occurred around
10,000 years ago and the maize, beans and
squashes in Mesoamerica may have been
domesticated around 10,000–9000 years ago.
Domestication of sheep, goats, pigs and cattle took
place in the Near East and neighboring areas
around 10,500–9000 years ago, shortly after, cats’
domestication occurred. But it was presumed that
the first domesticated animal was dog around
16000 years ago in southern China because of its
hunting importance. Horse was first domesticated
in the steppes of Kazakhstan at c. 5500 years ago,
the chicken in South Asia and Southeast Asia
including the Indus Valley and China, donkey in
Figure 3. Domestication of plants from different north-east Africa about 5000 years ago, water
parts of the world.
buffalo during the Neolithic in various regions in south and eastern Asia, and the pig in the Middle East
and China.
Another important development in agriculture was irrigation and the adoption of riverine agriculture
presumably started in Egypt around 5050 years ago. In the “Secondary Products Revolution, the used of
domesticated animals were applied in agriculture such as ploughing. Textiles from animal fibers were
also produced and used for exchanges. The use of milk was also developed leading to pastoralism.
In general, the spread of agriculture has transformed the land cover of
the earth. There have been enormous changes in the landscape of
different biomes. Before agriculture, the forest cover was around 46.8
million square kilometers, but it declined during agriculture period.
For the past 300 years, cropland and pasture areas had tremendously
increased. The transformation of the landscape, due to deforestation,
may have caused modification of global climatic conditions because of
the released carbon dioxide.
Another important development of human history is the emergence of
Neolithic cultures, the mining of ores and smelting of metals, during
eighth millennium BC. But first evidence of smelting was found in
Turkey and Jordan about 6th millennium BC. The spread of the metal
works was very rapid, in 2500 BC, it already appeared in Britain and
China.
The used of fossil fuels came in recent years. It has expanded to the development of fossil-fueled
machineries allowing mining to expand. At least 28 million tons of earth materials were moved due to
mining.

Table 2. Population of Urban areas in 2010.

C. Modern industrial and urban civilizations Adopted from Goudie 2013.
It was during the cereal agriculture that humans were
gathered in large numbers and settlements (cities) with
more institutionalized social formations like states.
Around 6000 years ago, cities were developed in the
basin of the Tigris and Euphrates, and around 5000
years ago in the coastal Mediterranean, the Nile valley,
the Indus plain and coastal Peru. Early cities with large
population number have emerged such as Nineveh with
a population of 700,000, the Augustan Rome with
around 1 million and the Carthage at its fall in 146 BC
had 700,000 in population. However, major
transformation occurred in 17th century when culture
and technology was revolutionized for the arrival of
major industries. Along with these turning point
transformation was also the acceleration of human population and the development of urbanization.
Highly urbanized cities emerged which center large chunk of the population. In 2010, the most populous
city was Tokyo in Japan with around 36.7 million followed by Delhi in India with 22.2 million (Table
2). The Manila of Philippines was also listed with 11.6 million.
This aggregation of human settlement has resulted to several environmental problems, thereby
increasing ecological footprints. An ecological footprint is an accounting tool for ecological resources in
which various categories of human consumption are translated into areas of productive land required to
provide resources and assimilate waste products. It is thus a measure of how sustainable the lifestyles of
different population groups are. The cities’ ecological footprints even rose in the 20th century because
human population reaches more than seven billion and the world economy goes up to more than 15 fold,
including the use of energy. To measure the human impact in the biosphere, these six indicators were
monitored: deforested areas, terrestrial vertebrate diversity, CO2 releases, population size, water
withdrawals, and Nitrogen releases.

Application
Write a historical analysis/background of human development in your locality. Make your presentation
like you are writing a story. To help you make your essay, follow the guide questions below:
1. When was your locality established?
2. What was the population at the time it was established?
3. What was the beginning mode of living of the people in your locality at the time it was
established?
4. What were the public structures at that time? Describes the structures?
5. What were the mode of transportation?
6. Describe the demographic changes until today.
7. Describe the development of public structures until today.
8. Describe the current mode of living of the people in your locality.
9. What are the current mode of transportation?
10. Describe the technology trend in your locality.
Closure
You have somehow understood now the significant role that we human contribute to the changes of the
unique system that our only home has. At this point, you are ready to know more the details of the
changes the human did, does and will be doing particularly in transforming the earth’s landscape and its
vegetation.
References
Bergstrom, C. and L.A. Dugatkin (2016). Evolution, 2nd edition, W. W. Norton & Company, United
States of America.
Goudie, A. 2013. The Human Impact on the Natural Environment: Past, Present and Future (7th
Edition). UK: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.