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Over the course of human history, human beings gradually learned how to exert more control over the natural environment and were able to pass on this useful knowledge to geographically distant groups and to their own younger generations. In Fire and Civilization (1992), the Dutch sociologist Johan Goudsblom (1932–2020) argues that an especially significant development was the discovery of fire and the invention of techniques for making, managing and keeping it under control.

Human groups that learned how to make and use fire gained dominance over those that did not. Eventually all human societies were able to make and use fire, which enabled them to dominate other animal species. Goudsblom’s developmental history of fire shows something of the way that societies try to manipulate and manage the natural environment to their own advantage. In the process, though, there is also pressure on societies to change their own social organization.

From small domestic fires used for keeping warm and cooking food, all the way to modern central heating systems and large power plants, the gradual expansion of fire-making has necessitated more complex forms of social organization. When early humans learned how to make and manage small fires, they had to organize themselves to keep fires going, to monitor them and, at the same time, to stay safe. Much later, with the introduction of domesticated fires into private homes, societies needed specialists in fire control – fire brigades and fire-prevention advisers. With the advent of large power-generating stations, it has become important to protect these, militarily if necessary, from potential attack. Today, more people are more dependent on the easy availability and control of fire than ever before.

Goudsblom notes one further consequence of the domestication of fire: the changing psychology of individuals. To be able to use fire, people had to overcome their previous fear of it, perhaps born of seeing naturally occurring bush fires, lightning strikes or volcanoes. This was not an easy task. It meant controlling their fears and emotions long enough to be able to take advantage of the possible benefits of fire use. Such emotional control slowly came to be experienced as ‘natural’, so that people today hardly think about how long it has taken for humans to arrive at such high levels of control over their emotions.

Even today, fires still cause harm, destroying forests, homes, families and businesses. Fire is always threatening to escape the control of human societies, however firmly established that control might seem. The sociological lesson we can take from this study is that the relationship between human societies and the natural environment is an unavoidable two-way process: human societies try to exert control over the natural environment, but, as they do so, the natural environment also imposes certain constraints and requirements on them.

European explorers, traders and missionaries from the early fifteenth century reported back on the variety of human societies, cultures and ways of life. They recorded small-scale, nomadic, hunter-gatherer groups of just twenty or thirty people who survived by eating wild animals and plants. In parts of South and North America and East Asia were larger, quite settled communities based on agriculture and farming. In China and elsewhere they also found empires with cities, class groups, palaces and armed forces (Harris 1978).

This variety of major human groups and societies can be roughly organized into three main categories: hunters and gatherers, larger agrarian and pastoral societies (involving agriculture or the tending of domesticated animals) and traditional states and civilizations. As table 4.1 shows, successive societal types tended to increase the size of the global human population.

Around 20,000 BCE – the peak of the last Ice Age – some hunting and gathering societies began to raise domesticated animals and cultivate fixed plots of land as their means of livelihood, and by 5000 BCE many groups and societies across the world lived by farming (Mithen 2003). Pastoral societies are those that rely mainly on domesticated livestock, while agrarian societies are those that grow crops (practise agriculture), though many societies have had mixed pastoral and agrarian economies.

Depending on their environment, pastoralists rear and herd animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, camels and horses. Many pastoral societies still exist, concentrated especially in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. These societies are usually found in regions with dense grasslands, deserts or mountains that are not amenable to agriculture but may support livestock. Pastoral communities usually migrate across different areas according to seasonal changes. Given their nomadic lifestyle, people in pastoral societies do not normally accumulate many material possessions, although their way of life is more complex in material terms than that of hunters and gatherers.

Table 4.1 Types of pre-modern human society

Type	Period of existence	Characteristics
Hunting and gathering societies	50,000 BCE to the present. Today on the verge of disappearance.	Small numbers gaining a livelihood from hunting, fishing and gathering edible plants.Few inequalities.Differences of rank limited by age and gender.
Agrarian societies	12,000 BCE to the present. Most are now part of larger political entities, thus losing their distinct identity.	Based on small rural communities without towns or cities.Livelihood through agriculture, often supplemented by hunting and gathering.Stronger inequalities than hunters and gatherers.Ruled by chiefs.
Pastoral societies	12,000 BCE to the present. Today mostly part of larger states; traditional ways of life are being undermined.	Size ranges from a few hundred people to many thousands.Dependent on tending domesticated animals for subsistence.Marked by distinct inequalities.Ruled by chiefs or warrior kings.
Traditional societies or civilizations	6000 BCE to the nineteenth century. All traditional civilizations have now disappeared.	Very large in size, some numbering several millions of people.Some cities exist, in which trade and manufacture are concentrated.Based largely on agriculture.Major inequalities exist among different classes.Distinct government apparatus headed by a king or emperor.

Several hundred people of the Hadza tribe continue to live as hunter-gatherers, the last of their kind in East Africa. Survival International estimates that the Hadza have lost about half of their land over the last sixty years.

At some point, some hunting and gathering groups began to sow their own crops. This practice first developed as ‘horticulture’, where small areas were cultivated using hoes and digging tools. Like pastoralism, horticulture provided a more secure food supply than was possible by hunting and gathering and could therefore support larger communities. Since they were more settled, people could then develop larger stocks of material possessions than either hunting and gathering or pastoral communities. As table 4.2 shows, only a small minority of people in the industrialized countries today still work on the land, though agriculture remains a significant or primary source of employment for numerous developing countries, most of them in Africa. Since originating in Africa, the long-term direction of human life was towards settled agriculture and, as a result, a rising global population.

Figure 4.1 The decline of hunting and gathering societies

Source: Lee and De Vore (1968: ii).

Table 4.2 Agricultural employment (percentage of workforce), selected countries, 2019

Note: Figures based on the most recent national estimates available.

Source: Adapted from CIA World Factbook online (2019).

Country	Percentage of workers in agriculture
Burundi	92
Chad	81
Central African Republic	72
Malawi	72
Mozambique	71
	The impact of industrialization
Australia	3
Japan	3
Netherlands	2
United States	1
Germany	1