Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

In history, for every step forward there were always consequences.  As people moved from hunting and gathering to farming, it seemed that their lives would be automatically improved.  However, this was not the case.   People did not always consider how they would impact the environment, and many times it would cause great damage.  For instance, when civilizations began to grow crops, creative problems solving lead them to build systems for getting water from the rivers to there crops.  But, the consequence of being successful at farming was over-farming.  Once land became over-farmed, it was no longer useful because it was not arable.  Overuse of land for both farming and building lead to erosion and other problems in the societies.

Also people learned how to keep animals, instead of hunting them.  Hunting only allowed the animal to be used once, but in domestication, animals could reproduce and make more animals.  Instead of only being used for meat, once they were domesticated, they could other things, too, such as clothing from fur and hides, and they could be kept for producing milk and eggs.  If they were killed and used once, they could not produce all of those other types of products.   The consequences of using animals was that the animals carried diseases that were not common to humans.   So, human immune system was not strong enough to fight theses new diseases.  Many first generation farmers died as a result leading to a major population drop.

Early humans' creativity lead to advances in politics, writing, and art.  It seemed that the more they were able to change their environment -- on purpose -- the better their lives became and the more advances there were to science and technology.  However, people learned very often that when they took a few steps forward, there was always problems that arose and caused them to have to take a step or two back.  This continues to happen today, and hopefully humans learn from their mistakes and begin to cooperate with their environment, and do not repeat the mistakes they made in the past.