Naturalisation of humans

Topic: Human Geography: Nature, Scope and Approaches · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Human Geography: Nature and Scope"

Meaning

Naturalisation of humans is the early stage of human history when technology was very low, so people had to adjust to what nature allowed. They obeyed nature, feared its fury and worshipped it. NCERT calls a person at this stage the "naturalised human". It matters because it shows a key idea of human geography: technology decides how much nature controls people. NCERT links this stage to environmental determinism (the idea that nature controls human life).

Explanation

Technology decides who is in control

• NCERT's key question: what matters is not what people produce. It is "with the help of what tools and techniques" they produce it.
• Technology shows how far a society has developed its culture. A society with better tools has gone further.
• Technology rests on understanding natural laws. People first learn how nature works. Then they use that knowledge.
• Friction and heat → fire
• DNA and genetics → ways to conquer diseases

• Aerodynamics (how air moves around objects) → faster planes

• "Technology loosens the shackles of environment": with each new tool, nature controls people a little less.

• Less technology → fewer choices → nature decides how people live. This is naturalisation.
• More technology → more choices → people are free of some of nature's limits.

How naturalisation works (cause → process → result)

• Cause: very simple tools and an early, simple stage of social development.
• Process: people cannot change nature, so they follow what it allows.
• Result: people obey nature, fear its fury and worship it.
• They depend directly on nature for food, water, medicine and trade.
• Nature is seen as "Mother Nature". People worship and protect it.

Benda: NCERT's example of a naturalised human

• Home: Abujhmarh (Abujh Maad), a hilly, forested area in Narayanpur district, southern Chhattisgarh. Benda is an Abujh Maria, a Gond group.
• Settlement: his village has just three huts, deep in the forest.
• Farming: his people practise shifting cultivation (clear and burn a patch of forest, grow crops for a few years, then move to a new patch).
• They burn small patches of the penda (forest).
• The ash makes the soil fertile.

• They grow crops there and later move on.

• Religion: before drinking from a stream, he thanks Loi-Lugi, the forest spirit.

• Trade: he collects the herbs Gajjhara and Kuchla. He barters them (swaps them without money) at the madhai (tribal fair).
• Vegetation around him: mahua, palash and sal, trees typical of the tropical dry deciduous forests of central India.
• Contact with outsiders: he melts into the forest when outsiders come.

The thinking behind it: environmental determinism

• Environmental determinism says the physical environment, especially climate and relief, controls human life and culture. Relief means the height and shape of the land.

• It says differences between peoples come from climate and landscape, not from inborn qualities [4].

• Main thinkers:

• Friedrich Ratzel: Politische Geographie (1897). He saw the state as an organism that struggles for land [6].
• Ellen Churchill Semple: Influences of Geographic Environment (1911). She studied under Ratzel at Leipzig [5].

• Ellsworth Huntington: Civilization and Climate (1915). He argued that climate controls human energy and the rise of civilisations [7].

• The opposite stage: as technology grows, people change nature. NCERT calls this the humanisation of nature.

Where it occurs

• Abujhmarh, Chhattisgarh (India): in Narayanpur district, between the Indravati river (a tributary of the Godavari) and the Bastar plateau. It is home to the Abujh Maria, who are listed as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG). They were listed under Madhya Pradesh, which included Chhattisgarh when the list was made [2].
• PVTG areas across India: 75 PVTGs in 18 states and 1 Union Territory [2][3]. They live in isolated, remote and difficult areas in small, scattered hamlets [2]. One of the four criteria for PVTG status is a pre-agricultural level of technology, which is close to the naturalised stage [2][3].
• Shifting cultivation belts of central and north-east India: here, people who live off the forest still depend directly on it.
• Map practice: mark Narayanpur in southern Chhattisgarh. Draw the Indravati river south of it, flowing west to the Godavari. Draw the Bastar plateau around it. Abujhmarh is the forested hill block between them.

Don't confuse with

• Humanisation of nature: the opposite stage. People with better technology change and shape nature. In naturalisation, nature shapes people.
• Environmental determinism: this is a school of thought (Ratzel, Semple, Huntington). Naturalisation of humans is the stage of human-environment interaction that NCERT links to it.
• Possibilism: says nature offers many choices and people pick among them using technology. Naturalisation means people have almost no choice.
• Neo-determinism (Griffith Taylor's "stop-and-go determinism"): a middle path. People can change nature, but only within its limits. It came after determinism and possibilism.

Prelims Hooks

• "Naturalised human" = a person in a society with low technology who obeys, fears and worships nature. NCERT links this stage to environmental determinism.
• Abujhmarh is in Narayanpur district, Chhattisgarh, between the Indravati river and the Bastar plateau. It is home to the Abujh Maria, a Gond group listed as a PVTG [2].
• Benda's terms: penda = forest used for shifting cultivation; madhai = tribal fair; Loi-Lugi = forest spirit; Gajjhara and Kuchla = herbs he barters.
• NCERT's natural law → technology pairs: friction and heat → fire; DNA → conquering disease; aerodynamics → faster planes.
• PVTGs: 75 groups in 18 states and 1 UT. The four criteria are pre-agricultural technology, low literacy, economic backwardness, and a stagnant or declining population [2][3].
• Order in time: environmental determinism → possibilism → neo-determinism (Griffith Taylor) → the quantitative, radical, behavioural and humanistic schools.

Mains Points

• Technology sets how much nature controls people. Communities like the Abujh Maria still live close to naturalisation.
• They depend directly on forests and practise shifting cultivation.
• Their PVTG status shows the cost: isolation, low literacy and a stagnant population [2].

• So policy must respect their link to the forest and still bring services such as schools and health care to them.

• Shifting cultivation is both an adaptation and a problem.

• With few people, burnt land has time to grow back, so the forest stays healthy.
• When population rises, people return to the same patch too soon. This causes soil loss and forest damage in central and north-east India.

• Possible responses: forest rights, help with settled farming, and land-use plans suited to each area.

• Critique of the determinist view behind naturalisation (GS-I):

• It ignores human choice and technology. It also treats correlations (two things happening together) as causes.
• Colonial powers used it through the "tropical laziness" myth. Ratzel's Lebensraum ("living space") idea was later twisted into Nazi expansion into eastern Europe [6][8].
• Nature's limits are real, as climate change shows, but societies respond to the same environment in very different ways. This supports Griffith Taylor's "stop-and-go determinism" over strict determinism.

Related concepts

• Abujhmarh
• Environmental determinism
• Lebensraum

Read more

• Naturalisation of humans and environmental determinism