Human domination of nature

It was agriculture, introduced some 10,000 years ago, that led us to believe that we could 'step out of' our local ecosystems. This belief led us to the conclusion that we could secure our survival and meet all our needs solely by our cultural cleverness. In other words, it led us to believe that we could dominate nature with impunity and escape the ecological laws of the planet established through many millennia of evolution.