Prehistoric lifeways dominate the human story. Millenia passed before civilization became a substantial lifeway on our planet. Many more centuries passed before it became the dominant lifeway. The great majority of human cultural time has not been civilization. If we are to study the story of human interaction with the environment, then prehistory is not the prelude to our studies, but the major focus of it.
Civilization is rather an epilogue.
They left no records. Their lives are all but impossible to study. If human ecology is to find ways to improve our quickly disintegating relationship with the planet, we cannot shy away from such endeavors. We cannot allow the difficulty of studyingnoncivilized peoples nor the lack of empirical methodology stop us from grappling with these questions. Noncivilized peoples are not noble savages.