Human Cultural Development Teachers' Page Human culture is a set of tools to help people adapt to the natural and social environment around them.
People interact with their environment in many ways.
They earn a living from it. They identify with it in ways that help them form their personalities and their beliefs about who they are. People who live and lived on the Great Plains of the United States and Prairies of Canada have adjusted to one of the most variable environments in North America. At the same time that their cultures have adapted to the environment, so too has their presence affected the environment. The idea behind this web site is that students need to understand that the environmental factors that affected the first peoples on the Great Plains still have profound impacts on the inhabitants of the Great Plains today.