In this chapter, researcher focused on the major effects, challenges and solutions. For many years, biologists and anthropologists have realized that the organic and the cultural evolution of human beings have been interdependent, mutually complementary processes (e.g., Roe and Simpson, 1958; Caspari, 1963; Dobzhansky, 1961, 1962, 1963; Montagu, 1962, 1968a, b; McBride, 1971). In anthropology, this realization prompted the analysis of cultures and social systems as superorganic extensions of human adaptation (e.g., Cohen, 1974b; Meggers, 1971, 1973; Rappaport, 1969, 197 la,b; Sanders and Price, 1968; Steward, 1955; Vayda, 1969). The major contention has been that cultural practices provide people with the behavioral means of adjustment to the physical and social conditions of their lives (Harris, 1974; Rappaport, 1969, 1971 a,b; Vayda, 1961). However, ecological anthropology has suffered from a lack of agreement about how best to characterize adaptation and about how to describe the processes producing it (cf. Alland and Mceay, 1973; Flannery, 1972).
