How did Julian H. Steward explain cultural adaptation to local environments?

Julian H. Steward, the founder of cultural ecology, rejected both environmental determinism and possibilism to explain how societies adapt to their surroundings. Instead, he proposed that cultures interact with their environments by adapting specific features—such as technology, economic organization, and social structures like kinship—to effectively pursue their livelihoods.12

Steward argued that social systems arise from patterns of resource exploitation, which are determined by a group's technological adaptation to their natural environment. Rather than viewing the environment as a simple limit or determinant, he saw it as a set of problems and opportunities. Consequently, he posited that cultural adaptations depend as much on the existing sociocultural features of a group as they do on the environment itself.12

This methodology supported his theory of multilinear evolution, which suggests that while human societies generally progress, they do so along different paths based on their unique environmental and historical settings. For example, he demonstrated how the collective labor required for irrigation in arid climates led to increased social stratification and the development of the state.13