Humanity is by many measures the biggest success story in the animal kingdom. Throughout their evolutionary history, humans have affected the natural environment, sometimes with a promise of sustainable balance, but also in a destructive manner. Humans never existed in isolation from the rest of life, and could not exist alone, because they depend on the complex and intimate associations that make life possible.

To a very large extent, ecosystems have influenced the patterns of human events. Consequently, the narratives of history must place human events within the context of local and regional ecosystems, and world history must in addition place them within the ecosphere, the worldwide ecosystem.

History offers many instances of the importance of ecological processes. Humans have made major changes in their environments. They have had to adapt to the changes they made, by altering the patterns of their societies, or to disappear. This has happened in every historical period and in every part of the inhabited Earth.

Nowadays, the impact of human activities on the planet has accelerated the loss of species and ecosystems to a level comparable to a sixth mass extinction, the first driven by a living species. In order to begin reversing our environmental disaster, we must have a better understanding of our own past and the incalculable environmental costs incurred at every stage of human innovation. 

The main purpose of ODENA Institute project is to follow a path through the history of humankind in relationship to ecosystems around the whole Earth, unfold the human evolution alongside with the brain revolution, the different realities existed from 10.000 years before, where the agricultural revolution took place up to 300 hundred years ago were the industrial revolution modified nature and drained its resources. Ιn what people think about nature, and how they have expressed those ideas in folk religions, popular culture, literature and art. We hope that this project can take us beyond the distinction between human-centered and environmentally-centered discourse to a broader view that recognizes and embraces the community of life, surrounding, including, and in relationship to humans.

The experiment known in the literature as “The Tragedy of the Commons” reminds us that we need frugality and cooperation to solve environmental problems and survive