It even goes both ways: most species change their environment to better accommodate their needs (beavers dam rivers, termites build mounds, forests modify the soil and create their own microclimate, etc.).

So it really is a complex system of adaptation to external conditions, modifying inanimate aspects of the environment to meet our needs and interactions with other species.

Human technology and -activity is not unmatched in scale (cyanobacteria are still the champions - completely remodelling Earth's atmosphere), but no other other species had the means to do it so quickly. We seem to strife for a mixture of artificial (houses, streets, technology) and versions of nature that we're fully in control of (from fish tanks and zoos to parks and gardens).

This need to "tame the land" even extends to other parts of the universe, hence the concept of "terraforming", even though adaption even if by artificial means would be much less complicated, quicker and "more natural".

And that's the secret sauce for every species that made it so far.