The origin of man and of his superstitions / by Carveth Read.

  • Carveth Read
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The origin of man and of his superstitions / by Carveth Read. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and can be stated very briefly; others I shall return to in the next chapter. We shall see that they all follow naturally from the above hypothesis. (1) The anthropoids are never found out of the tropical forests of Africa and Malaya (including Borneo and Sumatra). They feed chiefly on the fruits and other highly nutritious vegetable products that, all the year round, are only there obtainable. Although often coming to the ground, especially the chimpanzee and gorilla, they are adapted to living in the trees : that is their home. In contrast with their habits, Man is at home on the ground, with unlimited range over the whole planet from beyond the Arctic Circle to Tasmania and Tierra del Fuego; because on the ground (chiefly) he everywhere finds his food in the other animals whom he hunts and slays. This, then, is the condition of his emancipation from the tropical forest. It is, indeed, conceivable that a frugivorous animal, originally of the forest, should obtain a wider range by taking to a coarser diet of roots and herbage, such as suffices the Ungulates, browsing or grazing or digging with their snouts; but this would not have led to the upright gait, or the big brain, or any of the marks that distinguish Man. Not advance but retrogression must have followed such a change. (2) That the earliest men of whose condition of life we have any knowledge were hunters agrees with the hypothesis. Any other view of Man’s origin must explain how and when he became a hunter. There seems to be no reason to put the change of habits (which certainly occurred at some time) anywhere nearer than the beginning of our differentiation. The further we put it back the better it explains other modifications. (3) The erect attitude was reached by the apes in the course of adaptation to arboreal life; 1 but the erect gait as the normal mode of progression is (if we neglect the gibbons’ imperfect performance) peculiar to ourselves; and such a gait was attained because the most successful hunters followed their prey afoot upon the ground. The feeble ineffective shuffle of the anthropoids upon the ground, 1 F. Wood Jones, Arboreal Man, pp. 117-22.
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