The origin of man / by Carveth Read.

  • Carveth Read
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    47/122 page 31
    CHAPTER IV CULTURAL CONSEQUENCES § 1. The dependence of Man upon Society both for the progress of culture and for the development of personal character is now generally recognized, and it seems to me a strong recommendation of the hypothesis I am supporting concerning his origin, that it offers a good explanation of the origin and nature of human society. Monkeys of most species, whether in the New World or in the Old, are social, living in bands of from ten to fifty or more, and may co-operate occasionally in mutual defence or in keeping watch. Baboons, indeed, are seen in herds of several hundreds; and they are credibly reported to co-operate in raiding plantations, and in defending themselves against leopards, other baboons and even human hunters1. Gibbons, again, are social, going in bands to the number of fifty. But the large anthropoids live only in families—the male orang being even of a somewhat solitary habit; three or four families of chimpanzees may for a time associate together; a party of gorillas is generally limited to the family; and the condition of these apes supplies the only datum from which to judge of the condition of our own ancestor before the differentiation. Man, however, is everywhere—with a few doubtful exceptions, probably degenerate—both social and co-operative; and the purpose of his co-operation at the level of the Australian or the Semang is instructive. It is not (as we might infer from our own life) in industry, but in hunting, war, or tribal ceremonies that tribesmen work together—the last no doubt of compara¬ tively recent origin: so that not many thousand years ago there was no co-operation except in hunting and in war (which come to the same thing). That the large anthropoids are neither gregarious nor 1 Numerous references might be given, from which I select Hagenbeck, Beasts and Men, p. 63.
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