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.

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    portionate to his actual requirements1.” This illusion results from our not reflecting that the first task of increasing intelli¬ gence is to deal appropriately with details in greater and greater number and variety, and that the details of their life, with both savage and anthropoid, are just what we cannot appreciate. Still, the anthropoid seems to have rather a lazy time of it: especially, he seems to have hardly any occasion for following out a purpose needing some time for its accom¬ plishment. This powerful stimulus the hunting life applies to carnivores, above all to dogs and wolves; and in the same way it affected our ape: compelling him to combine many activities for a considerable period of time, along with his fellows, and to direct them to one end in the actual hunting, and (later) to prosecute still other activities for a longer period in preparing weapons and snares to make the hunting more effective. Add to these considerations the development of gesture and rudi¬ ments of speech, exacting intelligence for their acquisition and increasing intelligence by their attainment, and the superiority of the lowest savage to an anthropoid is sufficiently explained. Severe must have been the selection of those that were capable of such progress, and correspondingly rapid the advance and differentiation of the species2. § 4. Using stones as weapons, and finding that broken stones do most damage, and breaking them for that purpose, the progressive hunter necessarily makes some sparks fly; and if these fall amongst dry leaves or grass, he may light a fire. “In making flint implements sparks would be produced; in polishing them it would not fail to be observed that they became hot; and in this way it is easy to see how the two methods of making fire may have originated3.” But if the 1 Natural Selection, p. 193. 2 Primates of different Families have, nevertheless, been observed when in captivity to work with great persistency at any task that excited their interest. See the account of a Cebus in Romanes’ Animal Intelligence, and of the Orang in Hornaday’s Minds and Manners of Wild Animals, ch. viii. Persistency of purpose is not wholly due to the hunting life but directed and confirmed by it. It is an universal character of effective animals—e.g., ants and spiders. 3 Avebury, Prehistoric Times, 7th ed., p. 578. 3-2
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