BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



imderstaod human history as an expression of human 

 nature, one must see man as an extremely complex and 

 highly variable creature basically much more akin to the 

 Canidae than to the Bovidae. It is no mere unique and 

 accidental phenomenon that the dog was the first domesti- 

 cated animal and that there is a more sympathetic and 

 intimate understanding between man and dog than between 

 man and any other animal. The thesis advanced and 

 admirably sustained by Professor Carveth Read^ that man 

 is descended from a wolf-ape which acquired a taste for 

 meat and developed the habit of hunting in packs is at 

 least plausible. Such a theory, in any case, is in harmony 

 with those conditions of life essential to the development 

 of longer legs, agility, erect stature, intelligence, lan- 

 guage, and social life. Moreover, it is in harmony, not 

 only with the universality of the hunting-pack pattern 

 in social life, but also with characteristic psychological 

 traits expressing themselves therein. Conspicuous among 

 these traits are those of leadership and following, an order 

 of precedence, rivalry, loyalty, lust of the chase and the 

 thrill of killing, cunning and strategy. The leader must 

 prove his superiority and must be followed with unswerv- 

 ing loyalty. The individual must cooperate with the pack 

 and hence must be subservient to the interests and moods 

 of his group. Nothing is more common at all stages of 

 human evolution than the formation by strong and aggres- 

 sive men of bands of followers for purposes of hunting, 

 fighting, robbing, plundering, intimidating, and otherwise 

 controlling and regulating the lives of weaker or less well- 

 organized persons. Among our Nordic ancestors, to live by 

 robbery and plunder was honorable and meritorious, and 

 the comitatus, or organization of chief, lieutenants, and 

 followers, was the unit out of which have been forged 



• Read, Carveth, "The Origin of Man," Cambridge University Press (The 

 Macmillan Company, New York), 1925- 



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