BIOLOGY OF MAN 1179 



THE HUNTING STAGE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE— Fresh 



results are ever appearing from the study of occupational types; and 

 this from earliest times onward. Before the invention of rude imple- 

 ments, and of the art of cooking with fire, man's early predecessors, 

 and even his ancestors, must have had a hard time; at seasons often 

 a very hard time, yet doubtless correspondingly selective, in making 

 their living, from whatever their hands could pick, seize, or scratch 

 out from among the various resources yielded by the plant and minor 

 animal life within reach, in fact all that their omnivorous dentition 

 and digestion could cope with. So as increasing masteries of flint 

 and fire made the hunting life possible, effective, and at length 

 predominant, we cannot but recognise how epochal was the advance 

 of which even its earliest cavern-floors and terraces are yielding 

 their records ; thus, on that level of hunting which we so long thought 

 of as but earliest and rudest savagery, we are increasingly making 

 out great and enduring beginnings of civilisation. Hence a copious 

 and ever-increasing literature, to which Sollas' Ancient Hunters 

 may be taken as example and introduction, and next, only to name 

 one other, Carveth Reid's Origin of Man. This will indeed be found 

 particularly to interest and reward the reader from its initial thesis 

 — "Man was differentiated from the Anthropoids by becoming a 

 Hunter" — a proposition more thoroughgoing than heretofore; and 

 this is well argued, first from man's early geographical and biological 

 environment, and its selective conditions, even to physical differen- 

 tiation accordingly. Thence through cultural consequences and 

 mental differentiation, with special comparisons to the psychology 

 of the hunting pack, and all that may be traced from it, as in contrast 

 to more recent doctrines, too simply derived from the herbivorous 

 herd. Thus he explains many acquisitions in culture, as from progress 

 of implements and of constructive ability, to language and to cus- 

 toms, as of marriage, and of property, and to amusements, even to 

 feast and laughter ; and again to war, as also from death to lamenta- 

 tion and burial. The moralisation of the hunter and the growth 

 of his "imaginary environment" next lead to his further volume — 

 on the Origin oj Superstitions, into which we must not enter here. 

 That much of all this hunter heritage, and of its burden too, persists, 

 alike in contemporary civilisation and in each of us, is further 

 argued : so this is no minor contribution to anthropology and social 

 science, but claims to extend throughout their range. To the 

 psychologist it teems with suggestive appeal also; yet by no means 

 least to the biological evolutionist, since the process of selection and 

 survival is not only well illustrated, but claimed, with apparent 

 justice, as affording its most vividly yet continuousl}^ dramatic 

 field in human origins and history, and perhaps in natural history 

 too. This presentment is also of great importance towards the general 

 treatment of occupational anthropology next to be considered, 



