170 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



to transform it into body-building or energizing factors. 

 The very belief that eating other warriors gave the vic- 

 torious their qualities, may easily enough have developed 

 from the fact that such a meal showed a marked difference 

 in results from those experienced with other foods. But 

 the main point to bear in mind is that warfare with objects 

 of this kind in view must have had not only very definite 

 results in cerebral growth, but also very rapid ones. After 

 a long period in which man was, perhaps, little more 

 developed than Pithecantheopus erectus, such enforced 

 organization, in groups which could develop subordina- 

 tion, and respect for ability in leaders, with the rapid 

 concomitant destruction of less plastic anthropoid stocks 

 of all kinds, must have resulted not only in the elimination 

 of most of the ground apes, while the monkeys were able 

 to preserve themselves, but also in a period of rapid pro- 

 gression in adaptability and cerebral development. Races 

 may have arisen perfectly capable of slow progression 

 to a status even higher than that of modern man, but if 

 they lacked the enforced cohesion of those who had eaten 

 up their hunting areas, and were finally driven into united 

 internecine warfare to obtain food, or prisoners who could 

 be slaves or food as necessity dictated, they would have 

 had no more chance against intrusive voracious hordes 

 with gross simian characteristics than Greece had against 

 the armies of Philip. There are even suggestions in what 

 we know of early human history which point, however 

 vaguely, towards such unrecorded tragedies. 



Among them, perhaps, may be reckoned that of the 

 disappearance of such a species of humanity as Neander- 

 thal man. His brain capacity of about 1600 c.c, while 

 that of modern man is, say, 1400 c.c, is even more superior 

 than it seems to that of the average European of the 



