The moral of all this is that there was abundant time before the rise of Neolithic culture (which may be called the beginning of civilisation) for the complete adaptation of mankind everywhere, by natural selection, to the life of hunters; and that, since then, there has not been time for the biological adaptation of any race to the civilised state. We shall see that natural selection has probably had some civilising influence; but any approach to complete adaptation has been impossible, not only for want of time, but also because of rapid changes in the structure of civilisation, the social protection of some eccentrics, the persistence of the hunting-life as a second resource or as a pastime, and by the frequent recurrence of warfare—that is to say, man-hunting. To civilisation we are, for the most part, merely accommodated by experience, education, tradition and social pressure. A few people seem to be adapted to civilised life from their birth, and others to the slavish life; but all inherit, more or less manifestly, the nature of the hunter and warrior. This is a necessary basis of general and social psychology; and perhaps tribal or national characters (so far as distinguishable) may be understood by assigning the conditions under which they have, in various directions, been modified from this type.
To avoid the appearance of overlooking an obvious objection, I may add that the life of the hunter does not imply an exclusively carnivorous diet, but merely that hunting is the activity upon which his faculties are bent and upon which his livelihood chiefly depends. It is most unlikely that a cousin of the frugivorous anthropoids should entirely give up his ancestral food, immediately, or perhaps at any time. Even the diet of the wolf, in North-East Canada, includes “much fruit, especially the uva-ursi”; and the coyote there also eats berries;[57] so does the jackal in India. Savage women everywhere subsist largely on roots and fruits. Dr. Keith says the teeth and jaws of the Neanderthal species were adapted to a coarse vegetable diet.[58] Yet the Neanderthal burials at La Ferrasie, La Chapelle aux Saints, Jersey and Krapina, with their implements and animal remains, leave no doubt that the species hunted the biggest game. At Krapina, besides mammoth and rhinoceros, “the cave-bear occurred abundantly, it was evidently a favourite article of diet”: the inhabitants were not fanatical vegetarians.