Note 16 — Chapter I · PREAMBLE: ON THE ORIGIN OF WEAPONS.

Sir John Lubbock has calculated that among the North American savages the proportion of man to the animals which feed him is 1 to 750; and, as the hunter is at least four times as long-lived as his prey, the ratio might be increased, 1 to 3000. If this were so, and all the bones were preserved, there would be 3,000 bestial skeletons to one human. Without assuming with Mr. Evans (p. 584) that ‘respect for the dead may be regarded as almost instinctive in man,’ and that human remains would be buried, we here find one cause of the present insufficiency of the geologic record.