The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1892-08-13
CLIMATE AND FOOD.
Tho Two Things which Make Nations
Just What They Are.

Tho Two Things which Make Nations |
just what They Are.
In the structure Of his teeth and the |
organs of digestion, man more closely |
resembles his nearer relatives of the
ape and monkey tribe, who are vege-
tarians, than he does his more distant
relations, the carnivora. Yet there are
differences of structure which clearly
separate him from the former as well
as the latter class, and which justify us
in ranking him as omnivorous, and
adaptable in his dietetic habits to vary
ing conditions of climatic and social en-
vironment. If any argument is needed
for further scientific rebuttal of the ex-
treme vegetarian view it may be found
in the universal experience of the race.
The further back we go in human his
tory, the nearer we approach, appar-
emily, not condition of pure vegetar-
ianism, but on the contrary more gem
eral and universal use of animal food.
Men were hunters and fishermen be-
fore they adopted a pastoral or agricul-
tural life, living almost exclusively
upon the products of the chase and the
resources of the sea. In the ancient
'l1itchen middens' of Europe and
America, mingled with the shells and
bones of fish, we find animal and some
times even human bones, on which the
marks of human teeth clearly reveal
The uses to which they were put. And
if we assume before this stage of human
evolution a social or unsocial state,
when men lived exclusively on the
products of the soil, an assumption
which has no warrant in the accessible
testimony of archaeology or history, we
must imagine the condition of man
then to have been similar to that of the
Digger Indian or certain of the hill
trihes of Hindostan, who rank among
the lowest extant specimens of the hui
MAN race.
Looking at this question from the
climatic standpoint, we find in the
| tropical regions a predominance, but
not an exclusive prevalence of the vege-
tartan habit, while in the Arctic re-
| gions the native races resort almost en-
tirely to the use of animal food. In
neither of these regions do we find the
human race in its highest perfection.
Civilization received it's primary inn
pulse and has achieved its most notable
snccess in the temperate zone, and
among races which are neither eXclus-
+, lively vegetarian nor exclusively car
nivorous in their habits
The modern American and European,
as is well known, is a descendant of
one or more branches of the ancient
Aryan or European stock. 1t so
| happens that one branch of this stock,
which early separated from it's Euro
pean cousins and travelled southwark to
people the mountains and plains of In
dia, through stress of climatic and re-
ligious influences, became as nearly eX-
clusively vegetarian in its habits as
any large section of the human race
has ever been and has remained so fol
centuries. Here then, is an opportu
nifty for comparison.
The effect of the vegetarian habit
superadded to climatic conditions, has
been to develop a race nota BILE indeed
for some of it's intellectual traits, but
inferior in size, lacking in physical
stamina and energy of character, whose
millions of people easily fell a prey first
to Mohamme dan and afterward to the
| English, whose commercial enterprise
for centuries has proved inferior to that
of the small competing race of the Par
sees-their nearer blood relations-anc
which has shown itself lacking in those
essential traits which characterize oul
modern, progcf fssive civilization. Th'
great and successful men of ali age
have been those who have not departed
too widely from the mixed diet whicl
has long constituted the habit of thu
races which have peopled the temperate
regions of the earth. Food.