Those Yahoos

Swift's description of what Gulliver's master has seen in the yahoos of his country calls to mind what humans would be like if we had stayed wild and without civilization and culture. Our nails would be longer. We'd be stronger, faster, and abler at climbing trees and other similar tasks. There's a tendency to fight and a lust for having a lot of things. These two factors are huge in the development of what we are now. All our modern weaponry and laws arose from quarrel settling. There's the violent way, and the peaceful way.

Gulliver's master also relates some strange behavior from the female yahoos: "At other times, if a female stranger came among them, three or four of her own sex would get about her, and stare, and chatter, and grin, and smell her all over; and then turn off with gestures, that seemed to express contempt and disdain." This observation is Swift's way of telling us he believes women have been the way they are since forever and that it is not because of culture that this phenomenon occurs.