The Dawn Races of Early Man

62:5.1From the year A.D. 1934 back to the birth of the first two hu­man be­ings is just 993,419 years.

62:5.2These two re­mark­able crea­tures were true hu­man be­ings. They pos­sessed per­fect hu­man thumbs, as had many of their an­ces­tors, while they had just as per­fect feet as the pres­ent-day hu­man races. They were walk­ers and run­ners, not climbers; the grasp­ing func­tion of the big toe was ab­sent, com­pletely ab­sent. When dan­ger drove them to the tree­tops, they climbed just like the hu­mans of to­day would. They would climb up the trunk of a tree like a bear and not as would a chim­panzee or a go­rilla, swing­ing up by the branches.

62:5.3These first hu­man be­ings (and their de­scen­dants) reached full ma­tu­rity at twelve years of age and pos­sessed a po­ten­tial life span of about sev­enty-five years.

62:5.4Many new emo­tions early ap­peared in these hu­man twins. They ex­pe­ri­enced ad­mi­ra­tion for both ob­jects and other be­ings and ex­hib­ited con­sid­er­able van­ity. But the most re­mark­able ad­vance in emo­tional de­vel­op­ment was the sud­den ap­pear­ance of a new group of re­ally hu­man feel­ings, the wor­ship­ful group, em­brac­ing awe, rev­er­ence, hu­mil­ity, and even a prim­i­tive form of grat­i­tude. Fear, joined with ig­no­rance of nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena, is about to give birth to prim­i­tive re­li­gion.

62:5.5Not only were such hu­man feel­ings man­i­fested in these prim­i­tive hu­mans, but many more highly evolved sen­ti­ments were also pres­ent in rudi­men­tary form. They were mildly cog­nizant of pity, shame, and re­proach and were acutely con­scious of love, hate, and re­venge, be­ing also sus­cep­ti­ble to marked feel­ings of jeal­ousy.

62:5.6These first two hu­mans—the twins—were a great trial to their Pri­mates par­ents. They were so cu­ri­ous and ad­ven­tur­ous that they nearly lost their lives on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions be­fore they were eight years old. As it was, they were rather well scarred up by the time they were twelve.

62:5.7Very early they learned to en­gage in ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion; by the age of ten they had worked out an im­proved sign and word lan­guage of al­most half a hun­dred ideas and had greatly im­proved and ex­panded the crude com­mu­nica­tive tech­nique of their an­ces­tors. But try as hard as they might, they were able to teach only a few of their new signs and sym­bols to their par­ents.

62:5.8When about nine years of age, they jour­neyed off down the river one bright day and held a mo­men­tous con­fer­ence. Ev­ery ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gence sta­tioned on Uran­tia, in­clud­ing my­self, was pres­ent as an ob­server of the trans­ac­tions of this noon­tide tryst. On this event­ful day they ar­rived at an un­der­stand­ing to live with and for each other, and this was the first of a se­ries of such agree­ments which fi­nally cul­mi­nated in the de­ci­sion to flee from their in­fe­rior an­i­mal as­so­ciates and to jour­ney north­ward, lit­tle know­ing that they were thus to found the hu­man race.

62:5.9While we were all greatly con­cerned with what these two lit­tle sav­ages were plan­ning, we were pow­er­less to con­trol the work­ing of their minds; we did not—could not—ar­bi­trar­ily in­flu­ence their de­ci­sions. But within the per­mis­si­ble lim­its of plan­e­tary func­tion, we, the Life Car­ri­ers, to­gether with our as­so­ciates, all con­spired to lead the hu­man twins north­ward and far from their hairy and par­tially tree-dwell­ing peo­ple. And so, by rea­son of their own in­tel­li­gent choice, the twins did mi­grate, and be­cause of our super­vi­sion they mi­grated north­ward to a se­cluded re­gion where they es­caped the pos­si­bil­ity of bi­o­logic degra­da­tion through ad­mix­ture with their in­fe­rior rel­a­tives of the Pri­mates tribes.

62:5.10Shortly be­fore their de­par­ture from the home forests they lost their mother in a gib­bon raid. While she did not pos­sess their in­tel­li­gence, she did have a wor­thy mam­malian af­fec­tion of a high or­der for her off­spring, and she fear­lessly gave her life in the at­tempt to save the won­der­ful pair. Nor was her sac­ri­fice in vain, for she held off the en­emy un­til the fa­ther ar­rived with re­in­force­ments and put the in­vaders to rout.

62:5.11Soon af­ter this young cou­ple for­sook their as­so­ciates to found the hu­man race, their Pri­mates fa­ther be­came dis­con­so­late—he was heart­bro­ken. He re­fused to eat, even when food was brought to him by his other chil­dren. His bril­liant off­spring hav­ing been lost, life did not seem worth liv­ing among his or­di­nary fel­lows; so he wan­dered off into the for­est, was set upon by hos­tile gib­bons and beaten to death.