The Overcontrol of Evolution

65:2.1The story of man’s as­cent from sea­weed to the lord­ship of earthly cre­ation is in­deed a ro­mance of bi­o­logic strug­gle and mind sur­vival. Man’s pri­mor­dial an­ces­tors were lit­er­ally the slime and ooze of the ocean bed in the slug­gish and warm-wa­ter bays and la­goons of the vast shore lines of the an­cient in­land seas, those very wa­ters in which the Life Car­ri­ers es­tab­lished the three in­de­pen­dent life im­plan­ta­tions on Uran­tia.

65:2.2Very few species of the early types of ma­rine veg­e­ta­tion that par­tic­i­pated in those ep­ochal changes which re­sulted in the an­i­mallike bor­der­land or­gan­isms are in ex­is­tence to­day. The sponges are the sur­vivors of one of these early mid­way types, those or­gan­isms through which the grad­ual tran­si­tion from the veg­etable to the an­i­mal took place. These early tran­si­tion forms, while not iden­ti­cal with mod­ern sponges, were much like them; they were true bor­der­line or­gan­isms—nei­ther veg­etable nor an­i­mal—but they even­tu­ally led to the de­vel­op­ment of the true an­i­mal forms of life.

65:2.3The bac­te­ria, sim­ple veg­etable or­gan­isms of a very prim­i­tive na­ture, are very lit­tle changed from the early dawn of life; they even ex­hibit a de­gree of ret­ro­gres­sion in their par­a­sitic be­hav­ior. Many of the fungi also rep­re­sent a ret­ro­grade move­ment in evo­lu­tion, be­ing plants which have lost their chloro­phyll-mak­ing abil­ity and have be­come more or less par­a­sitic. The ma­jor­ity of dis­ease-caus­ing bac­te­ria and their aux­il­iary virus bod­ies re­ally be­long to this group of rene­gade par­a­sitic fungi. Dur­ing the in­ter­ven­ing ages all of the vast king­dom of plant life has evolved from an­ces­tors from which the bac­te­ria have also de­scended.

65:2.4The higher pro­to­zoan type of an­i­mal life soon ap­peared, and ap­peared sud­denly. And from these far-dis­tant times the ameba, the typ­i­cal sin­gle-celled an­i­mal or­gan­ism, has come on down but lit­tle mod­i­fied. He dis­ports him­self to­day much as he did when he was the last and great­est achieve­ment in life evo­lu­tion. This minute crea­ture and his pro­to­zoan cousins are to the an­i­mal cre­ation what bac­te­ria are to the plant king­dom; they rep­re­sent the sur­vival of the first early evo­lu­tion­ary steps in life dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion to­gether with fail­ure of sub­se­quent de­vel­op­ment.

65:2.5Be­fore long the early sin­gle-celled an­i­mal types as­so­ci­ated them­selves in com­mu­ni­ties, first on the plan of the Volvox and pres­ently along the lines of the Hy­dra and jel­ly­fish. Still later there evolved the starfish, stone lilies, sea urchins, sea cu­cum­bers, cen­tipedes, in­sects, spi­ders, crus­taceans, and the closely re­lated groups of earth­worms and leeches, soon fol­lowed by the mol­lusks—the oys­ter, oc­to­pus, and snail. Hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of species in­ter­vened and per­ished; men­tion is made only of those which sur­vived the long, long strug­gle. Such non­pro­gres­sive spec­i­mens, to­gether with the later ap­pear­ing fish fam­ily, to­day rep­re­sent the sta­tion­ary types of early and lower an­i­mals, branches of the tree of life which failed to pro­gress.

65:2.6The stage was thus set for the ap­pear­ance of the first back­boned an­i­mals, the fishes. From this fish fam­ily there sprang two unique mod­i­fi­ca­tions, the frog and the sala­man­der. And it was the frog which be­gan that se­ries of pro­gres­sive dif­fer­en­ti­a­tions in an­i­mal life that fi­nally cul­mi­nated in man him­self.

65:2.7The frog is one of the ear­li­est of sur­viv­ing hu­man-race an­ces­tors, but it also failed to pro­gress, per­sist­ing to­day much as in those re­mote times. The frog is the only species an­ces­tor of the early dawn races now liv­ing on the face of the earth. The hu­man race has no sur­viv­ing an­ces­try be­tween the frog and the Es­kimo.

65:2.8The frogs gave rise to the Rep­tilia, a great an­i­mal fam­ily which is vir­tu­ally ex­tinct, but which, be­fore pass­ing out of ex­is­tence, gave ori­gin to the whole bird fam­ily and the nu­mer­ous or­ders of mam­mals.

65:2.9Prob­a­bly the great­est sin­gle leap of all pre­hu­man evo­lu­tion was ex­e­cuted when the rep­tile be­came a bird. The bird types of to­day—ea­gles, ducks, pi­geons, and os­triches—all de­scended from the enor­mous rep­tiles of long, long ago.

65:2.10The king­dom of rep­tiles, de­scended from the frog fam­ily, is to­day rep­re­sented by four sur­viv­ing di­vi­sions: two non­pro­gres­sive, snakes and lizards, to­gether with their cousins, al­li­ga­tors and tur­tles; one par­tially pro­gres­sive, the bird fam­ily, and the fourth, the an­ces­tors of mam­mals and the di­rect line of de­scent of the hu­man species. But though long de­parted, the mas­sive­ness of the pass­ing Rep­tilia found echo in the ele­phant and mastodon, while their pe­cu­liar forms were per­pet­u­ated in the leap­ing kan­ga­roos.

65:2.11Only four­teen phyla have ap­peared on Uran­tia, the fishes be­ing the last, and no new classes have de­vel­oped since birds and mam­mals.

65:2.12It was from an ag­ile lit­tle rep­til­ian di­no­saur of car­niv­o­rous habits but hav­ing a com­par­a­tively large brain that the pla­cen­tal mam­mals sud­denly sprang. These mam­mals de­vel­oped rapidly and in many dif­fer­ent ways, not only giv­ing rise to the com­mon mod­ern va­ri­eties but also evolv­ing into ma­rine types, such as whales and seals, and into air nav­i­ga­tors like the bat fam­ily.

65:2.13Man thus evolved from the higher mam­mals de­rived prin­ci­pally from the west­ern im­plan­ta­tion of life in the an­cient east-west shel­tered seas. The east­ern and cen­tral groups of liv­ing or­gan­isms were early pro­gress­ing fa­vor­ably to­ward the at­tain­ment of pre­hu­man lev­els of an­i­mal ex­is­tence. But as the ages passed, the east­ern fo­cus of life em­place­ment failed to at­tain a sat­is­fac­tory level of in­tel­li­gent pre­hu­man sta­tus, hav­ing suf­fered such re­peated and ir­re­triev­able losses of its high­est types of germ plasm that it was for­ever shorn of the power to re­ha­bil­i­tate hu­man po­ten­tial­i­ties.

65:2.14Since the qual­ity of the mind ca­pac­ity for de­vel­op­ment in this east­ern group was so def­i­nitely in­fe­rior to that of the other two groups, the Life Car­ri­ers, with the con­sent of their su­pe­ri­ors, so ma­nip­u­lated the en­vi­ron­ment as fur­ther to cir­cum­scribe these in­fe­rior pre­hu­man strains of evolv­ing life. To all out­ward ap­pear­ances the elim­i­na­tion of these in­fe­rior groups of crea­tures was ac­ci­den­tal, but in re­al­ity it was al­to­gether pur­pose­ful.

65:2.15Later in the evo­lu­tion­ary un­fold­ing of in­tel­li­gence, the lemur an­ces­tors of the hu­man species were far more ad­vanced in North Amer­ica than in other re­gions; and they were there­fore led to mi­grate from the arena of west­ern life im­plan­ta­tion over the Bering land bridge and down the coast to south­west­ern Asia, where they con­tin­ued to evolve and to ben­e­fit by the ad­di­tion of cer­tain strains of the cen­tral life group. Man thus evolved out of cer­tain west­ern and cen­tral life strains but in the cen­tral to near-east­ern re­gions.

65:2.16In this way the life that was planted on Uran­tia evolved un­til the ice age, when man him­self first ap­peared and be­gan his event­ful plan­e­tary ca­reer. And this ap­pear­ance of prim­i­tive man on earth dur­ing the ice age was not just an ac­ci­dent; it was by de­sign. The rig­ors and cli­matic sever­ity of the glacial era were in ev­ery way adapted to the pur­pose of fos­ter­ing the pro­duc­tion of a hardy type of hu­man be­ing with tremen­dous sur­vival en­dow­ment.