camels

61:2.9The horse, an out­stand­ing ex­am­ple of evo­lu­tion, lived dur­ing these times in both North Amer­ica and Eu­rope, though his de­vel­op­ment was not fully com­pleted un­til the later ice age. While the rhinoceros fam­ily ap­peared at the close of this pe­riod, it un­der­went its great­est ex­pan­sion sub­se­quently. A small hog­like crea­ture also de­vel­oped which be­came the an­ces­tor of the many species of swine, pec­ca­ries, and hip­popota­muses. Camels and lla­mas had their ori­gin in North Amer­ica about the mid­dle of this pe­riod and over­ran the west­ern plains. Later, the lla­mas mi­grated to South Amer­ica, the camels to Eu­rope, and soon both were ex­tinct in North Amer­ica, though a few camels sur­vived up to the ice age.

61:3.5The first deer ap­peared, and North Amer­ica was soon over­run by ru­mi­nants—deer, oxen, camels, bi­son, and sev­eral species of rhinoceroses—but the gi­ant pigs, more than six feet tall, be­came ex­tinct.

61:3.10Mam­malian life con­tin­ued to evolve. Enor­mous herds of horses joined the camels on the west­ern plains of North Amer­ica; this was truly the age of horses as well as of ele­phants. The horse’s brain is next in an­i­mal qual­ity to that of the ele­phant, but in one re­spect it is de­cid­edly in­fe­rior, for the horse never fully over­came the deep-seated propen­sity to flee when fright­ened. The horse lacks the emo­tional con­trol of the ele­phant, while the ele­phant is greatly hand­i­capped by size and lack of agility. Dur­ing this pe­riod an an­i­mal evolved which was some­what like both the ele­phant and the horse, but it was soon de­stroyed by the rapidly in­creas­ing cat fam­ily.

61:4.3For a short time all the land of the world was again joined ex­cept­ing Aus­tralia, and the last great world-wide an­i­mal mi­gra­tion took place. North Amer­ica was con­nected with both South Amer­ica and Asia, and there was a free ex­change of an­i­mal life. Asi­atic sloths, ar­madil­los, an­telopes, and bears en­tered North Amer­ica, while North Amer­i­can camels went to China. Rhinoceroses mi­grated over the whole world ex­cept Aus­tralia and South Amer­ica, but they were ex­tinct in the West­ern Hemi­sphere by the close of this pe­riod.

61:4.4In gen­eral, the life of the pre­ced­ing pe­riod con­tin­ued to evolve and spread. The cat fam­ily dom­i­nated the an­i­mal life, and ma­rine life was al­most at a stand­still. Many of the horses were still three-toed, but the mod­ern types were ar­riv­ing; lla­mas and gi­raf­fe­like camels min­gled with the horses on the graz­ing plains. The gi­raffe ap­peared in Africa, hav­ing just as long a neck then as now. In South Amer­ica sloths, ar­madil­los, anteaters, and the South Amer­i­can type of prim­i­tive mon­keys evolved. Be­fore the con­ti­nents were fi­nally iso­lated, those mas­sive an­i­mals, the mastodons, mi­grated ev­ery­where ex­cept to Aus­tralia.

61:5.7These first two ice in­va­sions were not ex­ten­sive in Eura­sia. Dur­ing these early epochs of the ice age North Amer­ica was over­run with mastodons, woolly mam­moths, horses, camels, deer, musk oxen, bi­son, ground sloths, gi­ant beavers, saber-toothed tigers, sloths as large as ele­phants, and many groups of the cat and dog fam­i­lies. But from this time for­ward they were rapidly re­duced in num­bers by the in­creas­ing cold of the glacial pe­riod. To­ward the close of the ice age the ma­jor­ity of these an­i­mal species were ex­tinct in North Amer­ica.

81:2.12The And­ites of Tur­kes­tan were the first peo­ples to ex­ten­sively do­mes­ti­cate the horse, and this is an­other rea­son why their cul­ture was for so long pre­dom­i­nant. By 5000 B.C. the Mes­o­po­ta­mian, Tur­kes­tan, and Chi­nese farm­ers had be­gun the rais­ing of sheep, goats, cows, camels, horses, fowls, and ele­phants. They em­ployed as beasts of bur­den the ox, camel, horse, and yak. Man was him­self at one time the beast of bur­den. One ruler of the blue race once had one hun­dred thou­sand men in his colony of bur­den bear­ers.

156:2.8Je­sus greatly en­joyed the keen sense of hu­mor which these gen­tiles ex­hib­ited. It was the sense of hu­mor dis­played by No­rana, the Syr­ian woman, as well as her great and per­sis­tent faith, that so touched the Mas­ter’s heart and ap­pealed to his mercy. Je­sus greatly re­gret­ted that his peo­ple—the Jews—were so lack­ing in hu­mor. He once said to Thomas: “My peo­ple take them­selves too se­ri­ously; they are just about de­void of an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of hu­mor. The bur­den­some re­li­gion of the Phar­isees could never have had ori­gin among a peo­ple with a sense of hu­mor. They also lack con­sis­tency; they strain at gnats and swal­low camels.”

175:1.17“Woe upon you, scribes and Phar­isees and all other hyp­ocrites who make sure that they tithe mint, anise, and cumin and at the same time dis­re­gard the weight­ier mat­ters of the law—faith, mercy, and judg­ment! Within rea­son, the one you ought to have done but not to have left the other un­done. You are truly blind guides and dumb teach­ers; you strain out the gnat and swal­low the camel.

163:3.1By the time Je­sus had fin­ished talk­ing with Mata­dor­mus, Pe­ter and a num­ber of the apos­tles had gath­ered about him, and as the rich young man was de­part­ing, Je­sus turned around to face the apos­tles and said: “You see how dif­fi­cult it is for those who have riches to en­ter fully into the king­dom of God! Spir­i­tual wor­ship can­not be shared with ma­te­rial de­vo­tions; no man can serve two mas­ters. You have a say­ing that it is ‘eas­ier for a camel to go through the eye of a nee­dle than for the hea­then to in­herit eter­nal life.’ And I de­clare that it is as easy for this camel to go through the nee­dle’s eye as for these self-sat­is­fied rich ones to en­ter the king­dom of heaven.”