dawn mammals

62:2.1A lit­tle more than one mil­lion years ago the Mes­o­po­ta­mian dawn mam­mals, the di­rect de­scen­dants of the North Amer­i­can lemur type of pla­cen­tal mam­mal, sud­denly ap­peared. They were ac­tive lit­tle crea­tures, al­most three feet tall; and while they did not ha­bit­u­ally walk on their hind legs, they could eas­ily stand erect. They were hairy and ag­ile and chat­tered in mon­key­like fash­ion, but un­like the simian tribes, they were flesh eaters. They had a prim­i­tive op­pos­able thumb as well as a highly use­ful grasp­ing big toe. From this point on­ward the pre­hu­man species suc­ces­sively de­vel­oped the op­pos­able thumb while they pro­gres­sively lost the grasp­ing power of the great toe. The later ape tribes re­tained the grasp­ing big toe but never de­vel­oped the hu­man type of thumb.

62:2.2These dawn mam­mals at­tained full growth when three or four years of age, hav­ing a po­ten­tial life span, on the av­er­age, of about twenty years. As a rule off­spring were born singly, al­though twins were oc­ca­sional.

62:2.3The mem­bers of this new species had the largest brains for their size of any an­i­mal that had thereto­fore ex­isted on earth. They ex­pe­ri­enced many of the emo­tions and shared nu­mer­ous in­stincts which later char­ac­ter­ized prim­i­tive man, be­ing highly cu­ri­ous and ex­hibit­ing con­sid­er­able ela­tion when suc­cess­ful at any un­der­tak­ing. Food hunger and sex crav­ing were well de­vel­oped, and a def­i­nite sex se­lec­tion was man­i­fested in a crude form of court­ship and choice of mates. They would fight fiercely in de­fense of their kin­dred and were quite ten­der in fam­ily as­so­ci­a­tions, pos­sess­ing a sense of self-abase­ment bor­der­ing on shame and re­morse. They were very af­fec­tion­ate and touch­ingly loyal to their mates, but if cir­cum­stances sep­a­rated them, they would choose new part­ners.

62:2.4Be­ing small of stature and hav­ing keen minds to re­al­ize the dan­gers of their for­est habi­tat, they de­vel­oped an ex­traor­di­nary fear which led to those wise pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures that so enor­mously con­tributed to sur­vival, such as their con­struc­tion of crude shel­ters in the high tree­tops which elim­i­nated many of the per­ils of ground life. The be­gin­ning of the fear ten­den­cies of man­kind more specif­i­cally dates from these days.

62:2.5These dawn mam­mals de­vel­oped more of a tribal spirit than had ever been pre­vi­ously ex­hib­ited. They were, in­deed, highly gre­gar­i­ous but nev­er­the­less ex­ceed­ingly pug­na­cious when in any way dis­turbed in the or­di­nary pur­suit of their rou­tine life, and they dis­played fiery tem­pers when their anger was fully aroused. Their bel­li­cose na­tures, how­ever, served a good pur­pose; su­pe­rior groups did not hes­i­tate to make war on their in­fe­rior neigh­bors, and thus, by se­lec­tive sur­vival, the species was pro­gres­sively im­proved. They very soon dom­i­nated the life of the smaller crea­tures of this re­gion, and very few of the older non­car­niv­o­rous mon­key­like tribes sur­vived.

62:2.6These ag­gres­sive lit­tle an­i­mals mul­ti­plied and spread over the Mes­o­po­ta­mian penin­sula for more than one thou­sand years, con­stantly im­prov­ing in phys­i­cal type and gen­eral in­tel­li­gence. And it was just sev­enty gen­er­a­tions af­ter this new tribe had taken ori­gin from the high­est type of lemur an­ces­tor that the next epoch-mak­ing de­vel­op­ment oc­curred—the sud­den dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of the an­ces­tors of the next vi­tal step in the evo­lu­tion of hu­man be­ings on Uran­tia.

61:6.1The great event of this glacial pe­riod was the evo­lu­tion of prim­i­tive man. Slightly to the west of In­dia, on land now un­der wa­ter and among the off­spring of Asi­atic mi­grants of the older North Amer­i­can lemur types, the dawn mam­mals sud­denly ap­peared. These small an­i­mals walked mostly on their hind legs, and they pos­sessed large brains in pro­por­tion to their size and in com­par­i­son with the brains of other an­i­mals. In the sev­en­ti­eth gen­er­a­tion of this or­der of life a new and higher group of an­i­mals sud­denly dif­fer­en­ti­ated. These new mid-mam­mals—al­most twice the size and height of their an­ces­tors and pos­sess­ing pro­por­tion­ately in­creased brain power—had only well es­tab­lished them­selves when the Pri­mates, the third vi­tal mu­ta­tion, sud­denly ap­peared. (At this same time, a ret­ro­grade de­vel­op­ment within the mid-mam­mal stock gave ori­gin to the simian an­ces­try; and from that day to this the hu­man branch has gone for­ward by pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion, while the simian tribes have re­mained sta­tion­ary or have ac­tu­ally ret­ro­gressed.)

62:3.1Early in the ca­reer of the dawn mam­mals, in the tree­top abode of a su­pe­rior pair of these ag­ile crea­tures, twins were born, one male and one fe­male. Com­pared with their an­ces­tors, they were re­ally hand­some lit­tle crea­tures. They had lit­tle hair on their bod­ies, but this was no dis­abil­ity as they lived in a warm and equable cli­mate.

62:3.4When the num­bers of this new and su­pe­rior group grew great, war, re­lent­less war, broke out; and when the ter­ri­ble strug­gle was over, not a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual of the pre-ex­is­tent and an­ces­tral race of dawn mam­mals re­mained alive. The less nu­mer­ous but more pow­er­ful and in­tel­li­gent off­shoot of the species had sur­vived at the ex­pense of their an­ces­tors.

62:3.9You can hardly re­al­ize by what nar­row mar­gins your pre­hu­man an­ces­tors missed ex­tinc­tion from time to time. Had the an­ces­tral frog of all hu­man­ity jumped two inches less on a cer­tain oc­ca­sion, the whole course of evo­lu­tion would have been markedly changed. The im­me­di­ate lemur­like mother of the dawn-mam­mal species es­caped death no less than five times by mere hair­breadth mar­gins be­fore she gave birth to the fa­ther of the new and higher mam­malian or­der. But the clos­est call of all was when light­ning struck the tree in which the prospec­tive mother of the Pri­mates twins was sleep­ing. Both of these mid-mam­mal par­ents were severely shocked and badly burned; three of their seven chil­dren were killed by this bolt from the skies. These evolv­ing an­i­mals were al­most su­per­sti­tious. This cou­ple whose tree­top home had been struck were re­ally the lead­ers of the more pro­gres­sive group of the mid-mam­mal species; and fol­low­ing their ex­am­ple, more than half the tribe, em­brac­ing the more in­tel­li­gent fam­i­lies, moved about two miles away from this lo­cal­ity and be­gan the con­struc­tion of new tree­top abodes and new ground shel­ters—their tran­sient re­treats in time of sud­den dan­ger.