gorillas

• gorillas

61:3.12The bi­o­logic de­vel­op­ments of this pe­riod con­tributed much to­ward the set­ting of the stage for the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of man. In cen­tral Asia the true types of both the prim­i­tive mon­key and the go­rilla evolved, hav­ing a com­mon an­ces­tor, now ex­tinct. But nei­ther of these species is con­cerned in the line of liv­ing be­ings which were, later on, to be­come the an­ces­tors of the hu­man race.

• gorillas

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.

62:3.12And so it may be read­ily seen that man and the ape are re­lated only in that they sprang from the mid-mam­mals, a tribe in which there oc­curred the con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous birth and sub­se­quent seg­re­ga­tion of two pairs of twins: the in­fe­rior pair des­tined to pro­duce the mod­ern types of mon­key, ba­boon, chim­panzee, and go­rilla; the su­pe­rior pair des­tined to con­tinue the line of as­cent which evolved into man him­self.