lemurs

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.)

62:2.1A 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.

61:2.10About this time a no­table thing oc­curred in west­ern North Amer­ica: The early an­ces­tors of the an­cient lemurs first made their ap­pear­ance. While this fam­ily can­not be re­garded as true lemurs, their com­ing marked the es­tab­lish­ment of the line from which the true lemurs sub­se­quently sprang.

62:1.1The early lemurs con­cerned in the an­ces­try of the hu­man species were not di­rectly re­lated to the pre-ex­is­tent tribes of gib­bons and apes then liv­ing in Eura­sia and north­ern Africa, whose progeny have sur­vived to the pres­ent time. Nei­ther were they the off­spring of the mod­ern type of lemur, though spring­ing from an an­ces­tor com­mon to both but long since ex­tinct.

62:1.2While these early lemurs evolved in the West­ern Hemi­sphere, the es­tab­lish­ment of the di­rect mam­malian an­ces­try of man­kind took place in south­west­ern Asia, in the orig­i­nal area of the cen­tral life im­plan­ta­tion but on the bor­ders of the east­ern re­gions. Sev­eral mil­lion years ago the North Amer­i­can type lemurs had mi­grated west­ward over the Bering land bridge and had slowly made their way south­west­ward along the Asi­atic coast. These mi­grat­ing tribes fi­nally reached the salu­bri­ous re­gion ly­ing be­tween the then ex­panded Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea and the el­e­vat­ing moun­tain­ous re­gions of the In­dian penin­sula. In these lands to the west of In­dia they united with other and fa­vor­able strains, thus es­tab­lish­ing the an­ces­try of the hu­man race.

62:1.3With the pass­ing of time the sea­coast of In­dia south­west of the moun­tains grad­u­ally sub­merged, com­pletely iso­lat­ing the life of this re­gion. There was no av­enue of ap­proach to, or es­cape from, this Mes­o­po­ta­mian or Per­sian penin­sula ex­cept to the north, and that was re­peat­edly cut off by the south­ern in­va­sions of the glaciers. And it was in this then al­most par­a­di­si­a­cal area, and from the su­pe­rior de­scen­dants of this lemur type of mam­mal, that there sprang two great groups, the simian tribes of mod­ern times and the pres­ent-day hu­man species.

74:8.5Away from the in­flu­ences of Dala­ma­tia and Eden, man­kind tended to­ward the be­lief in the grad­ual as­cent of the hu­man race. The fact of evo­lu­tion is not a mod­ern dis­cov­ery; the an­cients un­der­stood the slow and evo­lu­tion­ary char­ac­ter of hu­man prog­ress. The early Greeks had clear ideas of this de­spite their prox­im­ity to Mes­o­po­ta­mia. Al­though the var­i­ous races of earth be­came sadly mixed up in their no­tions of evo­lu­tion, nev­er­the­less, many of the prim­i­tive tribes be­lieved and taught that they were the de­scen­dants of var­i­ous an­i­mals. Prim­i­tive peo­ples made a prac­tice of se­lect­ing for their “totems” the an­i­mals of their sup­posed an­ces­try. Cer­tain North Amer­i­can In­dian tribes be­lieved they orig­i­nated from beavers and coy­otes. Cer­tain African tribes teach that they are de­scended from the hyena, a Malay tribe from the lemur, a New Guinea group from the par­rot.

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.