mid-mammals

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.

62:3.2These chil­dren grew to be a lit­tle over four feet in height. They were in ev­ery way larger than their par­ents, hav­ing longer legs and shorter arms. They had al­most per­fectly op­pos­able thumbs, just about as well adapted for di­ver­si­fied work as the pres­ent hu­man thumb. They walked up­right, hav­ing feet al­most as well suited for walk­ing as those of the later hu­man races.

62:3.3Their brains were in­fe­rior to, and smaller than, those of hu­man be­ings but very su­pe­rior to, and com­par­a­tively much larger than, those of their an­ces­tors. The twins early dis­played su­pe­rior in­tel­li­gence and were soon rec­og­nized as the heads of the whole tribe of dawn mam­mals, re­ally in­sti­tut­ing a prim­i­tive form of so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion and a crude eco­nomic di­vi­sion of la­bor. This brother and sis­ter mated and soon en­joyed the so­ci­ety of twenty-one chil­dren much like them­selves, all more than four feet tall and in ev­ery way su­pe­rior to the an­ces­tral species. This new group formed the nu­cleus of the mid-mam­mals.

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.

62:3.5And now, for al­most fif­teen thou­sand years (six hun­dred gen­er­a­tions), this crea­ture be­came the ter­ror of this part of the world. All of the great and vi­cious an­i­mals of for­mer times had per­ished. The large beasts na­tive to these re­gions were not car­niv­o­rous, and the larger species of the cat fam­ily, li­ons and tigers, had not yet in­vaded this pe­cu­liarly shel­tered nook of the earth’s sur­face. There­fore did these mid-mam­mals wax valiant and sub­due the whole of their cor­ner of cre­ation.

62:3.6Com­pared with the an­ces­tral species, the mid-mam­mals were an im­prove­ment in ev­ery way. Even their po­ten­tial life span was longer, be­ing about twenty-five years. A num­ber of rudi­men­tary hu­man traits ap­peared in this new species. In ad­di­tion to the in­nate propen­si­ties ex­hib­ited by their an­ces­tors, these mid-mam­mals were ca­pa­ble of show­ing dis­gust in cer­tain re­pul­sive sit­u­a­tions. They fur­ther pos­sessed a well-de­fined hoard­ing in­stinct; they would hide food for sub­se­quent use and were greatly given to the col­lec­tion of smooth round peb­bles and cer­tain types of round stones suit­able for de­fen­sive and of­fen­sive am­mu­ni­tion.

62:3.7These mid-mam­mals were the first to ex­hibit a def­i­nite con­struc­tion propen­sity, as shown in their ri­valry in the build­ing of both tree­top homes and their many-tun­neled sub­ter­ranean re­treats; they were the first species of mam­mals ever to pro­vide for safety in both ar­bo­real and un­der­ground shel­ters. They largely for­sook the trees as places of abode, liv­ing on the ground dur­ing the day and sleep­ing in the tree­tops at night.

62:3.8As time passed, the nat­u­ral in­crease in num­bers even­tu­ally re­sulted in se­ri­ous food com­pe­ti­tion and sex ri­valry, all of which cul­mi­nated in a se­ries of in­ternecine bat­tles that nearly de­stroyed the en­tire species. These strug­gles con­tin­ued un­til only one group of less than one hun­dred in­di­vid­u­als was left alive. But peace once more pre­vailed, and this lone sur­viv­ing tribe built anew its tree­top bed­rooms and once again re­sumed a nor­mal and semi­peace­ful ex­is­tence.

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.

62:3.10Soon af­ter the com­ple­tion of their home, this cou­ple, vet­er­ans of so many strug­gles, found them­selves the proud par­ents of twins, the most in­ter­est­ing and im­por­tant an­i­mals ever to have been born into the world up to that time, for they were the first of the new species of Pri­mates con­sti­tut­ing the next vi­tal step in pre­hu­man evo­lu­tion.

62:3.11Con­tem­po­ra­ne­ously with the birth of these Pri­mates twins, an­other cou­ple—a pe­cu­liarly re­tarded male and fe­male of the mid-mam­mal tribe, a cou­ple that were both men­tally and phys­i­cally in­fe­rior—also gave birth to twins. These twins, one male and one fe­male, were in­dif­fer­ent to con­quest; they were con­cerned only with ob­tain­ing food and, since they would not eat flesh, soon lost all in­ter­est in seek­ing prey. These re­tarded twins be­came the found­ers of the mod­ern simian tribes. Their de­scen­dants sought the warmer south­ern re­gions with their mild cli­mates and an abun­dance of trop­i­cal fruits, where they have con­tin­ued much as of that day ex­cept for those branches which mated with the ear­lier types of gib­bons and apes and have greatly de­te­ri­o­rated in con­se­quence.

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.

62:3.13Mod­ern man and the simi­ans did spring from the same tribe and species but not from the same par­ents. Man’s an­ces­tors are de­scended from the su­pe­rior strains of the se­lected rem­nant of this mid-mam­mal tribe, whereas the mod­ern simi­ans (ex­cept­ing cer­tain pre-ex­is­tent types of lemurs, gib­bons, apes, and other mon­key­like crea­tures) are the de­scen­dants of the most in­fe­rior cou­ple of this mid-mam­mal group, a cou­ple who only sur­vived by hid­ing them­selves in a sub­ter­ranean food-stor­age re­treat for more than two weeks dur­ing the last fierce bat­tle of their tribe, emerg­ing only af­ter the hos­til­i­ties were well over.

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.)

62:4.1Go­ing back to the birth of the su­pe­rior twins, one male and one fe­male, to the two lead­ing mem­bers of the mid-mam­mal tribe: These an­i­mal ba­bies were of an un­usual or­der; they had still less hair on their bod­ies than their par­ents and, when very young, in­sisted on walk­ing up­right. Their an­ces­tors had al­ways learned to walk on their hind legs, but these Pri­mates twins stood erect from the be­gin­ning. They at­tained a height of over five feet, and their heads grew larger in com­par­i­son with oth­ers among the tribe. While early learn­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with each other by means of signs and sounds, they were never able to make their peo­ple un­der­stand these new sym­bols.