Primates

• descendants of mid-mammals; immediate ancestors of humans

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.)

61:6.21,000,000 years ago Uran­tia was reg­is­tered as an in­hab­ited world. A mu­ta­tion within the stock of the pro­gress­ing Pri­mates sud­denly pro­duced two prim­i­tive hu­man be­ings, the ac­tual an­ces­tors of man­kind.

• lightning struck tree in which prospective mother slept

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.

• descendants of mid-mammals; immediate ancestors of humans

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.

• descendants of mid-mammals; immediate ancestors of humans
• walked upright, largely abandoned tree life; developed language

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.

62:4.2When about four­teen years of age, they fled from the tribe, go­ing west to raise their fam­ily and es­tab­lish the new species of Pri­mates. And these new crea­tures are very prop­erly de­nom­i­nated Pri­mates since they were the di­rect and im­me­di­ate an­i­mal an­ces­tors of the hu­man fam­ily it­self.

62:4.3Thus it was that the Pri­mates came to oc­cupy a re­gion on the west coast of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian penin­sula as it then pro­jected into the south­ern sea, while the less in­tel­li­gent and closely re­lated tribes lived around the penin­sula point and up the east­ern shore line.

• greatly subject to fear
• skeletons very similar to primitive humans

62:4.4The Pri­mates were more hu­man and less an­i­mal than their mid-mam­mal pre­de­ces­sors. The skele­tal pro­por­tions of this new species were very sim­i­lar to those of the prim­i­tive hu­man races. The hu­man type of hand and foot had fully de­vel­oped, and these crea­tures could walk and even run as well as any of their later-day hu­man de­scen­dants. They largely aban­doned tree life, though con­tin­u­ing to re­sort to the tree­tops as a safety mea­sure at night, for like their ear­lier an­ces­tors, they were greatly sub­ject to fear. The in­creased use of their hands did much to de­velop in­her­ent brain power, but they did not yet pos­sess minds that could re­ally be called hu­man.

• mature at about 10; natural life span about 40 years

62:4.5Al­though in emo­tional na­ture the Pri­mates dif­fered lit­tle from their fore­bears, they ex­hib­ited more of a hu­man trend in all of their propen­si­ties. They were, in­deed, splen­did and su­pe­rior an­i­mals, reach­ing ma­tu­rity at about ten years of age and hav­ing a nat­u­ral life span of about forty years. That is, they might have lived that long had they died nat­u­ral deaths, but in those early days very few an­i­mals ever died a nat­u­ral death; the strug­gle for ex­is­tence was al­to­gether too in­tense.

62:4.6And now, af­ter al­most nine hun­dred gen­er­a­tions of de­vel­op­ment, cov­er­ing about twenty-one thou­sand years from the ori­gin of the dawn mam­mals, the Pri­mates sud­denly gave birth to two re­mark­able crea­tures, the first true hu­man be­ings.

• extinct within 5000 years of man’s appearance
• last vital link in human evolution

62:4.7Thus it was that the dawn mam­mals, spring­ing from the North Amer­i­can lemur type, gave ori­gin to the mid-mam­mals, and these mid-mam­mals in turn pro­duced the su­pe­rior Pri­mates, who be­came the im­me­di­ate an­ces­tors of the prim­i­tive hu­man race. The Pri­mates tribes were the last vi­tal link in the evo­lu­tion of man, but in less than five thou­sand years not a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual of these ex­traor­di­nary tribes was left.

• threw stones; used clubs, spicules of flint, bone

63:1.2The par­ents of this first hu­man cou­ple were ap­par­ently lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the av­er­age of their tribe, though they were among its more in­tel­li­gent mem­bers, that group which first learned to throw stones and to use clubs in fight­ing. They also made use of sharp spicules of stone, flint, and bone.

• greatly subject to fear

63:2.3They had al­ready pre­pared a crude tree­top re­treat some half-day’s jour­ney to the north. This was their se­cret and safe hid­ing place for the first day away from the home forests. Not­with­stand­ing that the twins shared the Pri­mates’ deathly fear of be­ing on the ground at night­time, they sal­lied forth shortly be­fore night­fall on their north­ern trek. While it re­quired un­usual cour­age for them to un­der­take this night jour­ney, even with a full moon, they cor­rectly con­cluded that they were less likely to be missed and pur­sued by their tribes­men and rel­a­tives. And they safely made their pre­vi­ously pre­pared ren­dezvous shortly af­ter mid­night.

• replenished fire kindled by lightning

63:2.7The Pri­mates an­ces­tors of An­don had of­ten re­plen­ished fire which had been kin­dled by light­ning, but never be­fore had the crea­tures of earth pos­sessed a method of start­ing fire at will. But it was a long time be­fore the twins learned that dry moss and other ma­te­ri­als would kin­dle fire just as well as birds’ nests.

• Andonites assimilated better strains of

65:3.4Even the loss of An­don and Fonta be­fore they had off­spring, though de­lay­ing hu­man evo­lu­tion, would not have pre­vented it. Sub­se­quent to the ap­pear­ance of An­don and Fonta and be­fore the mu­tat­ing hu­man po­ten­tials of an­i­mal life were ex­hausted, there evolved no less than seven thou­sand fa­vor­able strains which could have achieved some sort of hu­man type of de­vel­op­ment. And many of these bet­ter stocks were sub­se­quently as­sim­i­lated by the var­i­ous branches of the ex­pand­ing hu­man species.