twins

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.