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Spaceways, v. 4, issue 6, whole no. 29, 1942
Page 12
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12 SPACEWAYS DEVOLUTION defeat his enemies and prey by sticks, sharp-edged weapons, traps and stealth since he could no longer either vanquish his foes with his strength or escape from them with his nimbleness; had to cultivate an inordinate sexual proclivity to compensate for the great mortality due to his increased susceptibility to disease, had to learn to make the best of his dental deficiencies by making his food more readily masticulated. Millions of "fallen apes" probably died before one genuine mutation toward intelligence appeared on the scene who could cheat Nature by artificial means—but once the start was made, these weaklings and outcasts, the disinherited sons and daughters of apes, not only contrived to live, but actualy to flourish like some foul disease. Natural selection was still taking a great toll on these deformed, degenerate apes, but it no longer weeded out the physically unfit—if indeed it ever once did—instead, it was the weakest who survived when the not-so-far-gone specimens died off—because the weaker, the more deficient an animal was, the more intelligence he had to produce in self defence, to compensate for his handicaps, in direct ratio to the extent of his infirmities, thus producing ever poorer specimens—and ever improving brains. Why aren't there any of the species of apes and ape-men surviving in the world of modern times, to anticipate the obvious reflection the reader will advance? Why is Genus Homo represented by one single species—Sapiens; why is the race of anthropoid ape he sprang from represented today only by the inhabitants of tropical rainforests? Simple. First of all, let us glance at the world of pre-Ice Age times. In these days the world was warmer than it is today. The polar zones of cold were confined to negligible patches far to the north and south, with very little influence on the world's climate. Semi-tropical vegetation, coming down to us in fossil form from this time, tell us that a semi-tropical climate obtained in latitudes as high as Greenland and Iceland. What is now the tropical zone must have been much warmer than it is now—and here we find few traces of prehistoric man or ape-man. So here, in this unplesantly hot but still livable climate, the ancestors of the last surviving species of anthropoid ape which fathered our race—the midgets of the ape family, crowded out of the nest by their big brothers, but able to get along quite well where the competition of their larger, stronger kindred was removed—found unexploited hunting grounds, even though not as suitable climatically. These were not like our forebears—being unable to get along farther north mainly because of comparatively small size and strength which put them at a disadvantage in the competition with their larger, stronger fellows for food, but which were eminently suitable in a field where that competition was removed, rather than being at a disadvantage with respect to natural deficiencies, which involved not so much a struggle against the competition of the more favored apes, as with ruthless Nature herself, as in the case of our ancestors. The very fact that the smaller but no less well made apes were able to move about in search of fresh fields—the apes we sprang from were probably far more adapted to a pedestrian existence and less confined to hiding weakly in the tops of trees than is generally supposed—perhaps even more so than present anthropoids—and able to stand the heat and diseases probably rampant in those hot spots they were forced to live in—while the degraded apes who became our great-grandparents were forced to stick it out where they were, rigorious though competition may have been at first, points up the difference between our forebears and the forebears of our cousins in the rain-forests. We were washouts as apes, as well as being undersized; they, merely a few sizes too small. The size of dominant apes, of course, reserved for them absolute possession of all this vast pre-Ice Age semi-tropical paradise; which fact proved their undoing and preserved the smaller anthropoids like the gorilla—probably just as we find them today. The picture, as it stands, needs only one little touch to bring it up to date—to a world where this failure of an ape would be the only living represen-
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12 SPACEWAYS DEVOLUTION defeat his enemies and prey by sticks, sharp-edged weapons, traps and stealth since he could no longer either vanquish his foes with his strength or escape from them with his nimbleness; had to cultivate an inordinate sexual proclivity to compensate for the great mortality due to his increased susceptibility to disease, had to learn to make the best of his dental deficiencies by making his food more readily masticulated. Millions of "fallen apes" probably died before one genuine mutation toward intelligence appeared on the scene who could cheat Nature by artificial means—but once the start was made, these weaklings and outcasts, the disinherited sons and daughters of apes, not only contrived to live, but actualy to flourish like some foul disease. Natural selection was still taking a great toll on these deformed, degenerate apes, but it no longer weeded out the physically unfit—if indeed it ever once did—instead, it was the weakest who survived when the not-so-far-gone specimens died off—because the weaker, the more deficient an animal was, the more intelligence he had to produce in self defence, to compensate for his handicaps, in direct ratio to the extent of his infirmities, thus producing ever poorer specimens—and ever improving brains. Why aren't there any of the species of apes and ape-men surviving in the world of modern times, to anticipate the obvious reflection the reader will advance? Why is Genus Homo represented by one single species—Sapiens; why is the race of anthropoid ape he sprang from represented today only by the inhabitants of tropical rainforests? Simple. First of all, let us glance at the world of pre-Ice Age times. In these days the world was warmer than it is today. The polar zones of cold were confined to negligible patches far to the north and south, with very little influence on the world's climate. Semi-tropical vegetation, coming down to us in fossil form from this time, tell us that a semi-tropical climate obtained in latitudes as high as Greenland and Iceland. What is now the tropical zone must have been much warmer than it is now—and here we find few traces of prehistoric man or ape-man. So here, in this unplesantly hot but still livable climate, the ancestors of the last surviving species of anthropoid ape which fathered our race—the midgets of the ape family, crowded out of the nest by their big brothers, but able to get along quite well where the competition of their larger, stronger kindred was removed—found unexploited hunting grounds, even though not as suitable climatically. These were not like our forebears—being unable to get along farther north mainly because of comparatively small size and strength which put them at a disadvantage in the competition with their larger, stronger fellows for food, but which were eminently suitable in a field where that competition was removed, rather than being at a disadvantage with respect to natural deficiencies, which involved not so much a struggle against the competition of the more favored apes, as with ruthless Nature herself, as in the case of our ancestors. The very fact that the smaller but no less well made apes were able to move about in search of fresh fields—the apes we sprang from were probably far more adapted to a pedestrian existence and less confined to hiding weakly in the tops of trees than is generally supposed—perhaps even more so than present anthropoids—and able to stand the heat and diseases probably rampant in those hot spots they were forced to live in—while the degraded apes who became our great-grandparents were forced to stick it out where they were, rigorious though competition may have been at first, points up the difference between our forebears and the forebears of our cousins in the rain-forests. We were washouts as apes, as well as being undersized; they, merely a few sizes too small. The size of dominant apes, of course, reserved for them absolute possession of all this vast pre-Ice Age semi-tropical paradise; which fact proved their undoing and preserved the smaller anthropoids like the gorilla—probably just as we find them today. The picture, as it stands, needs only one little touch to bring it up to date—to a world where this failure of an ape would be the only living represen-
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