That is, so to say, the last and most significant discovery in paleontology. Science progressed as far, as to return to the world conception of the Bushmen, considered to be the most primitive tribe on Earth. Namely, if you ask the nature nation about their opinion of where the forest apes came from, they all would tell you, that apes are former humans, who lost their spiritually-moral character (and not that humans are evolved monkeys, who gained spirit and morals). Indian and Aztec myths tell us the same: prior to this, previous generations of mankind existed, that did not succeed. They did not express names of their creators, they refused to worship them, therefore they were repudiated. Remnants of these generations scattered into the forest as apes. This motion is also found at different three places in Quran: God damned those, who didn't respect commandments and turned them in monkeys (7:166, 2:65, 5:60).
Scientists are now returning to this old religious truth, like lost sons returning back home. Responsible for this return is a fossil called Ardipithecus ramidus, found in the Afari desert in Ethiopia. With is age of 4.4 million years, it is the oldest relatively complete skeleton of a hominid. A special issue of the magazine Science was dedicated to the conclusion of the 17 years of lasting research, with contributions from more than 50 specialists.
Up until now we somehow assumed that the common ancestor of humans and apes was ape-like, most likely similar to a chimpanzee. This fact was depicted by the flag picture of Darwinism: the “apeman”, who gradually straightened up to a human. Ardipithecus somehow turns this idea on its head. He is namely located so deep in the evolutional tree, that it tells something about the real appearance of our last common ancestor with the monkeys. “...research on Ardi suggests humans are far more primitive in an evolutionary sense than today’s great apes – like chimps and gorillas – which have continued to evolve from the missing link... In a way we’re saying that the old idea that we evolved from a chimpanzee is totally incorrect. It’s more proper to say that chimpanzees evolved from us.” said Owen Lovejoy, one of the primary specialists, working on the research of Ardiphitecus.1 The picture has to be redrawn: an erected creature will cringe, grow hair, become wilder and sink back on four legs, evolving into a monkey.
Up until now we thought, that development of man was a side-effect of climatic changes in Africa – recession of forest and accession of savanna: together, with the receding forests, monkeys fell from trees and in the savanna looked up and around in order to see predators. This assumption failed, when the experts identified the Ardipithecus’ environment and the plants and animals in it. Already in the forest he walked upright. He did not have a big brain, but had several human-like features. Among others, was a human-like pelvis adjusted to an upright walk. He did not run around on his four legs supported by the knuckles of the fore limbs, as the recent apemen, although he was a good climber and could grip branches with the toe of his foot.
His set of teeth was also human-like. Recent big apes have their canine teethes fearfully protruding and they grin when fighting. They belong to their pronounced sexual dimorphism – big difference between the males and the females. Such physiognomy is a sign of a strong visceral life, aggressive and a promiscuous way of life in the bands, where the males fight for females. Ardi’s canine tooth protrudes only a little bit more than human’s and the differences between the sexes were small, just as by humans. That bears witness to a mild character and way of life. To put it in a different way: our ancestor was not a rough apeman, who would become ennobled. It is the other way around; apemen was our descendant, who became wild. The Ardiphitecus probably lived in communities of mutual support, cooperation and lived in monogamous, mutually faithful bonds. The savanna hypothesis was replaced by a new hypothesis about the development: Ardi needed free hands in order to bring food to his faithful wife. A Christian missionary, traveling in time and finding himself in Pliocene could without a problem baptize Ardi and his family. Right next to him he would find his less refined relatives, who abandoned Ardi's community and started to live in a lascivious sexual and aggressive way of life. These were the ancestors of today's gorillas and chimpanzees.
Paleontology began 155 years ago with the discovery of a Neanderthal. Ever since it’s history is a history of a repeated error. This suggests, that man came out of the fight for earthly survival and therefore came out of the animal-like beasts, who constitute his past. The understanding about this past changes dramatically. The last Neanderthals died out 28.000 years ago. Their features were coarser than features of the recent (Cro-Magnon) man; a robust skeleton, strong arms and super orbital arch. Right after his discovery we projected our fantasies about our brutal ancestor into the Neanderthals. In the museums he stood hunched and haired: a killer with a bludgeon in his hands. According to this image we were still big savages not so long ago. Only later it was revealed that the Neanderthal is not our ancestor. A long time before him lived the Heidelberg man, who is our ancestor. Only part of the Heidelberg men evolved in the coarser direction towards the Neanderthals. Also, the Neanderthal was not such a brute. He lived socially, he took care of his sick, and he put flowers on the graves of his deceased. His ape-like looks and character were vastly overstated.
Today the experts understand that the previous image of the Neanderthal was a pure projection of the cultural milieu of the epoch between the two world wars and of the western imperialism. The pseudo-scientific theories about the origin of humans and about the inherited instincts, helped to explain away the politically proclaimed right of the stronger to subjugate other nations, markets and territories. However, museum’s curators these days complain that the truthful reconstruction of the Neanderthals does not fascinate and attract many visitors.
The same erroneous thinking was repeated several times, where the assumed god-less ancestor of humans was pushed more and more into the past. Among the Neanderthals we also distinguish two branches: a robust one (coarser, earthly) and gracil one (delicate, more human-like). However, the gracil forms do not follow the robust ones, as to expect by the evolution from the bottom to the top, but the other way around. Not by ennobling, but by coarsening.
Ardipitecus told us the same story about parting of men and apemen more than 6 million years ago and definitely clarified their mutual relationships. Rather than men evolving from apes through hominisation, big apes evolved out of a man-like form on a path that could be named gorillisation: on a smooth skull raises the sagittal crest, the snout starts to dominate over the cranium, the spine curves and the creature falls back on its four.
At the end of the 19th century it was revived according to the traditional spiritual teachings on one hand and by Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy in the context of the Haeckel’s discovery of the biogenetic law on the other: “These critters evolved further, however on a descending lineage and so the ape race comes into being. Therefore we cannot say that men evolved from monkeys...”.2 Steiner edited and issued Goethe’s writings in the Goethe’s archive in Weimar. He and anthropologists- philosophers (Arnold Gehlen) and Goetheanist biologists (Wolfgang Schad) further elaborated the ideas of the poet-biologist’s apprehension.3,4,5
Goethe by observing the metamorphosis of the plants arrived to a concept of a primeval plant, not in a sense of an evolutionary predecessor of plants, but as a spiritual archetypal image, from which we can, through metamorphosis, derive all types of plants. By the search of the primeval animal Goethe came close to an apprehension of an essence of human. The harmonious middle, from which we can think of deriving all animal forms – that is the human. For example, man is the only one having his set of teeth developed harmoniously evenly. From a human’s set of teeth we can derive all types of teeth of mammals: Set of teethes of rodents with long incise teeth, predator’s teeth with brute canine teeth, also a set of teeth of ruminants with their pronounced molars and lapsed canine teeth. This is the way it also played out in the evolution – the harmonious set of teeth specialized to adapt to the various ways of life. A reverse development is not possible. The lapsed teeth will not come back and the specialized teeth will not through selection become generic again.
This process is also true for the human hand. Only man has the archetypal, non-specialized hand. From it we can derive limbs of all four-legged animals: fish’s fins, bird’s wings, horse’s hoofs. This way it really evolved and it is repeated also by the development of the animal fetuses: a five-finger palm will through an extreme elongation of the middle finger become a wing, by merging of the three fingers in the middle become a hoof, etc. Only man kept the original, five-fingers hand, suitable for nothing special, but capable with the help of tools of doing everything, what can all the animals do together. The human hand is older and more original than all other limbs of the vertebrates that evolved from it.
The human head is original among the heads of apes as well. Did you ever see a seven month old fetus or a new born chimpanzee? It looks like a human being. It has a high, vaulted forehead and a round skull: a straight face without an elongated snout; his body is not furry, hair only grows on his head as it is by men. It is a morally heart-rending picture, when this little human with an intelligently bemused look begins to grow fur, on his skull grows the sagittal crest, the brow bone raises, the snout grows bigger and deadly canines burst out of it. If the Haeckel’s law holds true, saying that the development of an individual is a repetition of the evolution of the whole species, then in front of our eyes plays out the story of a man degenerating into a monkey. The thinking form transforms into a form ruled by instincts and with it also the psychological abilities degenerate. Young monkeys are still capable of self-perception – the older monkey do not know about the self. How do we know that? When in the jungle after rain form puddles, let’s paint a red mark on the chimpanzee’s foreheads. The monkeys will look in the mirror on the water surface. The younger ones will touch their foreheads since they are aware that the picture in the water is theirs. The adults do not understand anymore what they see. Monkeys once had a spirit, just as humans do, but they lost it.
The standing of man in the evolution therefore seems paradoxically twofold. On one hand man appears physically as last, after all animals. On the other hand it looks as man himself embodies at best the spiritual primeval image preceding all animals. The evolution of nature namely contains two opposing movements: one descending, concerning the material forms, directed from the simpler to the more complex. The second one is ascending and concerns the spiritual primeval images descending into the matter and organizing it. Darwinists see only the first movement, hence only half of the truth, they don’t understand the second movement, not even when it unfolds in front of their eyes. Stephen Jay Gould, one of the last distinguished innovators of paleontology, described the evolution of men as a story of a creature, who always keeps the young, original, versatile features (this is also called neoteny or pedomorphy).6 However, it does not make sense to him, by what accident could a man assume such a unique position, reminding him of the biblical teaching about the crown of the creation.
Man is characterized by the versatility and by some un-pronouncement of the forms. He is potentially capable of development in all-possible directions, but he does not pursue any of them and keeps all of their manifestations in his soul. This is how the spirit manifests itself and it is also the definition of the Sun principle, which in the ancient wisdom symbolizes the spirit. All life has one DNA and that proves the continuity of the physical life in the whole family tree from the protozoans to the primates. In the middle of this evolution, however, always existed one main solar branch of evolution, which was the carrier of the spirit. Also the tree of life, just as every tree, has its central bud, where the undifferentiated cell masses are located and wherefrom it develops always higher and higher, while the side branches bring flowers, fruits and seeds in which they end their growth.
For seventeen years I have been presenting the following picture of evolution in lectures at the School of Angelology: Man seems, from the material point view, as the last creation of the nature, but from the spiritual point of view he is the first-born and the only one from the beginning intended son. The primeval human is a spirit, comprising within harmoniously evenly spread all soul principles (the whole zodiac). Evolution starts through descending of this spiritual primeval man into the matter. The individual life forms and organ systems develop according to the order of the zodiac signs. The animals evolved from humans by completely succumbing to the creative impulse at the time of the working of one of the archetypes (zodiac signs) and they extremely developed one or another organ system. They specialized and materialized earlier than man, who preserved in self a moderate balance. Every animal evolved from man by succumbing to some of the soul instinct, which man resisted, and represents the physical embodiment of this instinct.
Man has within, psychologically, the whole zodiac, all properties, which are outside in the nature unfolded in the individual animal species. The choleric ferocity of the predators, the sanguine fleetness of birds, also the phlegmatic vegetation of the cattle (symbolized by the fixed signs of Lion, Eagle and Taurus) are all within man. But they are inside only psychologically and they are in balance. They did not pour out into a one-sided physical corpus of the predator, bird or a bovine and thanks that man kept his freedom, in contrast to animals who must obey their organs.
The axis of evolution was always represented by the solar middle line, which could not become extinct, since it preserved the plasticity and its connection with the creative forces of the Spirit. It never descended too much into the matter. Through this middle line evolution always progressed further and further, since it received archetypes manifested as macroevolution. From this main branch it continuously disengaged lateral branches that became heavier and coarser. They specialized too much, became earthly, lost their plasticity and capability to be further formed by the spiritual impulses and to evolve. They petrified in a full adaptation and then they either became extinct because of the change in their environment or they exist without a change for hundreds of millions of years, until today. Precisely because the solar line was so delicate, docile and permeated by spirit, it is almost invisible in the fossil record. We mainly find the lateral branches, having ossified those parts that in the central line stayed as soft tissue. We find a whole array of extinct, fully developed forms with missing interlinks. Interlinks must have existed, however the next instance never evolved from the previous, since that froze in the specialization and was not capable of change. The next development always proceeded from the child forms of the preceding instances that stayed small, soft and generically unpronounced.
There are the two antipodal movements in evolution. One is continually rejuvenating, as if returning to the primeval state and to versatility, through which the spirit constantly moves forward. The second one is inductive of maturity, aging, specialization, and pronouncement. The first could be called caelomorphic (moving up to the heaven) and the second terramorphic (dragging down to the Earth). Darwin discovered the second movement: macroevolution, enabling survival through specialization to a given environment. For a short-term it always means success, for the long-term extinction.
These are the laws of evolution, which have a universal validity for the nature as well as for a culture. Also among the nations, one steps forward by developing more of one ability and thus it becomes the bearer of a whole cultural epoch. It builds a successful civilization and for this reason it loses the ability to be a carrier of the next, newer spiritual impulse of the following epoch. Younger, more open nations will be chosen instead as the carriers of the future. This way come the alteration of cultural epochs about.
Where are the ancient Egyptians or Greeks today, who were once the avant-garde of the human culture? And who are the bearers of the terramorphic and caelomorphic streams at the present? If we should point somebody within the Indo-European race, it would be Americans and Slavs. Indo-Europeans, who embarked from their ancient homeland to the West, entered into the terramorphic stream. It has been as if the western nation under its influence matured and aged faster. They developed a more pronounced individualities, technology and success. The nations staying in the East kept a stronger connection with the caelomorphic stream, they stayed younger, less developed, but opened up to new development. The rejuvenating forces namely come from the East, on the West stream from the Earth powers, which make us older.7
An American wants to be the best in some special area and he goes after an earthly success at the cost of abandoning other dimensions of his personality. A Slav does not excel above him in any unilateral ability, but his soul is more versatile and pious, which connects him emotionally with the provenance. Americans are united with the powers of the Earth and they are strong, yet Slavs are loved by the heavens. The science-fiction literature serves as the Rorschach test, revealing the sub consciousness of both cultures. If we do not know anything about the extraterrestrials, then what are they like? When an American closes his eyes, he sees them as Martians – as a race technically equipped with guns all the way to the teeth and they came here to enslave us and to occupy our Earth. All around him he sees some degenerated mutants with ultra-specialized corporal organs giving them advantage in survival, building a barbaric civilization on the debris of ours. When a Slav closes his eyes, he sees a noble human archetype – to him it seems like a civilization of a higher degree of evolution watches somewhere and waits for the time when it will be able to give us a helping hand.
Both cultures see their own future. One aims into a lateral branch with dead end, fascinated by the brute physical force. The second prepares to be a bearer of the next cultural level in the development of mankind. Deep inside of one lays egotism, the other a premonition of a sacrifice it needs to bring. Americanization is a cultural equivalent to gorillisation, dinosaurisation in the nature.
Darwinism mirrors the Anglo-American realities aimed at the competitive struggle. It sees in the nature only its own character. On the other hand, from Russia came completely opposite concepts about cooperation and love as an evolutionary driving force, which are – as we know already – at least as much truthful. If they came out of West, they came from women, not from men. Of both sexes, woman is namely the gracil, man the robust type. Man’s corporeal composition follows all signs of the terramorphism one degree further than woman’s, who keeps the juvenile and more receptive physiognomy. Man is stronger and more successful earthly, but woman preserves finer, more intuitive connection with the universe.
So, how come science “discovers” and makes news from things we knew about long time ago? How many more truthful ideas are scientists suppressing right now, so that in about fifteen-twenty years they themselves can reap laurels and fame? Where is the problem? If sophiology can predict profound discoveries in advance, it is thanks to the fact that it is integral. A sophiologist integrates an empirical, rational and also intuitive dimension. Mainstream specialists each linger upon one of the stones of mosaic, but they miss the whole picture. They can be excellent empiricists, but they are usually bad philosophers and thinkers. From the wisdom of the wholeness I can think in the right way together with the nature and look at the world through the eyes of its creative intelligences – and apprehend, foretell Ardipitecus’ appearance. The paleontologists have to physically dig out his skeleton and be surprised about their thinking parts with the reality. However they will continue to make the same errors in thinking. Ardipithecus is not one unique case, there is a whole set of them. In December 2006 on the cover of the nature magazine appeared a flying squirrel, Volaticotherium antiquum. What I explained years before, came true, namely that the mammals sailed through the air much earlier, together with the Jurassic ancient birds, not only during the Cenozoic, as previously assumed.
If we put the skulls of the fossil hominids on a table, we have the facts in front of us. But to put them in the order of the tree of evolution is a task of the human thinking. The paleo-anthropologists here amid the empirical facts continuously impose their own erroneous ideas, emanated only from their own personal sub-consciousness. And they are not aware of it, since they lack self-knowledge and spiritual work on self. They only innovate the artificial tools of into an impeccable perfection, but the main tool of exploration – namely their own mind – they do not perfect, since they consider it perfect already. The exact facts in the science are being put together with the personal sub-consciousness of the scholars, at the same time they are absolutely not aware about their own derailment, since they do not know the great archetypes of human psychology and of the creativity in its purity and fullness, or better to say, they are not aware of them at all.
Sophiology is not a freakish pseudo-science, but an indispensable imperative of the scientific exploration! Every analysis must be compensated by a synthesis. The particulars start to make sense only in the light of the whole and the whole is tested by the particulars. Synthetic thinking by itself would lead us inevitably to spirituality, when at the same time the one sided emphasis on the analytical thinking methods jerked us down towards materialism. If we want to stay on the solar forehead of life, pointing into the future, we must keep both these principles in balance. This is also an important impulse for pedagogy: do not dream that children will excel in some special ability from their cribs on. Young geniuses will in later age stumble and clash. The heavenly line is characterized from the beginning of life by holding back in the phase of versatility, by prolonged maturing and by postponing the moment of specialization to a later time. The earthly line is characterized by a short childhood, fast specialization and independence of the young, but also by the loss of freedom. If we choose the first one, our children grow into more healthy, responsible and creative people – they will become more human.
--Emil Páleš
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1 Jenny Kolber: Apes descended from Humans – NOT the other way around.
http://www.articlesafari.com/2011/05/apes-descended-from-humans/
2 Rudolf Steiner: Menschheitsentwickelung und Christus-Erkenntnis. Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, 1981, s. 245.
3 Arnold Gehlen: Der Mensch, seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt. Junker&Dünnhaupt, Berlin, 1940.
4 Wolfgang Schad: Säugetiere und Mensch. Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, 1971.
5 Jos Verhulst: Der Erstgeborene. Mensch und höhere Tiere in der Evolution. Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, 1999.
6 Stephen Jay Gould: Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Belknap, Cambridge,1977.
7 Stephen Jay Gould: The Mismeasure of man. Norton, New York, 1981.
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From Wikipedia (translated): Páleš is a trained Cyberneticist, teaching computational linguistics at the Department of Artificial Intelligence Mathematics and Physics, Comenius Universityin Bratislava. From 1989 to 1994 he led the The Institute of Linguistics Štúr Slovak Academy of Sciences research project "Computer Slovak model ', and also worked in the research of artificial intelligence. He publishes and lectures at home and abroad.
