Apes, Anthropoid
Human-like primates such as chimpanzees, gorillas, gibbons and orangutans. They have been regarded by evolutionists to have the same ancestors as human beings. Theosophical phylogeny disagrees with this view.
In the evolutionary accounts of The Secret Doctrine, the anthropoid apes occupy a unique role distinct from other animals. They were the descendants of a “dumb race” who were the result of the mating of “senseless” humans and animals during the Third Root Race. Thus the apes appeared later than humans.
- . . . the bestiality of the primeval mindless races resulted in the production of huge man-like monsters — the offspring of human and animal parents. As time rolled on, and the still semi-astral forms consolidated into the physical, the descendants of these creatures were modified by external conditions, until the breed, dwindling in size, culminated in the lower apes of the Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the “Mindless” — this time with full responsibility. The resultants of their crime were the species of apes now known as Anthropoid. (SD II:689)
- . . . the pithecoids, the orang-outang, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee . . . descend from the animalized Fourth human Root-Race, being the product of man and an extinct species of mammal — whose remote ancestors were themselves the product of Lemurian bestiality — which lived in the Miocene age. (SD II:683)
These anthropoids are destined to die out in this round and “their monads will be liberated and pass into the astral human forms (or the highest elementals) of the Sixth and the Seventh Races, and then into lowest human forms in the fifth Round . . .” (SD I:184).
Helena P. Blavatsky explains why the Hindus gave “a divine origin to the apes and monkeys because the men of the Third Race were gods from another plane who had become ‘senseless’ mortals” (SD I:185). Thus, Hanuman, the monkey in Rāmāyaṇa, was the son of Pavana or Vāyu, god of the wind, and a monster called Kesari.
See also CHAIN, PLANETARY; ROOT RACES; DUMB RACES.
© Copyright by the Theosophical Publishing House, Manila
