The Jurassic Period and the Sons of Mind:

The 100 year period of the triangle of Leo, Capricorn, and Pisces 1875-1975 EA 538.

These three constellations are: Leo, Capricorn and Pisces. These are curiously and most mysteriously related to the fourth kingdom in nature and therefore to the evolution and the destiny of the human family.

This relation and intensification of vibration occurred [also]: At the time of the coming of the Sons of Mind to the Earth during the Lemurian age. EA 538.

The Sons of Mind, of Venusian origin. EA 188.

As far as the evolution of manas in this round is concerned its highest efflorescence may be looked for during the next five hundred years. TCF 499.

The evolution of humanity upon this planet about 18 million years ago, during the middle of the Lemurian, or third root race. LOM 355.

The Sun was in Sagittarius when the first human tendencies struggled to the fore. The stage of animal man was completed and when Sagittarius was dominant (from our planetary standpoint - I am using words with care) the great event of individualization took place. But the brain of the then human being failed to register what had happened. In the words of the Old Commentary:

"The sons of God shot forth like arrows from the bow. The forms received the impulse and lo! a God was born. The tiny babe knew not the great event."

The fourth active constellation was Gemini. EA 538.

At the time of the coming in of the lords of flame, an occult 100-year cycle commencing with the emerging energy of Gemini. This intensification of vibration enabled the individualized recognition of either sex. A councious recognition of gender was registered. Leo brought full self conciousness of "I am." JPC.

The Separation of the Sexes in the early third root-race, the Lemurian. The same historical fact is hinted at also in the Bible in Genesis VI, 2:4.

"They (the sexes) had already separated before the ray of divine reason had enlightened the dark region of their hitherto slumbering minds. TCF 563.

This took place twenty-one million years ago. Cycles passed and when at a later date the sun was in Leo (approximately eighteen million years ago) the first instances of coordination between brain and mind took place and the human being was definitely self-conscious. He registered his individuality. The figures for the first date (though exactness is not possible in a system of mutation such as ours) are 21,688,345 years ago. These figures are useless at this time for they can neither be proved correct nor incorrect. Later investigation will prove their usefulness, when the nature of time is better understood. Sagittarius governs human evolution, for it symbolizes progress towards a conscious goal. Leo governs the human consciousness in the human kingdom for the energy pouring through it enables man to say "I am". 

There is naught known about the races of men who lived those millions of years ago; naught is known of the civilization which flourished in early Atlantean times twelve million years ago; naught is known at all of the still more ancient Lemurian civilization which goes back more than fifteen million years; still less is known of that twilight period which existed twenty-one million years ago when men were scarcely human and when they were so closely related to the animal kingdom that we call them by the cumbersome name of "animal-man." EH 226.

The third kingdom of nature, the animal kingdom, had reached a relatively high state of evolution, and animal man was in possession of the earth; he was a being with a powerful physical body, a coordinated astral body, or body of sensation and feeling, and a rudimentary germ of mind which might some day form a nucleus of a mental body. Left to himself for long aeons animal man would have eventually progressed out of the animal kingdom into the human, and would have become a self-conscious, functioning, rational entity, but how slow the process would have been may be evidenced by the study of the bushmen of South Africa, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and the hairy Ainus. IHS 31.

The relation of the animals to man has been purely physical in the long past ages. Animals preyed upon men in the days when animal-man was but little removed from them. It is oft forgotten that there was a stage in human development when animal-man and the existent forms of animal life lived in a much closer relation than today. Then, only the fact of individualization separated them.

It was, however, an individualization so little realized that the difference between the mindless animal (so-called) and infant humanity was scarcely appreciable. In those distant aeons, much transpired which has been lost in the dark silence of the past. The animal world was then far more potent than the human, men were helpless before the onslaughts of the animals, and the devastation wrought by animals upon early animal-men in mid-Lemurian days was terrible and appalling. Little nomadic groups of human beings would be completely wiped out, age after age, by the powerful animal life of the period, and though instinct taught the animal-men to take certain precautions, it was an instinct but little removed from that found in their enemies.

It was only as the millennia of years passed away, and human intelligence and cunning began to assert themselves, that humanity became more powerful than the animals and in its turn devastated the animal kingdom. Up until two hundred years ago the toll of life exacted by the animal world from the human, in the forests of the western continents, in Africa, in the primeval lands of Australia and in the islands of the tropic seas, was incalculable. This is a fact often forgotten in the sentimentality of a moment, but it lies at the root of man's cruelty to animals. EP1 256.

The Fall of man into generation occurred during the earliest portion of what science calls the Mesozoic times, or the age of the reptiles. SD2 204.

The early Third produced the monsters, great beasts and evil forms. They prowled upon the surface of the sphere. Stanza of Dzyan. TCF 29.

The Jurassic period, or the middle of the so-called "Reptilian" age (when the Third Race appeared), up to the Miocene, when the bulk of the Fourth Race was submerged? SD2 156.

Either the early Secondary, or the Primary ages of geology. The secondary or "Reptilian" SD2 157.

Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk of the Third Race. SD2 207.

The animals of the first ray are no longer in existence on earth. EP1 164.

The waters came and swept away the progenitors of the fluidic spawn. Stanza of Dyzan. TCF 29.

Exoteric scientific dating is inaccurate and it must be remembered that the fall into individualization of the third race happened in the Jurassic period or second third of the Mesozoic era. So forget compemperary scientific dating and accounting of cave men below and let the imagination carry you through the descriptive account. JPC.

Mesozoic ("Middle Life") Era:

This is the second of three geologic eras squeezed into the Phanerozoic ("Evident Life") Eon that covers the last 10% of Earth's whole geologic history. This is the era we all think of when we imagine the Ancient Earth! Rampaging dinosaurs! Dive-bombing pterodactyls! Endless forests of giant ferns! Erupting Volcanoes! (Sorry, no cave men! They didn't show up until the end of the Cenozoic.)

The Mesozoic Era lasted about 180 million years, from about 245 million years ago to about 65 million years ago. The Mesozoic is divided into just three time periods: the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous. Since lots of things were going on in each time period, we can only summarize the events. You can learn more by going to your library or searching the Internet for words like "Mesozoic" or the names of each of the periods.

In the view above, we see Earth in the middle of the Jurassic Period, in mid-Mesozoic times (sort of a middle-middle view). The supercontinents Gondwanaland and Laurasia collided some time back to form a single super-super continent called Pangea ("All-Earth"). But plate tectonics continues its irresistible motions, and even as we look, Pangea is beginning to break up into the continents we know now. At upper left, North America is just breaking away from the northwest coast of Africa, and the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico are beginning to form. The Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States are a high, rugged mountain range, something like the Rocky Mountains of today. Over the next fifty million years or so, South America, India, and Antarctica will all break away from Africa and move toward their present positions.

Life is diversifying rapidly, and beginning to look familiar. The dominant animals on both land and sea are reptiles, the most famous of which are the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs began in the Triassic, spread during the Jurassic, and dominated Earth in the Cretaceous. They are so prominent that the Mesozoic is also called "The Age of Reptiles." But dinosaurs are not the only life form around: birds and mammals also appear during the Mesozoic, as well as deciduous trees and flowering plants.

The climate during the Mesozoic is warm; so warm that there are no ice caps at all, even at the poles! Plants grow like crazy in the warmth and moisture, so there is food everywhere for your average hungry 50-ton Ultrasaurus! So what happened to this Dino Paradise? More change! A mass extinction like those in the Paleozoic ended the idyllic Mesozoic Era (if you can call dodging your friendly local T-Rex as idyllic). More than half of all existing life forms disappeared, including virtually all of the dinosaurs. Why? There are many hypotheses, including disease, volcanic eruptions, and giant impacts. www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/msese/earthsysflr/mesozoic.html

The Devonian, with its predominance of fish and first appearance of reptiles; the Mesozoic with its batrachians (or frog family); the Secondary formations, in which reptiles of the sea, land and air preponderated, and the first humble forms of vertebrate land animals began to appear; and finally, the Tertiary, in which mammalian life has become abundant, and type succeeding to type and species to species, are gradually differentiated and specialized, through the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods, until we arrive at the Glacial and Pre-historic periods, and at positive proof of the existence of man.

The same order, plus the description of animals unknown to modern science, is found in the commentaries on the Puranas in general, and in the Book of Dzyan -- especially. SD2 293.

The early Third produced the monsters, great beasts and evil forms. They prowled upon the surface of the sphere.
   
The watery Fourth produced within the watery sphere, reptiles and spawn of evil fame, the product of their karma. The waters came and swept away the progenitors of the fluidic spawn.
   
The separating Fifth built in the rupa sphere the concrete forms of thought. They cast them forth. They peopled the lower four, and like a black and evil cloud shut out the light of day. The higher three were hid. Stanza of Dzyan. TCF 29.

Having passed through all the kingdoms of nature in the previous three Rounds, his physical frame -- one adapted to the thermal conditions of those early periods -- was ready to receive the divine Pilgrim at the first dawn of human life, i.e., 18,000,000 years ago. It is only at the mid-point of the 3rd Root Race that man was endowed with Manas. SD2 293.

Titans -- men of a superhuman tremendous physical power, which enabled them to defend themselves, and hold at bay the gigantic monsters of the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic times. SD2 293.

The watery Fourth produced within the watery sphere, reptiles and spawn of evil fame, the product of their karma. The waters came and swept away the progenitors of the fluidic spawn. Stanza of Dyzan. TCF 29.

The reader is asked to bear in mind that when we speak of "animals," the mammalians alone are meant. Crustacea, fishes, and reptiles are contemporary with, and most have preceded physical man in this Round. All were bisexual, however, before the age of mammalia in the closing portion of the secondary or Mesozoic ages, yet nearer to the Palaeozoic than the Cenozoic ages. Smaller marsupial mammalia are contemporary with the huge reptilian monsters of the Secondary. SD2 504.

Physical man, we say, existed before the first bed of the Cretaceous rocks was deposited. In the early part of the Tertiary Age, the most brilliant civilization the world has ever known flourished at a period when the Haeckelian man-ape is conceived to have roamed through the primeval forests.

The Tertiary age began 15 million of years ago.  A more correct calculation, according to Esoteric doctrine. SD2 265.

The Lemuro-Atlantean:

The esoteric teaching which tells us of Man having had in the Third Round a GIGANTIC APE-LIKE FORM on the astral plane. And similarly at the close of the Third Race in this Round. Thus it accounts for the human features of the apes. SD2 228.

The black and yellow gigantic Lemuro-Atlantean. SD1 184.

The man who preceded the Fourth, the Atlantean race, however much he may have looked physically like a "gigantic ape" -- "the counterfeit of man who hath not the life of a man" -- was still a thinking and already a speaking man. The "Lemuro-Atlantean" was a highly civilized race, and if one accepts tradition, which is better history than the speculative fiction which now passes under that name, he was higher than we are with all our sciences and the degraded civilization of the day: at any rate, the Lemuro-Atlantean of the closing Third Race was so. SD1 191.

The Hottentots, they are of indirect Lemuro-Atlantean descent. SD2 779.

The name 'Hottentot' is derived from a Dutch word meaning 'stammerer'; it was applied to Southern Africa's Khoikhoi people as early as the 17th century, apparently in reference to the Khoikhoi and Khoisan (a related people, often referred to as 'Bushmen' language, which is distinguished by clicking sounds. Unlike Bantu groups such as the Zulu, the Khoisan-speaking peoples are small of stature and have a Yellow-Tan complexion. social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/DEBCLASS/hotten.htm

The "Language of Animals" is obviously Inner African. It is employed especially by the Bushmen and Hottentots. The clicks of the Pygmies, the San (Bushmen), the Khoi-Khoi (Hottentots), and the Kaffirs constitute a living link betwixt the human beginner and his predecessor. Ancient Egypt. Gerald Massey.

Hottentot women, peculiarities of: compression of nose by. Decent Of Man. Charles Darwin.

The Hottentot language is said to have affinities with the Hamitic tongues, from which it is separated by the whole breadth of Bantu-speaking Central Africa. A Hottentot-like language with Bushman affinities is still spoken in equatorial East Africa, and this strengthens the idea that the whole of East Africa was once Hamitic-speaking. The Bantu languages and peoples spread, in comparatively recent times, from some centre of origin in West Central Africa and cut off the Hottentots from the other Hamitic peoples. But it is at least equally probable that the Hottentot is a separate language group. Among other remote and isolated little patches of language are the Papuan speech of New Guinea and the native Australian. The now extinct Tasmanian language is but little known. What we do know of it is in support of what we have guessed about the comparative speechlessness of Pal olithic man. Outline Of History. H G Wells.

The Ethnologist tells us that the lowest peoples of the earth are the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, the Hottentots, a number of little-understood peoples in Central Africa, the wild Veddahs of Ceylon, the (extinct) Tasmanians, the Aetas in the interior of the Philippines, and certain fragments of peoples on islands of the Indian Ocean. Story Of Evolution. Joseph McCabe.

The Secret Doctrine teaches that the specific unity of mankind is not without exceptions even now. For there are, or rather still were a few years ago, descendants of these half-animal tribes or races, both of remote Lemurian and Lemuro-Atlantean origin. The world knows them as Tasmanians (now extinct), Australians, Andaman Islanders, etc. The descent of the Tasmanians can be almost proved by a fact, which struck Darwin a good deal, without his being able to make anything of it. This fact deserves notice. SD2 195.

When Tasmania was first colonised the natives were roughly estimated by some at 7000 and by others at 20,000.  Their number was soon greatly reduced, chiefly by fighting with the English and with each other.  After the famous hunt by all the colonists, when the remaining natives delivered themselves up to the government, they consisted only of 120 individuals ( All the statements here given are taken from 'The Last of the Tasmanians,' by J. Bonwick, 1870.), who were in 1832 transported to Flinders Island. 

This island, situated between Tasmania and Australia, is forty miles long, and from twelve to eighteen miles broad:  it seems healthy, and the natives were well treated.  Nevertheless, they suffered greatly in health.  In 1834 they consisted (Bonwick, p. 250) of forty-seven adult males, forty-eight adult females, and sixteen children, or in all of 111 souls.  In 1835 only one hundred were left.  As they continued rapidly to decrease, and as they themselves thought that they should not perish so quickly elsewhere, they were removed in 1847 to Oyster Cove in the southern part of Tasmania. 

They then consisted (Dec. 20th, 1847) of fourteen men, twenty-two women and ten children.  (38.  This is the statement of the Governor of Tasmania, Sir W. Denison, 'Varieties of Vice-Regal Life,' 1870, vol. i. p. 67.)  But the change of site did no good.  Disease and death still pursued them, and in 1864 one man (who died in 1869), and three elderly women alone survived.  The infertility of the women is even a more remarkable fact than the liability of all to ill-health and death.  At the time when only nine women were left at Oyster Cove, they told Mr. Bonwick (p. 386), that only two had ever borne children:  and these two had together produced only three children! Decent Of Man. Charles Darwin.

The aboriginal Tasmanians, who died out about forty years ago, were of great evolutionary interest. It is sometimes said that man is distinguished from all other animals by the possession of abstract ideas, but the very imperfect speech of the Tasmanians expressed no abstract ideas. Their mind seems to have been in an intermediate stage of development. They never made fire, and, like the other surviving fragments of early humanity, they had no tribal organisation, and no ideas of religion or morality. Story Of Evolution. Joseph McCabe.

To search for the "Missing Link" is useless. To the scientists of the closing sixth Root-race, millions and millions of years hence, our modern races, or rather their fossils, will appear as those of small insignificant apes -- an extinct species of the genus homo. SD1 184.

The Quaternary is sometimes called the 'age of man'. From a theosophical viewpoint, while it is true that our own fifth root-race or humanity rose to dominance during this period, recognizably human beings, with self-conscious minds, emerged over 18 million years ago in the Mesozoic.

The earth's history is divided into a series of geological periods, whose boundaries are often marked by geological convulsions, biological extinctions, and the sudden development of new species. According to theosophy, sedimentation in the present, fourth round of the earth's evolution began in the Laurentian period, towards the close of the Precambrian era, about 320 million years ago (corresponding 'scientific' date: about 640 million years). This was followed by the Paleozoic era (the age of trilobites and fishes), which began with a rapid and unprecedented proliferation of marine organisms (the 'Cambrian explosion'), and ended with the greatest extinction event in earth history. It was followed by the Mesozoic era (the age of reptiles), and then the Cenozoic era (the age of mammals). The main theosophical and scientific dates are given below:

Paleozoic: began about 240 million years ago (science: 540 million) Divided into: Cambrian, Silurian, Ordovician, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian

Mesozoic: began about 44 million years ago (science: 245 million) Divided into: Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous

Cenozoic: began about 8 million years ago (science: 66.4 million) Divided into: Tertiary (subdivisions: Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene); Quaternary (subdivisions: Pleistocene, Holocene)

The Quaternary period began with the Pleistocene ice age, about 870,000 years ago (science: 1.6 million), which ended with the extinction of many species of large mammals around 10,000 years ago, during the transition to the Holocene or Recent epoch. Age Of Earth. David Pratt. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/age.htm

Destruction/Extinction of the Dinosaurs:

I have used these references to indicate a theory that the Elephant is on the 1st sub ray of the second ray. Inferentially we can take it perhaps that the dinosours had only dynamic will in its destructive/destroyer mode without the balance of intelligence or love in its least degree, a disaster indeed. JPC.

The animals of the first ray are no longer in existence on earth. EP1 164.

The waters came and swept away the progenitors of the fluidic spawn. Dyzan. TCF 29.

Elephants are upon the first ray. EP1 260.

The elephant is said to stand at the head of the second ray type of animal. EP1 164.