In an article published in Veja.com, August 7, 2018, entitled Why only Homo sapiens survived?, writer Sabrina Brito reports a new study suggesting that the permanence of the species Homo sapiens is due to its ability to adapt to extreme environments.

The research by the University of Michigan, USA, and the Max Planck Institute for Science of Human History, in Germany, raised the hypothesis that "our permanence is due to the ability of today's man to adapt to extreme environments".

The thesis considered that other representatives of the Homo genus occupied woods and fields, but only Homo sapiens established housing in hard-to-survive places, hostile climates and inhospitable environments.

In addition, the archaeological scientist Patrick Roberts stated that this achievement was the result of our “cumulative culture” and our ability to form relationships with all members of our species, including those who do not belong to our family. This characteristic facilitated "the adjustment of certain peoples in areas unknown to them, as they would have a prior knowledge of the mechanisms and customs necessary to live in that place".

Science and Spiritism

As can be seen from the subject, Science seeks explanations as to why Homo sapiens survived in relation to the other preceding species that succumbed over time.

It is important to highlight that Science and Spiritism go together in search of truth, complementing each other. Science alone cannot explain all the phenomena of the Universe only by the laws of matter. Spiritism without Science would lack the support and evidence needed to sustain Spiritual phenomena.

For Spiritism, the Universe is not only matter; it has an intelligent principle governing everything that exists. Nothing is by chance, nothing happens without control or in disorder.

In this sense, two forces that govern the Universe stand out: the Spiritual principle and the material principle; and above all God, supreme intelligence, primary cause of all things. There is no effect without previous cause.

From the simultaneous action of the material and intelligent principles, phenomena are born which are naturally inexplicable, if we do not consider either.

Evolution of worlds, beings and Spirits

The Universe is constantly evolving, for progress is the Law of nature and all beings are subject to it. Nothing is stopped: worlds, living beings and Spirits evolve.

As the world progresses, it offers a more pleasant dwelling place for its inhabitants as they progress. At the same time, progress of men, animals, vegetables and worlds they inhabit take place.

The Earth has been materially and morally in a lower state than today, and will reach a more advanced degree.

Genesis

In the book Genesis Kardec expresses: “Genesis comprises two parts: the history of the formation of the material world and that of humanity, considered in its twofold, bodily and Spiritual principle” (KARDEC. Genesis, p. 77, 2nd Edition, FEB, 2013).

Further, he adds: “but the history of man, considered as a Spiritual being, is linked to a special order of ideas, which are not of the domain of Science itself, and for this reason it is not the object of its investigations” (KARDEC. Genesis, p. 77, 2nd Edition, FEB, 2013).

It is exactly at this point that the Spiritist Doctrine will explain why only Homo sapiens survived.

Regarding the primary formation of living things, Kardec clarifies that “there was a time when there were no animals; soon they began. Each species appeared as the globe acquired the conditions for its existence” (KARDEC. Genesis, p. 161, 2nd Edition, FEB, 2013).

The issue of Homo sapiens leads us to the ancestors of human creatures in their evolutionary process with the enhancements of Nature.

The Spirit Emmanuel, in the psychographics of Francisco Candido Xavier, in “On the way to light” (38th Edition, FEB, 2016) brings some considerations that contribute to answer the question of the writer.

 “Under the merciful and wise guidance of the Christ, numerous assemblies of Spiritual workers labored on Earth. Like modern engineering, which builds a building that meets the lowest requirements of its purpose, the artists of Spirituality built the world of cells by beginning, in the early days, the construction of the organized and intelligent forms of the centuries to come”. (...)

“The forms of all oars of the terrestrial nature were studied and predicted. The fluids of life were manipulated to adapt to the physical conditions of the planet, staging the cellular constructions according to the possibilities of the earthly environment, all obeying a plan pre-established by the merciful wisdom of Christ, considered the laws of principle and general development". (pg. 19)

"Earth-appropriate types have been consummated in all the kingdoms of Nature, eliminating the teratological and strange fruits from the laboratory of their persevering experiences". (pg. 23)

 “The Spiritual forces that direct earthly phenomena, under the guidance of the Christ, established, at the time of the great malleability of material elements, a definitive lineage for all species, within which the Spiritual principle would find the process of their aggregation in progress to rationality. Fish, reptiles, mammals had their fixed lines of development and man would not escape this general rule”. (pg. 24)

From these assertions, it appears that Jesus and his Spiritual workers participated in the genesis of humanity by building organized and intelligent forms in order to adapt to the physical conditions of the planet, according to the possibilities of the terrestrial environment, in which the most suitable types survived and imperfect ones were eliminated by the laboratory of the Spiritual forces. The ultimate lineage continued its path toward rationality.

As noted, Homo sapiens survived by its special characteristics that fit the earth's environment, surpassing its predecessors, which we can confirm once again in the words of the Spirit Emmanuel:

“Cave anthropoids then spread in groups on the surface of the globe over the slow course of centuries, suffering the influences of the environment and forming the prodromes of future races in their diverse types; the reality, however, is that the Spiritual entities helped the flint man by giving him new biological expressions. Extraordinary experiments were performed by the messengers of the invisible. Recent science research on the Neanderthal type, recognizing in him a kind of bestialized man, and other interesting discoveries of Paleontology regarding the fossil man, is a testament to the biological experiments that Jesus' preparations began until they settled on the "primate", the approximate characteristics of the future man". (pg. 24)

After centuries of experience, the actions of the invisible world made a definite transition in the pre-existing perispiritual body of primitive men in the sidereal regions and at certain intervals in their reincarnations.

Thus the first savages of improved complexion arise, tending to the elegance of the times to come. A visceral transformation had taken place in the structure of the ancestors of the human races.

Emmanuel, in “On the Path to Light”, further records that the phalanxes of Christ operated the latest experiments on the renewing fluids of life, perfecting the biological characters of the human races when the aid of the depleted Chapel Spirits came.

Those afflicted and tormented souls reincarnated in the most important regions, giving rise to the Adamic Race. With their reincarnations in the earthly world, definitive factors were established in the ethnological history of beings. A great event had taken place on the planet.

The Golden Spirit, in the book Universe and Life (9th Edition, FEB, 2016), clarifies this period of Humanity:

It was only about forty millennia ago - when savage primate descendants settled in Central Asia and then migrated in large groups to the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia and Atlantis – that the Homo sapiens emerged in the world, a result of the mass incarnation on Earth of the Chapel exiles, whose presence signaled on this planet the emergence of the Adamic races. (...)

This fact - besides being logical and natural, as it corresponds to the greatest and almost unique patrimony of vital achievements of these beings - was also necessary to ensure their survival in the world of thick and heavy material forms. (p. 53)

In this way, the human species went through several evolutionary phases until reaching Homo sapiens, the current characteristic and able to receive more evolved Spirits.

They withstood climate adversity and adverse situations, because intelligence and biological characteristics provided the means to overcome difficulties with other species.

In this sense, precedent species succumbed to Homo sapiens.

Science and Spiritism are in search of the origin of humanity and the truth. For the Spiritist Doctrine nothing is by chance, everything has its purpose, its intelligent principle and its explanation.

But for this, one must first believe in God as the supreme intelligence and primary cause of all things. Without belief in God and his action, analysis will be incomplete, even because man is God's work.

Spiritism brings to light the existence of the Spiritual world and with it adds the missing element to the understanding of the evolution of Homo sapiens.

To deny the existence of God is to deny the intelligent principle of all that exists.

Bibliography:

AUREO (Spirit); (psychographics by) Hernani Trindade Sant'Anna. Universe and Life. 9th Edition. Brasilia / DF: Brazilian Spiritist Federation, 2016.

BRITO, Sabrina. Why did only Homo sapiens survive? Available at: https://bit.ly/32NEyUw- Accessed September 17, 2018.

EMMANUEL (Spirit); (psychographics by) Francisco Candido Xavier. On the Path to Light. 38th Edition. Brasilia / DF: Brazilian Spiritist Federation, 2016.

KARDEC, Allan; translation by Evandro Noleto Bezerra from the 5th French edition of 1869. Genesis. 2nd Edition. Brasilia / DF: Brazilian Spiritist Federation, 2013.

KARDEC, Allan; translation of the Reformer's Writing in 1884. What is Spiritism. 56th Edition. Brasilia / DF: Brazilian Spiritist Federation, 2013.

This article was included in the contest “The Doctrine Explains”, held in 2018, promoted in the class of the Spiritist Speakers Course of the Federal District, in the Spiritist Federation of the Federal District (FEDF). The author is a Spiritist speaker.