-- DID AN ASTEROID IMPACT TRIGGER THE ICE AGES? From Science Frontiers Digest of Scientific Anomalies ["http://www.knowledge.co.uk/frontiers/"] #59, SEP-OCT 1988 by William R. Corliss, citing Frant T. Kyte, et al; "New Evidence on the Size and Possible Effects of a Late Pliocene Oceanic Asteroid Impact," Science, 241:63, 1988

Around 2,200,000 BC the approximately one km in diameter asteroid Eltanin impacts the Earth in the Bellingshausen Sea between South America and Antarctica, creating tsunamis 1 km tall, which themselves strike parts of South America and Australia. Severe changes to the Earth's climate follow.

Even as late as 2000 AD there will be primitive human tribes which possess extraordinarily close relationships with other primates and/or other animals-- even going so far as their women from puberty on nursing baby monkeys, raccoons, and pigs, as takes place among the Awa Guaja tribe of the Amazon.

The Awa Guaja (a matriarchal society) consider monkeys to be sacred, and will raise baby monkeys among their own human children, with perhaps little difference in care.

Some arbitrary observations: the Awa Guaja expect women to continuously breast-feed needy animals as well as human children from puberty onwards, and regard non-producing breasts as a curse. Could similar ways among much of prehistoric humanity over a million years or so have been one reason why human female breasts on average became more prominent than those of other large primates, by the dawn of recorded history?

In primitive human societies-- especially those not far removed from apes themselves, such as those of seven million to two million BC or so-- baby monkeys might often have served mothers as welcome replacements for true children lost to disease, accident, or predators. Such monkeys may have often grown into helpful and loyal pets or aides for their human foster parents-- perhaps even performing chores taught them by their families, to help out with gathering food, preparing it, and even chipping stones for tools. They may also have helped enhance the vigilance of a camp against predators or hostile humans.

If the practice of incorporating monkeys into human family units became sufficiently widespread, and continued on long enough in terms of generations, eventually the monkeys themselves might undergo certain evolutionary pressures of their own as a result. Imagine multiple generations of monkeys raised as human children reproducing amongst themselves, within and alongside their human host tribes. The smartest and most helpful monkeys might be favored and encouraged to breed by their masters, much as the wolves of later millennia will be transformed into obedient and capable dogs.

Only monkeys can be more intelligent and versatile than wolves/dogs. They could be trained to do more and understand more than wolves/dogs. And their ultimate evolutionary potential would certainly rate considerably higher than wolves/dogs-- after all, primates begat human beings.