It is to this period that we have to look for the first appearance of the ancestors of those, whom we term the most ancient peoples of the world—now called respectively the Âryan Hindûs, the Egyptians, and the oldest Persians, on the one hand, and the Chaldees and Phœnicians on the other. These were governed by the Divine Dynasties, _i.e._, Kings and Rulers who had of mortal man only his physical appearance _as it was then_, but who were Beings from Spheres higher and more celestial than our own Sphere will be, long Manvantaras hence. It is, of course, useless to attempt to force the existence of such Beings on sceptics. _Their_ greatest pride consists in proving their patronymic denomination as Catarrhinides—a fact which they try to demonstrate on the alleged authority of the Coccyx appended to their Os Sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if it were only long enough, they would wag with joy and for ever, in honour of its eminent discoverer. These will remain as faithful to their Ape‐ancestors as Christians will to tailless Adam. The Secret Doctrine, however, sets Theosophists and students of the Occult Sciences right on this point. If we regard the second portion of the Third Race as the first representatives of the _really human race_ with solid bones, then Hæckel’s surmise that “the evolution of the primitive men took place ...in _either_ Southern Asia or ... Lemuria”—Africa, whether Eastern or Western being out of the question—is correct enough, if not entirely so. To be accurate, however, just as the evolution of the First Race, from the bodies of the Pitris, took place on seven distinctly separated regions, at the Arctic Pole of the (then) only Earth—so did the ultimate transformation of the Third occur. It began in those northern regions, which have just been described as including Behring’s Straits, and what there then was of dry land in Central Asia, when the climate was semi‐tropical even in the Arctic regions and excellently adapted to the primitive wants of nascent physical man. That region, however, has been more than once frigid and tropical in turn since the appearance of man. The Commentary tells us that the Third Race was only about the middle point of its development when: _The axle of the Wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over __ the heads of that portion of the Sweat‐born; people knew snow, ice, and frost, and men, plants, and animals were dwarfed in their growth. Those that did not perish remained as half‐grown babes_(_735_)_ in size and intellect. This was the third Pralaya of the Races._(736)