The Origin of the Species

CW: discussions of racial prejudice
The following episode of Jack's World first aired on VRWC--Rain Wood City Radio on 33 Skel, 1958. It is an interview between children's radio personality 'Insomniac' Jack Pawly and biologist Evan Ender.
IJP: Welcome back to Jack's World, I'm your host, Insomniac Jack, and I could not sleep last night because I couldn't stop wondering how we all got to be here. Do you ever wonder that? How did we come to be here, living on this planet, and how did all these different people--Sprites, Elves, Mermish, Dragons come to be living alongside humans. Or did humans come to live alongside them? So I asked my friend Evan Ender to come here today to answer my questions, and yours. Hey Evan, how's is going?
EE: I'm doing well, how are you?
IJP: Well, I'm physically tired, but my mind won't shut off. But I think you might be able to help me with that.
EE: Okay.
IJP: So, tell us Evan, what do you do?
EE: I am an evolutionary biologist.
IJP: Whoa! What does that mean?
EE: Well, I study how plants and animals change over a period of time. And I specialize in changes that come about via magic. For example, the Melody Sea Star, which is found on our northern coast, they're called the Melody Sea Star because they communicate with each other by clicking together the oyster shells after they've eaten them, almost like they're playing an instrument.
IJP: Actually, we heard that on vacation last year. We didn't know what it was, but it was this... like you said, clicking.
EE: Yup, it was probably the melody sea star. But here's the thing. From what we can tell, the melody sea star is identical in every other way to the another sea star, found in the same area, called the Pitch Sea Star. And what we've done is we've used a Sight-Scope to look at the magical signatures of both the pitch sea star and the melody sea star. The pitch sea star has nothing.
IJP: (laughs) like me
EE: (laughs) like you. But the melody sea star has a signature very similar to a human or an elf who has cultivated a magical gift in Expressions.
IJP: Like people who work magic through music.
EE: Exactly. And by comparing older sea stars with younger ones--this is fortunately a long-lived species--we've determined that most likely, this is a Magical Mutation caused by the rift.
IJP: That is fascinating. And I am definitely going to have you back to tell us more about the rift in another episode. But I will not sleep tonight if I don't learn about magical mutations in people. Do you know anything about that?
EE: Yes. It's actually very similar, but in this case, we don't know the cause. But the leading scientific theory about the origin of sprites, elves, mermish, and dragons is that, similar to the melody sea star, they developed magical mutations which caused them to branch off of the human species.
IJP: So how do we know they branched off of humans, rather than co-exisiting or having evolved in some other way?
EE: Well, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, all of these other groups, even the dragons, resemble humans in some way, so there's almost certainly some type of shared ancestry. But unlike humans, who have kind of always lived all over the planet, the other groups each have a single point of origin. So most likely, there was a major magical event which caused different localized phenomena in several places, which is actually what we have seen with the rift.
IJP: So you think there was another rift about 1900 years ago?
EE: Very likely. And most likely it was centered in or near Zenxon.
IJP: And why's what?
EE: Well, the 1920 rift was centered in Saas, and that's where we saw the biggest magical shifts, with other changes sort of rippling outward from there. Now, we have evidence of elves and mermish and dragons all co-existing with human populations from very early on. But the first humans on Zenxon were Linakran settlers. So if this ancient rift was centered in Zenxon, it may have affected all of the humans living there, as opposed to just some of them.
IJP: And when you say you have evidence of these other groups living alongside humans, what evidence is that?
EE: Documentation! Actually, this is also why we know that these other species developed from humans. We have douments, almost two thousand years old, from Brek and from Brightland that talk about babies being born with these mutations.
IJP: These are the mermish and the elves.
EE: Yes. In Brightland, babies were being born with these pointed ears, and they referred to them as elves because of the stories in their culture, and in Brek, they were born with scaled legs and webbed fingers, and they called them mermish after the stories in their own culture. And later, they discovered that these weren't just physical mutations, but magical ones.
IJP: But we don't have documentation from Zenxon or Diamondheart?
EE: Well, we do have documentation from Diamondheart. They believed these babies were being born as demons, and as an Een follower, I have to say this is one of the greatest crimes our religion has committed. To be fair, these people were really reacting the same way as the Brekkans and the Brightlindish, but unfortunately, where the elves and mermish looked similar to cultural stories of benevolent beings, the Een looked at dragon children and saw the henchmen of The Great Tempter. But because of that superstition, dragons were mistreated for centuries, and it was a horrible thing, and it never should have happened.
IJP: Now, I've heard some theories that dragons have evolved from lizards.
EE: Okay, this mostly comes from the idea that dragons have lizard-like heads and tails. And we do have some six-legged lizards that could have grown into dragons, but where do we find them? Nefrale and Lowoni. Where did the first dragons live? Diamondheart. So, unlikely. Also, dragons have arms and legs and hands and feet very similar to humans. Dragons aren't much bigger than humans. The tallest dragon standing on their hind legs is what? Eight feet tall? It's rare, but some humans do get close to that. And most importantly, dragons are mammals! They don't lay eggs! So if you're going to say they evolved from Puffer Salamanders, you might as well say they evolved from bats, and nobody's saying that. No, it's much more likely that they evolved from humans due to a magical manipulation.
IJP: Okay, okay, so dragons evolved from humans. What did humans evolve from?
EE: Well, that's the mystery of our day. Evolution has happened, is happening, right now, all around us. But humans--humans don't seem to have evolved from anything.
IJP: What do you mean we didn't evolve from anything? How do you know?
EE: Well, the fossil record for one
IJP: Okay, what's the fossil record?
EE: The fossil record is the remains of ancient plants and animals--
IJP: --like skeletons--
EE: --like skeletons, buried in the dirt. And the deeper you find them, the older they are. And we have found fossils of all kinds of plants and animals that were alive way before humans showed up. And like the sea stars, like the dragons and the elves, we can see that they have evolved. Not necessarily magical evolution, but evolution. We can look at skeletons from different eras and say, 'hmm, this one looks kind of like this other animal that was older than it, and also kind of like this animal that was younger than it. Probably, one evolved into the other.' But we just don't have that with humans.
IJP: So there are no humanoid skeletons that also kind of look like some other animal?
EE: Nothing. Acheological evidence of humans only dates back a couple thousand years. And it's not only that we don't have fossils to show how we may have evolved physically, we also have no evidence of how society developed--nothing that shows us how art and arcitechture and writing came to be. It's like we appeared on this planet, fully formed.
IJP: But how is that possible?
EE: Well, you and I would probably say it's the Soul-Joiner. A person from Suxad would tell you it's the Forest Walker. A Zenxonian would call it The Lady, but the name doesn't really matter. It's really our best theory.
IJP: So you're telling me that there is scientific evidence that we were put on Nideon by a diety of some sort.
EE: Not exactly. We don't have evidence of a diety. But we also don't have evidence of anything else. It's very unlikely that we could have just sprung up this way without some sort of of supernatural intervention, so right now, it is the leading theory.
IJP: What if we came here from say, another planet?
EE: (laughs) You're talking about Astromythology
IJP: I'm talking about astromythology.
EE: Well, to be honest, it's not terrible theory. It would explain why there's no evidence of evolution, why there's not early or art or literature, possibly why humans don't seem to have a single origin point. But if that's the case, how did we get here? You would need a vehicle to transport that many people. Even something like a Transportation Station requires some kind of infrastructure, and we haven't found the tineist scrap of any method of transport.
IJP: Is it possible that there were very powerful transport Wizards who were able to move people from one planet to another without the help of a station?
EE: It is possible. And if something like that happened, it would probably leave no evidence. My only caveat about that theory is that if these wizards were powerful enough to get here, why have we not heard from the Homeworld in all this time?
IJP: Could they have lost their powers in the same rift that caused those first magical mutations?
EE: (laughs) Well, I don't think we came here on some sort of space vessels, but like you said having come from some other place isn't impossible. I do think astromythologists have to add a lot of details to get around the questions of evidence that should be there, but we are operating without evidence, which puts us in the realm of faith.
IJP: So what you're saying is we'll never know where we came from.
EE: Not without further evidence, which I don't think we're going to get.
IJP: Doesn't that keep you up at night?
EE: (laughs) Probably not as much as you
IJP: (yawns) Actually, I'm feeling pretty sleepy now. I think I'm going to go take a nap. Thanks for telling us all about our origins!
EE: Thank you, it's been a pleasure.