Recent discovery of a partial skeleton of a half-size Homo species—supposedly a female, three feet, three inches tall—in a cave on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores, has provided new evolutionary insights. It is believed to have lived there, side by side with Homo sapiens. Many differing views have been expressed. A research team led by Peter Brown of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, concluded that "aside from its small stature and brain, the specimen closely resembles Homo erectus fossils." Some researchers maintain that the new species, dubbed Homo floresiensis, reached this island at least 38,000 years ago and then died out near the end of the Stone Age, i.e., roughly 20,000 years later. Brown's team explains it in terms of dwarfing—evolution of smaller creatures from larger ones. The remains of dwarf elephants and small Komodo dragons have been unearthed on Flores. "Brown's team proposes that Homo erectus reached Flores by 800,000 years ago and evolved into the smaller species as a result of living on an island with limited food sources," writes B. Bower (Science News, October 30). Brown considers it unlikely that Homo floresiensis evolved as pygmy versions of Homo sapiens. Marta M. Lahr and Robert Foley, both of the University of Cambridge in England, say, "The new find strengthens the view that many ancient Homo species evolved throughout the world."

Theosophy teaches that in the course of evolution, there have been instances of giants existing side by side with dwarfs. "The Nyam-Nyam of Africa are regular dwarfs, while their next neighbours (several tribes of comparatively fair-complexioned Africans) are giants when confronted with the Nyam-Nyams, and very tall even among Europeans, for their women are all above 6 ½ feet high." (S.D., II, 754)

H.P.B. mentions that there is an enormous overlapping of one race over the race that succeeds it. For instance, the Third or Lemurian race overlapped the Atlanteans and the fourth or Atlantean race overlapped with our Aryan race. The old race slowly changes with the succeeding race, in stature, general physique and mentality. The old race survives only in small groups on islands, where they vegetate, degenerate and die out, as the Aztecs have, as the Nyam-Nyam and the dwarfish Moola Koorumba of the Nilgiri Hills are dying (S.D., II, 444-45). Regarding the Atlantean race, H.P.B. writes:

The term "Atlantean" must not mislead the reader to regard these as one race only, or even a nation. It is as though one said "Asiatics." Many multityped, and various were the Atlanteans, who represented several humanities, and almost a countless number of races and nations....There were brown, red, yellow, white and black Atlanteans; giants and dwarfs (as some African tribes comparatively are, even now). (S.D, II, 433 fn.)

Though giant Atlanteans perished some 850,000 years ago, the last remnants of the Atlanteans—the Aryo-Atlanteans—were destroyed only some 11,000 years ago.

Further, H.P.B. shows that there is a connection between sexual licentiousness and physical stature and strength.

In such countries as the Punjab, for instance, where the lethal influence of Mussalman, and later on of European, licentiousness, has hardly touched the orthodox Aryan castes, one still finds the finest men—so far as stature and physical strength go—on the whole globe; whereas the mighty men of old have found themselves replaced in the Deccan, and especially in Bengal, by men whose generation becomes with every century (and almost with every year) dwarfed and weakened. (S.D, II, 411 fn.)

Who were the Phoenicians? Generally described as vigorous traders and sailors, relatively little is known about them. Historians refer to them as Canaanites. "The Greeks called them phoinikes, which means 'red people'—a name that became Phoenicians—after their word for a prized reddish purple cloth the Phoenicians exported," writes Rick Gore (National Geographic, October 2004). They are supposed to have been citizens of walled cities such as Byblos, Sidon and Tyre. Thus:

The culture later known as Phoenician was flourishing as early as the third millennium B.C. in the Levant, a coastal region now divided primarily between Lebannon, Syria and Israel....

From the ninth to sixth centuries B.C. they dominated the Mediterranean Sea, establishing emporiums and colonies from Cyprus in the east to the Aegean Sea, Italy, North Africa, and Spain in the west....

Acting as cultural middlemen, the Phoenicians disseminated ideas, myths, and knowledge from the powerful Assyrian and Babylonian worlds in what is now Syria and Iraq to their contacts in the Aegean. Those ideas helped spark a cultural revival in Greece, one which led to the Greeks' Golden Age and hence the birth of Western civilization. The Phoenicians imported so much papyrus from Egypt that the Greeks used their name for the first great Phoenician port, Byblos, to refer to the ancient paper. The name Bible, or "the book," also derives from Byblos.

H.P.B. points out that the achievements of the Phoenicians are comparable to those of the mighty Egyptians. Thus:

The writer in the National Quarterly Review...says that the Phoenicians were the earliest navigators of the world, founded most of the colonies of the Mediterranean, and voyaged to whatever other regions were inhabited. They visited the Arctic regions, whence they brought accounts of eternal days without a night, which Homer has preserved for us in the Odyssey. From the British Isles they imported tin into Africa, and Spain was a favourite site for their colonies....Their explorations, it seems, extended in every direction, their sails whitening the Indian Ocean, as well as the Norwegian fiords....A large portion of the African territory is asserted to have been peopled by the races expelled by Joshua and the children of Israel. At the time when Procopius wrote, columns stood in Mauritania Tingitana, which bore the inscription, in Phoenician characters, "We are those who fled before the brigand Joshua, the son of Nun or Nave." (Isis Unveiled, I, 545)

Many historians claim—with good reason—that the Jews were identical with the ancient Phoenicians, but, H.P.B. observes that the "Phoenicians were beyond any doubt an Aethiopian race." (Isis Unveiled, I, 566-67) Further:

Carthage was a Phoenician city, hence its name; for Tyre was equally Kartha....Their tutelar god was styled Mel-Kartha (Mel, Baal), or tutelar lord of the city....Moreover all the Cyclopean races were Phoenicians. In the Odyssey the Kuklopes (Cyclops) are the Libyan shepherds; and Herodotus describes them as miners and great builders. They are the ancient Titans or giants, who in Hesiod forge bolts for Zeus. They are the biblical Zamzummim from the land of the giants, the Anakim. (Isis Unveiled, I, 567)

As for the Phoenicians being Canaanites, H.P.B. has this to say:

The name Phoenician affords its own proof. They are called...Ph Anakes, which shows that the Anakes or Anakim of Canaan, with whom the people of Israel, if not identical in race, had, by intermarriage, become entirely absorbed, were the Phoenicians. (Isis Unveiled, I, 569)

Are coincidences meaningful? What rules our lives, chance or law? "Is there a deeper order, an overarching purpose to the universe? Or are we the lucky accidents of evolution, living our precious but brief lives in a fundamentally random world that has only the meaning we choose to give it?" asks Jill Neimark (Psychology Today, July-August 2004). Josh Tenenbaum, MIT cognitive scientist, points out that there is a double atmosphere about coincidences. On the one hand they seem irrational, without any causal connections, and on the other hand we owe some of the greatest scientific discoveries to them. It is felt that the information-rich environment of modern life—with a plethora of names, birth dates, e-mails, addresses, etc.—is itself a source of many coincidences. "Even 'prophetic' dreams can be explained by probability....This country [U.S.A.] dreams a half billion hours each night (250 million people dreaming two hours a night). Some of those dreams are bound to coincide with real events." The spotting of the comet across the sky, at different periods in history, has been usually accompanied by disasters. Were these mere coincidences—or are comets portents of divine intent? Neimark writes:

For those with a highly empirical bent, a coincidence is happenstance, a simultaneous collision of two events that has no special significance and obeys the laws of probability....

To the mystically inclined, however, coincidence is a synchronicity, the purposeful occurrence of two seemingly unrelated events. The argument is not likely to be resolved anytime soon.

"There is not an accident in our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doing in this or in another life," writes H.P.B. (S.D., I, 644). It is an orderly universe of Law where the Law of Karma, described as the ultimate law of the universe, governs supreme. There is no place for chance or randomness. The universe comes into existence and goes out of existence under the law of Periodicity or Cycles. Our present universe is one in the series of universes and is the result of the karma engendered on the previous universe. Cycles are the clocks of Karma. Similarly, everything in the universe is governed by the law of cycles. Law of Reincarnation is a special aspect of the law of cycles. Esoteric philosophy teaches that evolution proceeds first by natural impulse and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts, checked by Karma. The Ego reaches self-conscious godhood, "through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations." Everything in the manifested universe is linked to, affects and is affected by, other factors. A Master of Wisdom writes: "Nature has linked all parts of her Empire together by subtle threads of magnetic sympathy, and there is a mutual correlation even between a star and a man." (Mahatma Letters, No. 45)

Regarding chance, H.P.B. has this to say:

Most certainly chance is "impossible." There is no "chance" in Nature, wherein everything is mathematically co-ordinate and mutually related in its units. "Chance," says Coleridge, "is but the pseudonym of God (or Nature), for those particular cases which He does not choose to subscribe openly with His sign manual." Replace the word "God" by that of Karma and it will become an Eastern axiom. (S.D., I, 653)

People who profess to be happy, seem to be dissatisfied, deep down, with the modern way of life. The cultural pressure and changing lifestyles appear to be responsible for the wide gap between "what I believe in" and "how I live." There is search for meaning expressed in religion, New Age mysticism, moral reflection, or love and friendship. Many Americans are upset about their way of life and "people from all walks of life share similar concerns about a culture of materialism and excess, and the consequences for future generations." Such common concern indicates that the possibility of change can become a reality. Recent studies by U.S. researchers Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson reveal that a quarter of Americans and Europeans are cultural creatives, "people who have made a comprehensive shift in their world view, values and way of life." Ray and Anderson note:

°ƒThey are disenchanted with 'owning more stuff,' materialism, greed, me-firstism, status display, glaring social inequalities of race and class, society's failure to care adequately for elders, women and children, and the hedonism and cynicism that pass for realism in modern society." Instead, they are placing emphasis in their lives on relationships, communities, spirituality, nature and the environment, and real ecological sustainability.

A new moral autonomy seems to be emerging. "We humans have the opportunity, however small, of becoming truly moral beings, perhaps for the first time in history. That is, each of us has the opportunity to exercise genuine moral choice and to take responsibility for the consequences of those choices, rather than accepting moral edicts based on some grand, universal creed and handed down from on high by its apostles," says Richard Eckersley of Australian National University, Canberra (The Futurist, September-October 2004). However, it is realized that these choices need to be made within some socio-moral framework. It is envisaged that in future, "both science and spiritual faith will play a part—not, as in the past, as institutions of moral authority, but as sources of knowledge and guidance."

Theosophy teaches that at the present point of man's evolution, passions and desires reign supreme. It is evident from the undue attention given, in every country, to sensuous art, to struggle for power, to accumulation of wealth and all kinds of sense gratification. However, we are in a "transition period," when the mind is being evolved more and more. As a result, we observe, in all countries, "the beginning of the transition from the animal possessed of the germ of real mind to the man of mind complete." Mr. Judge writes:

Believing in his teacher, the theosophist sees all around him the evidence that the race mind is changing by enlargement, that the old days of dogmatism are gone and the "age of inquiry" has come, that the inquiries will grow louder year by year and the answers be required to satisfy the mind as it grows more and more, until at last, all dogmatism being ended, the race will be ready to face all problems, each man for himself, all working for the good of the whole, and that the end will be the perfecting of those who struggle to overcome the brute. For these reasons the old doctrines are given out again, and Theosophy asks every one to reflect whether to give way to the animal below or look up to and be governed by the God within. (The Ocean of Theosophy, p. 55)