World atavism

by Edmond Hamilton

"The evolutionary theory of my former associate, Dr. Grant——" Ferson had begun, but was interrupted by a chorus of derisive shouts provoked by the mention of the scientist whose ridiculous theory had been exploded.

So Ferson had been forced from the meeting by the furious scientists, who seemed seized indeed with the erratic craziness that was gripping the world. Another day they advanced and argued their theories, theories that grew ever more impossible, more incoherent, and then the meeting dissolved in a general riotous brawl of the arguing scientists. They, in common with the rest of the races of men, seemed incapable longer of calm thought, of cool, unpassioned reasoning. Two were killed, throttled in the brawl that ended the meeting, and the rest scattered. They were not followed or punished, for now the disintegration of humanity's institutions had become such that crime was unheeded.

Men were outrivalling each other in mad action. Those in high places as in low were gripped by the insanity that had apparently seized earth, and from the Cabinets and Congresses of a score of nations came declarations of war against other nations, for the slightest of reasons or for none at all. England, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Japan and China—these and a dozen others issued frenzied and incoherent calls to arms. But they were unheeded! Even war now could not penetrate the unreasoning minds of men. Armies had broken up, all discipline and organization vanishing. A few who tried to keep their soldiers in line found that the men could no longer handle the great guns and instruments of war, found that most of them were incapable of the operation of rifles!

Civilization was crashing with a prolonged roar of falling laws and institutions and customs echoing across the world. The ordinary methods of transportation and production having completely broken down days before, the stream of food into the great cities had abruptly ceased. The brutal throngs that filled those cities subsisted by looting the existing food supplies for a time, but soon these were exhausted and then terrible battles took place between the rioters for food which they had found. Battles they were of hordes of ragged brutes, of savages, who fought with knives or with their bare hands in the streets. Only occasionally was a shot heard, for almost none there was now with sufficient dull glimmer of intelligence to manipulate a gun.

In the shadow of the tall towers of New York, and in the brick and stone acres of London and the boulevards of Paris, thousands and hundreds of thousands of these savages swarmed, the ways choked with corpses of the slain. At night they crouched fearfully in hallways and offices and corridors, the vast cities lying dark and silent beneath the stars. Shapes of prowling animals were being seen in some of them by night. No wheel turned in all the world now, for none seemed left with intelligence enough to operate the simplest machine.

And these swarms that had been human were changing in appearance too. The men were unshaven and hairier, it seemed. Much clothing had been discarded, crude belts that held knives or the like weapons being retained. They crouched now as they walked, their step a watchful, animal-like one. From under shaggy brows they stared at each other. Small, crude family-groups held together, the man battling other men for the possession of food. Some managed to kill animals, and wore the skins.

They were troglodytes, millions of them, men such as the world had seen thousands of years before, as humanity had been then. They were troglodytes, wandering through the cities and towns that they themselves had built, staring in wondering fear about them at things the purpose of which they could not understand. But most had no wonder, only a brutal lack of interest in all save food and mating and sleep. There were no fires, for all had lost the use of fire and feared it now.

Driven by hunger, great masses of them were pouring out of the cities into the countryside, to hunt roots and herbs and to kill small animals for food. They made rude shelters for a time, then abandoned them for caves and crannies in the rocks. They ceased to use knives or spears, they could but throw great stones at each other or wield chance clubs, or fight with bare hands.

Many had remained in the cities and among them was more fighting. With each day they were changing farther, it seemed, going farther back along the long road of change that man had ascended so slowly through the ages, and that he was slipping back upon so swiftly.

The streets of New York and Glasgow and Constantinople and Yokohama saw them, these animal-like, ape-like hordes that wandered there. Ape-like they were becoming, indeed, swiftly hairier of body, more crouching of gait, stooping occasionally in moving to run on hands and feet. Clothing they had discarded. The fragmentary, mumbled speech that they had kept until days before had given way to a meaningless medley of barking shouts and cries whose tone conveyed their crude attempt at communication. They roamed the great cities in little groups or tribes, of each of which one was the strongest, the tyrant, the acknowledged lord.