| Rock Strata. | Depth of Strata. Feet. | Races of Men. | Cataclysms. | Animals. | Plants. | ||
| Laurentian Cambrian Silurian | } } } | Archilithic or Primordial | 70,000 | First Root Race which being Astral could leave no fossil remains. | Skull-less Animals. | Forest of gigantic Tangle and other Thallus Plants. | |
| Devonian Coal Permian | } } } | Palæolithic or Primary | 42,000 | Second Root Race which was Etheric. | Fish. | Fern Forests. | |
| Triassic Jurassic Cretaceous | } } } | Mesolithic or Secondary | 15,000 | Third Root Race or Lemurian. | Lemuria is said to have perished before the beginning of the Eocene age. | Reptiles. | Pine and Palm Forests. |
| Eocene Miocene Pliocene | } } } | Cenolithic or Tertiary. | 5,000 | Fourth Root Race or Atlantean. | The main Continent of Atlantis was destroyed in the Miocene period about 800,000 years ago. Second great catastrophe? about 200,000 years ago. Third great catastrophe about 80,000 years ago. Final submergence of Poseidonis 9564 B.C. | Mammals. | Forests of Deciduous Trees. |
| Diluvial or Pleistocene Alluvial | } } } | Quarternary or Anthopolithic | 500 | Fifth Root Race or Aryan. | More differentiated Mammals. | Cultivated Forests. | |
As it is written in the stanzas of the archaic Book of Dzyan, "Animals with bones, dragons of the deep, and flying sarpas were added to the creeping things. They that creep on the ground got wings. They of the long necks in the water became the progenitors of the fowls of the air." Modern science records her endorsement. "The class of birds as already remarked is so closely allied to Reptiles in internal structure and by embryonal development that they undoubtedly originated out of a branch of this class.... The derivation of birds from reptiles first took place in the Mesolithic epoch, and this moreover probably during the Trias."[14]
In the vegetable kingdom this epoch also saw the pine and the palm-tree gradually displace the giant tree ferns. In the later days of the Mesolithic epoch, mammals for the first time came into existence, but the fossil remains of the mammoth and mastodon, which were their earliest representatives, are chiefly found in the subsequent strata of the Eocene and Miocene times.
The Human Kingdom.
Before making any reference to what must, even at this early date, be called the human kingdom, it must be stated that none of those who, at the present day, can lay claim to even a moderate amount of mental or spiritual culture can have lived in these ages. It was only with the advent of the last three sub-races of this Third Root Race that the least progressed of the first group of the Lunar Pitris began to return to incarnation, while the most advanced among them did not take birth till the early sub-races of the Atlantean period.
Indeed, Lemurian man, during at least the first half of the race, must be regarded rather as an animal destined to reach humanity than as human according to our understanding of the term; for though the second and third groups of Pitris, who constituted the inhabitants of Lemuria during its first four sub-races, had achieved sufficient self-consciousness in the Lunar Manvantara to differentiate them from the animal kingdom, they had not yet received the Divine Spark which should endow them with mind and individuality—in other words, make them truly human.
Size and Consistency of Man's Body.