The Reemergence of the Tenth Men

The Reemergence of the Tenth Men is the evolutionary return of a human-like species on Neptune, long after the typical human form had vanished. It begins not with surviving humans, but with a small, vulnerable animal whose adaptations gradually bring back dexterity, upright posture, and complex social behavior in a fundamentally new body and mind.

After the Human Form

Nowhere had the typical human form survived. Neptune’s world was occupied by beasts adapted to many different niches, though traces of human mentality and anatomy persisted among them. Some grazing animals gathered in hardship to howl together, while certain carnivores would interrupt their ordinary activity to sit alone in high places, watching and waiting until hunger drove them back to action. These were vestiges, not human societies: the reemergence of the Tenth Men would come through a distinct evolutionary passage.

About three hundred million terrestrial years after the solar collision, a minute, hairless, rabbit-like creature lived on the polar grasslands. A swift hound from the south preyed upon it. The rabbit-like animal had little specialization and no effective defence or means of escape, and was almost exterminated. A few survived by taking refuge in dense scrub with thick trunks, where the hound could not follow.

Adaptation and New Capacities

The survivors changed their way of life along with their habitat. Leaving the grasslands, they fed on roots and berries, and also on worms and beetles. Their forelimbs became increasingly useful for digging and climbing, then for weaving nests from sticks and straw. Unlike many other species, their fingers had never fused together: separate toes protruded from elongated knuckles, which gradually lengthened into a new set of fingers. Within the palm, the bent remnants of ancient human fingers remained.

Manipulation fostered clearer perception. Combined with repeated experiments in food, hunting, and defence, this encouraged behavioral versatility and mental suppleness. The animals prospered, adopted an almost upright gait, and increased in stature and brain size. Their new brain regions were not simply a revival of the atrophied human cerebrum: they formed a new organ that overlaid and absorbed that ancient remnant. Their minds, too, were new, even as they were shaped by familiar basic needs for food, love, glory, and companionship.

The Tenth Men and Their Fate

In pursuing those needs, the creatures devised weapons and traps and built wicker villages. They held pow-wows, and the account identifies their emergence as the Tenth Men. Their humanity is therefore presented as an outcome of adaptation rather than the recovery of an unchanged human inheritance: old anatomical traces persist, but new hands, brains, and patterns of life have taken shape around them.

The Tenth Men spread wicker huts and bone implements across the great northern continents for a million terrestrial years. They then remained in possession for many more millions without further cultural progress, as biological and cultural evolution proceeded slowly on Neptune. Their tenure ended when a microorganism attacked and demolished them. From their ruins, several primitive human species developed, beginning another long and isolated phase of evolution. The reemergence thus marks not a final restoration of humanity, but one stage in a succession of forms that repeatedly inherit fragments of the past while becoming something new.