My own belief, for what it is worth, is that they were the outcome of a series of ingenious biological meddlings – and very likely accidental at that. Had they been evolved anywhere but in the region they were we should doubtless have had a well-documented ancestry for them. As it was, no authoritative statement was ever published by those who must have been best qualified to know. The reason for this lay, no doubt, in the curious political conditions then prevailing.
