_Hardly had man solved his basic problems on the planet of his origin
than he began to fumble into space. Barely a century had elapsed in the
exploration of the Solar System than he began to grope for the stars._
_And suddenly, with an all but religious zeal, mankind conceived its
fantasy dream of populating the galaxy. Never in the history of the race
had fervor reached such a peak and held so long. The question of why was
seemingly ignored. Millions of Earth-type planets beckoned and with a
lemming-like desperation humanity erupted into them._
_But the obstacles were frightening in their magnitude. The planets and
satellites of Sol had proven comparatively tractable and those that were
suited to man-life were quickly brought under his dominion. But there,
of course, he had the advantage of proximity. The time involved in
running back and forth to the home planet was meaningless and all
Earth's resources could be thrown into each problem's solving._
_But a planet a year removed in transportation or even communication?
Ay! this was another thing and more than once a million colonists were
lost before the Earthlings could adapt to new climates, new flora and
fauna, new bacteria--or to factors which the most far out visionary had
never fancied, perhaps the lack of something never before missed._
_So, mad with the lust to seed the universe with his kind, men sought
new methods. To a hundred thousand worlds they sent smaller colonies, as
few as a hundred pioneers apiece, and there marooned them, to adapt, if
adapt they could._
_For a millennium each colony was left to its own resources, to conquer
the environment or to perish in the effort._
_A thousand years was sufficient. Invariably it was found, on those
planets where human life survived at all, man slipped back during his
first two or three centuries into a state of barbarism. Then slowly
began to inch forward again. There were exceptions and the progress on
one planet never exactly duplicated that on another, however the average
was surprisingly close to both nadir and zenith, in terms of evolution
of society._
_In a thousand years it was deemed by the Office of Galactic
Colonization such pioneers had largely adjusted to the new environment
and were ready for civilization, industrialization and eventual
assimilation into the rapidly evolving Galactic Commonwealth._
_Of course, even from the beginning, new and unforeseen problems
manifested themselves ..._
_from_ "Man In Antiquity"
_published in Terra City, Sol
Galactic Year 3,502._