Poke-hypothesis

ething like this:

Since Mew is canonically the progenitor species to all (or most) species of Pokemon, it can be safely assumed that evolution as we know it (the change in species over ridiculously long periods of time) happened with Mew, only a lot faster.

Why?

Mew knows Transform. It’s literally the only other Pokemon in existence besides Ditto that can.

My guess is that as the original population of Mew reproduced and spread out to different environments across the Pokemon world, some of them willingly adopted forms that were best suited to their environment via transformation. A population of Mew that decided to live underwater altered their bodies to have gills, or fins, or scales or whatever; a population that decided volcanoes were a chill place to live in transformed to endure extreme heat and eventually became the Magmar line, etc etc. Over time, they decided that this form worked best for the lives they led and never bothered to change back, eventually losing the ability to transform and making their new forms permanent, becoming the myriad Pokemon species we know today.

Similarly, their energy manipulation abilities are descended from Mew’s ability to learn moves from every type. Basically, all Pokemon are a little bit psychic. As they specialized into the 18 types known today, the individual species lost the ability to learn certain moves while perfecting their control over moves of the same type. Psychic types in particular are those that perfected the Mew species’ naturally powerful psychokinetic abilities. Those Pokemon that aren’t good at Special Attacks instead focus most of their psychic energy inwards and become extremely durable or physically strong as a result. That residual psychic power would also explain how Pokemon are capable of understanding human speech and executing complex commands without most of them truly understanding or being capable of speaking human languages.

“But what about Ditto itself?” I hear one of you ask from the nosebleed seats? Easy explanation, my pupil: the Mewtwo Project. Ditto are failed clones of Mew who ended up as a sentient mass of protoplasm capable of transforming into any shape, and both sexual and asexual reproduction.

This partially solves the dilemma on how to classify most Pokemon and while it doesn’t completely solve the other problem of how to classify Ultra Beasts, it does make one thing clear: most Pokemon are those creatures descended from the original population of Mew that lived eons ago. Since Mew and Mewtwo are both perfectly capable of surviving in space, it’s also possible that Clefairy, Minior, and other Pokemon thought to have come from space are also descendants of Mew. Legendary Pokemon are a whole other ball-game seeing as Arceus is documented as having created reality as we know it. However, it’s possible that a few ridiculously powerful individuals adopted the form of, say, Rayquaza or Ho-Oh and have been around so long that they also lost their transformation ability. They also could be members of a species that also evolved from Mew rather than powerful individuals who’ve forgotten their original form, albeit extremely rare and powerful species.

Since Ultra Beasts come from an entirely different dimension altogether, then (assuming I’m right) I think it’ll be a long while until we figure out just what they are and if we can classify them as Pokemon as I have defined them. As it stands, most of them are in the same league as Legends as far as raw power goes and my hypothesis has difficulties accounting for those as it is.