Ezekiel 27:14

The Andites of Turkestan were the first peoples to extensively domesticate the horse, and this is another reason why their culture was for so long predominant. By 5000 b.c. the Mesopotamian, Turkestan, and Chinese farmers had begun the raising of sheep, goats, cows, camels, horses, fowls, and elephants. They employed as beasts of burden the ox, camel, horse, and yak. Man was himself at one time the beast of burden. One ruler of the blue race once had one hundred thousand men in his colony of burden bearers.

With the appearance of crude manufacture and beginning industry, commerce quickly became the most potent influence in the spread of cultural civilization. The opening up of the trade channels by land and by sea greatly facilitated travel and the mixing of cultures as well as the blending of civilizations. By 5000 b.c. the horse was in general use throughout civilized and semicivilized lands. These later races not only had the domesticated horse but also various sorts of wagons and chariots. Ages before, the wheel had been used, but now vehicles so equipped became universally employed both in commerce and war.

The climatic destruction of the rich, open grassland hunting and grazing grounds of Turkestan, beginning about 12,000 b.c., compelled the men of those regions to resort to new forms of industry and crude manufacturing. Some turned to the cultivation of domesticated flocks, others became agriculturists or collectors of water-borne food, but the higher type of Andite intellects chose to engage in trade and manufacture. It even became the custom for entire tribes to dedicate themselves to the development of a single industry. From the valley of the Nile to the Hindu Kush and from the Ganges to the Yellow River, the chief business of the superior tribes became the cultivation of the soil, with commerce as a side line.

A huge commercial traffic had grown up in association with the services and ceremonies of the temple worship. There was the business of providing suitable animals for the various sacrifices. Though it was permissible for a worshiper to provide his own sacrifice, the fact remained that this animal must be free from all “blemish” in the meaning of the Levitical law and as interpreted by official inspectors of the temple. Many a worshiper had experienced the humiliation of having his supposedly perfect animal rejected by the temple examiners. It therefore became the more general practice to purchase sacrificial animals at the temple, and although there were several stations on near-by Olivet where they could be bought, it had become the vogue to buy these animals directly from the temple pens. Gradually there had grown up this custom of selling all kinds of sacrificial animals in the temple courts. An extensive business, in which enormous profits were made, had thus been brought into existence. Part of these gains was reserved for the temple treasury, but the larger part went indirectly into the hands of the ruling high-priestly families.

As Urantia is entering the so-called “horseless age,” you should pause and ponder what this animal meant to your ancestors. Men first used horses for food, then for travel, and later in agriculture and war. The horse has long served mankind and has played an important part in the development of human civilization.

But the horse was the evolutionary factor which determined the dominance of the Andites in the Occident. The horse gave the dispersing Andites the hitherto nonexistent advantage of mobility, enabling the last groups of Andite cavalrymen to progress quickly around the Caspian Sea to overrun all of Europe. All previous waves of Andites had moved so slowly that they tended to disintegrate at any great distance from Mesopotamia. But these later waves moved so rapidly that they reached Europe as coherent groups, still retaining some measure of higher culture.

“4. Of all the males of men or cattle, the first-born are mine, says the Lord.

Several types of useful animals, now extinct, were tamed, together with some that have continued as domesticated animals to the present day. Man had long lived with the dog, and the blue man had already been successful in taming the elephant. The cow was so improved by careful breeding as to become a valuable source of food; butter and cheese became common articles of human diet. Men were taught to use oxen for burden bearing, but the horse was not domesticated until a later date. The members of this corps first taught men to use the wheel for the facilitation of traction.

The peaceful grain growers of the Euphrates and Tigris valleys had long been harassed by the raids of the barbarians of Turkestan and the Iranian plateau. But now a concerted invasion of the Euphrates valley was brought about by the increasing drought of the highland pastures. And this invasion was all the more serious because these surrounding herdsmen and hunters possessed large numbers of tamed horses. It was the possession of horses which gave them a tremendous military advantage over their rich neighbors to the south. In a short time they overran all Mesopotamia, driving forth the last waves of culture which spread out over all of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa.

“3. Trade wealth — riches obtained as a fair profit in the exchange and barter of material goods.