Far from these texts

The gradual cooling of the ocean waters contributed much to the destruction of oceanic life. The marine animals of those ages took temporary refuge in three favorable retreats: the present Gulf of Mexico region, the Ganges Bay of India, and the Sicilian Bay of the Mediterranean basin. And it was from these three regions that the new marine species, born to adversity, later went forth to replenish the seas.

Industry, war, slavery, and civil government arose in response to the social evolution of man in his natural environment; religion similarly arose as his response to the illusory environment of the imaginary ghost world. Religion was an evolutionary development of self-maintenance, and it has worked, notwithstanding that it was originally erroneous in concept and utterly illogical.

Urantians should get a vision of a new and higher cultural society. Education will jump to new levels of value with the passing of the purely profit-motivated system of economics. Education has too long been localistic, militaristic, ego exalting, and success seeking; it must eventually become world-wide, idealistic, self-realizing, and cosmic grasping.

And the invaders from the north soon learned to trust and prize these peace-loving Sumerians as able teachers and administrators. They were greatly respected and sought after as teachers of art and industry, as directors of commerce, and as civil rulers by all peoples to the north and from Egypt in the west to India in the east.

Gold was the first metal to be sought by man; it was easy to work and, at first, was used only as an ornament. Copper was next employed but not extensively until it was admixed with tin to make the harder bronze. The discovery of mixing copper and tin to make bronze was made by one of the Adamsonites of Turkestan whose highland copper mine happened to be located alongside a tin deposit.

On many worlds the better adapted secondary midway creatures are able to attain varying degrees of contact with the Thought Adjusters of certain favorably constituted mortals through the skillful penetration of the minds of the latters’ indwelling. (And it was by just such a fortuitous combination of cosmic adjustments that these revelations were materialized in the English language on Urantia.) Such potential contact mortals of the evolutionary worlds are mobilized in the numerous reserve corps, and it is, to a certain extent, through these small groups of forward-looking personalities that spiritual civilization is advanced and the Most Highs are able to rule in the kingdoms of men. The men and women of these reserve corps of destiny thus have various degrees of contact with their Adjusters through the intervening ministry of the midway creatures; but these same mortals are little known to their fellows except in those rare social emergencies and spiritual exigencies wherein these reserve personalities function for the prevention of the breakdown of evolutionary culture or the extinction of the light of living truth. On Urantia these reservists of destiny have seldom been emblazoned on the pages of human history.

320,000,000 years ago the third major flood of this period occurred. The waters of this inundation covered all the land submerged by the preceding deluge, while extending farther in many directions all over the Americas and Europe. Eastern North America and western Europe were from 10,000 to 15,000 feet under water.

Michael of Nebadon is like the Paradise Father because he shares his Paradise perfection; so will evolutionary mortals sometime attain to kinship with the experiential Supreme, for they will truly share his evolutionary perfection.

The iniquity of Caligastia was the by-passing of the time governor of progressive human liberation — the gratuitous destruction of restraining barriers, barriers which the mortal minds of those times had not experientially overridden.

Although their ability to traverse the energy circuits makes planetary departure feasible to any midwayer, they have individually pledged themselves not to leave the planet prior to their sometime release by the universe authorities. Midwayers are anchored on a planet until the ages of settled light and life. With the exception of 1-2-3 the first, no loyal midway creatures have ever departed from Urantia.

The blue men became expert hunters and trappers; by fencing the rivers they caught fish in great numbers, drying the surplus for winter use. Many forms of ingenious snares and traps were employed in catching game, but the more primitive races did not hunt the larger animals.

The shamans were great believers in the mission of chance as revelatory of the will of the spirits; they frequently cast lots to arrive at decisions. Modern survivals of this proclivity for casting lots are illustrated, not only in the many games of chance, but also in the well-known “counting-out” rhymes. Once, the person counted out must die; now, he is only it in some childish game. That which was serious business to primitive man has survived as a diversion of the modern child.

The closing epochs of the preceding era were indeed the age of frogs, but these ancestors of the land vertebrates were no longer dominant, having survived in greatly reduced numbers. Very few types outlived the rigorous trials of the preceding period of biologic tribulation. Even the spore-bearing plants were nearly extinct.

The puberty initiation ceremony usually extended over a period of five years. Much self-torture and painful cutting entered into these ceremonies. Circumcision was first practiced as a rite of initiation into one of these secret fraternities. The tribal marks were cut on the body as a part of the puberty initiation; the tattoo originated as such a badge of membership. Such torture, together with much privation, was designed to harden these youths, to impress them with the reality of life and its inevitable hardships. This purpose is better accomplished by the later appearing athletic games and physical contests.

As time passed, the natural increase in numbers eventually resulted in serious food competition and sex rivalry, all of which culminated in a series of internecine battles that nearly destroyed the entire species. These struggles continued until only one group of less than one hundred individuals was left alive. But peace once more prevailed, and this lone surviving tribe built anew its treetop bedrooms and once again resumed a normal and semipeaceful existence.

At the opening of this faraway era, Urantia should be envisaged as a water-bound planet. Later on, deeper and hence denser lava flows came out upon the bottom of the present Pacific Ocean, and this part of the water-covered surface became considerably depressed. The first continental land mass emerged from the world ocean in compensatory adjustment of the equilibrium of the gradually thickening earth’s crust.

The higher human races of Urantia are complexly admixed; they are a blend of many races and stocks of different origin. This composite nature renders it exceedingly difficult for the Monitors to work efficiently during life and adds definitely to the problems of both the Adjuster and the guardian seraphim after death. Not long since I was present on Salvington and heard a guardian of destiny present a formal statement in extenuation of the difficulties of ministering to her mortal subject. This seraphim said:

The ceremony of adoption consisted in drinking each other’s blood. In some groups saliva was exchanged in the place of blood drinking, this being the ancient origin of the practice of social kissing. And all ceremonies of association, whether marriage or adoption, were always terminated by feasting.

When society fails to punish crimes, group resentment usually asserts itself as lynch law; the provision of sanctuary was a means of escaping this sudden group anger. Lynching and dueling represent the unwillingness of the individual to surrender private redress to the state.

The blue men were hunters, fishers, and food gatherers; they were expert boatbuilders. They made stone axes, cut down trees, erected log huts, partly below ground and roofed with hides. And there are peoples who still build similar huts in Siberia. The southern Cro-Magnons generally lived in caves and grottoes.