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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 58
LIFE ESTABLISHMENT ON URANTIA
58:0.1
IN ALL Satania there are only sixty-one worlds similar
to Urantia, life-modification planets. The majority of
inhabited worlds are peopled in accordance with
established techniques; on such spheres the Life
Carriers are afforded little leeway in their plans for
life implantation. But about one world in ten is
designated as a decimal planet and assigned to the
special registry of the Life Carriers; and on such
planets we are permitted to undertake certain life
experiments in an effort to modify or possibly improve
the standard universe types of living beings.
1. PHYSICAL-LIFE PREREQUISITES
58:1.1
600,000,000 years ago the commission of Life Carriers
sent out from Jerusem arrived on Urantia and began the
study of physical conditions preparatory to launching
life on world number 606 of the Satania system. This was
to be our six hundred and sixth experience with the
initiation of the Nebadon life patterns in Satania and
our sixtieth opportunity to make changes and institute
modifications in the basic and standard life designs of
the local universe.
58:1.2
It should be made clear that Life Carriers cannot
initiate life until a sphere is ripe for the
inauguration of the evolutionary cycle. Neither can we
provide for a more rapid life development than can be
supported and accommodated by the physical progress of
the planet.
58:1.3
The Satania Life Carriers had projected a sodium
chloride pattern of life; therefore no steps could be
taken toward planting it until the ocean waters had
become sufficiently briny. The Urantia type of
protoplasm can function only in a suitable salt
solution. All ancestral life -- vegetable and animal --
evolved in a salt-solution habitat. And even the more
highly organized land animals could not continue to live
did not this same essential salt solution circulate
throughout their bodies in the blood stream which freely
bathes, literally submerses, every tiny living cell in
this "briny deep."
58:1.4
Your primitive ancestors freely circulated about in the
salty ocean; today, this same oceanlike salty solution
freely circulates about in your bodies, bathing each
individual cell with a chemical liquid in all essentials
comparable to the salt water which stimulated the first
protoplasmic reactions of the first living cells to
function on the planet.
58:1.5
But as this era opens, Urantia is in every way evolving
toward a state favorable for the support of the initial
forms of marine life. Slowly but surely physical
developments on earth and in adjacent space regions are
preparing the stage for the later attempts to establish
such life forms as we had decided would be best adapted
to the unfolding physical environment -- both
terrestrial and spatial.
58:1.6
Subsequently the Satania commission of Life Carriers
returned to Jerusem, preferring to await the further
breakup of the continental land mass, which would afford
still more inland seas and sheltered bays, before
actually beginning life implantation.
58:1.7
On a planet where life has a marine origin the ideal
conditions for life implantation are provided by a large
number of inland seas, by an extensive shore line of
shallow waters and sheltered bays; and just such a
distribution of the earth's waters was rapidly
developing. These ancient inland seas were seldom over
five or six hundred feet deep, and sunlight can
penetrate ocean water for more than six hundred feet.
58:1.8
And it was from such seashores of the mild and equable
climes of a later age that primitive plant life found
its way onto the land. There the high degree of carbon
in the atmosphere afforded the new land varieties of
life opportunity for speedy and luxuriant growth. Though
this atmosphere was then ideal for plant growth, it
contained such a high degree of carbon dioxide that no
animal, much less man, could have lived on the face of
the earth.
2. THE URANTIA ATMOSPHERE
58:2.1
The planetary atmosphere filters through to the earth
about one two-billionths of the sun's total light
emanation. If the light falling upon North America were
paid for at the rate of two cents per kilowatt-hour, the
annual light bill would be upward of 800 quadrillion
dollars. Chicago's bill for sunshine would amount to
considerably over 100 million dollars a day. And it
should be remembered that you receive from the sun other
forms of energy -- light is not the only solar
contribution reaching your atmosphere. Vast solar
energies pour in upon Urantia embracing wave lengths
ranging both above and below the recognition range of
human vision.
58:2.2
The earth's atmosphere is all but opaque to much of the
solar radiation at the extreme ultraviolet end of the
spectrum. Most of these short wave lengths are absorbed
by a layer of ozone which exists throughout a level
about ten miles above the surface of the earth, and
which extends spaceward for another ten miles. The ozone
permeating this region, at conditions prevailing on the
earth's surface, would make a layer only one tenth of an
inch thick; nevertheless, this relatively small and
apparently insignificant amount of ozone protects
Urantia inhabitants from the excess of these dangerous
and destructive ultraviolet radiations present in
sunlight. But were this ozone layer just a trifle
thicker, you would be deprived of the highly important
and health-giving ultraviolet rays which now reach the
earth's surface, and which are ancestral to one of the
most essential of your vitamins.
58:2.3
And yet some of the less imaginative of your mortal
mechanists insist on viewing material creation and human
evolution as an accident. The Urantia midwayers have
assembled over fifty thousand facts of physics and
chemistry which they deem to be incompatible with the
laws of accidental chance, and which they contend
unmistakably demonstrate the presence of intelligent
purpose in the material creation. And all of this takes
no account of their catalogue of more than one hundred
thousand findings outside the domain of physics and
chemistry which they maintain prove the presence of mind
in the planning, creation, and maintenance of the
material cosmos.
58:2.4
Your sun pours forth a veritable flood of death-dealing
rays, and your pleasant life on Urantia is due to the
"fortuitous" influence of more than two-score apparently
accidental protective operations similar to the action
of this unique ozone layer.
58:2.5
Were it not for the "blanketing" effect of the
atmosphere at night, heat would be lost by radiation so
rapidly that life would be impossible of maintenance
except by artificial provision.
58:2.6
The lower five or six miles of the earth's atmosphere is
the troposphere; this is the region of winds and air
currents which provide weather phenomena. Above this
region is the inner ionosphere and next above is the
stratosphere. Ascending from the surface of the earth,
the temperature steadily falls for six or eight miles,
at which height it registers around 70 degrees below
zero F. This temperature range of from 65 to 70 degrees
below zero F. is unchanged in the further ascent for
forty miles; this realm of constant temperature is the
stratosphere. At a height of forty-five or fifty miles,
the temperature begins to rise, and this increase
continues until, at the level of the auroral displays, a
temperature of 1200° F. is attained, and it is this
intense heat that ionizes the oxygen. But temperature in
such a rarefied atmosphere is hardly comparable with
heat reckoning at the surface of the earth. Bear in mind
that one half of all your atmosphere is to be found in
the first three miles. The height of the earth's
atmosphere is indicated by the highest auroral streamers
-- about four hundred miles.
58:2.7
Auroral phenomena are directly related to sunspots,
those solar cyclones which whirl in opposite directions
above and below the solar equator, even as do the
terrestrial tropical hurricanes. Such atmospheric
disturbances whirl in opposite directions when occurring
above or below the equator.
58:2.8
The power of sunspots to alter light frequencies shows
that these solar storm centers function as enormous
magnets. Such magnetic fields are able to hurl charged
particles from the sunspot craters out through space to
the earth's outer atmosphere, where their ionizing
influence produces such spectacular auroral displays.
Therefore do you have the greatest auroral phenomena
when sunspots are at their height -- or soon thereafter
-- at which time the spots are more generally
equatorially situated.
58:2.9
Even the compass needle is responsive to this solar
influence since it turns slightly to the east as the sun
rises and slightly to the west as the sun nears setting.
This happens every day, but during the height of sunspot
cycles this variation of the compass is twice as great.
These diurnal wanderings of the compass are in response
to the increased ionization of the upper atmosphere,
which is produced by the sunlight.
58:2.10
It is the presence of two different levels of
electrified conducting regions in the superstratosphere
that accounts for the long-distance transmission of your
long- and short-wave radiobroadcasts. Your broadcasting
is sometimes disturbed by the terrific storms which
occasionally rage in the realms of these outer
ionospheres.
3. SPATIAL ENVIRONMENT
58:3.1
During the earlier times of universe materialization the
space regions are interspersed with vast hydrogen
clouds, just such astronomic dust clusters as now
characterize many regions throughout remote space. Much
of the organized matter which the blazing suns break
down and disperse as radiant energy was originally built
up in these early appearing hydrogen clouds of space.
Under certain unusual conditions atom disruption also
occurs at the nucleus of the larger hydrogen masses. And
all of these phenomena of atom building and atom
dissolution, as in the highly heated nebulae, are
attended by the emergence of flood tides of short space
rays of radiant energy. Accompanying these diverse
radiations is a form of space-energy unknown on Urantia.
58:3.2
This short-ray energy charge of universe space is four
hundred times greater than all other forms of radiant
energy existing in the organized space domains. The
output of short space rays, whether coming from the
blazing nebulae, tense electric fields, outer space, or
the vast hydrogen dust clouds, is modified qualitatively
and quantitatively by fluctuations of, and sudden
tension changes in, temperature, gravity, and electronic
pressures.
58:3.3
These eventualities in the origin of the space rays are
determined by many cosmic occurrences as well as by the
orbits of circulating matter, which vary from modified
circles to extreme ellipses. Physical conditions may
also be greatly altered because the electron spin is
sometimes in the opposite direction from that of the
grosser matter behavior, even in the same physical zone.
58:3.4
The vast hydrogen clouds are veritable cosmic chemical
laboratories, harboring all phases of evolving energy
and metamorphosing matter. Great energy actions also
occur in the marginal gases of the great binary stars
which so frequently overlap and hence extensively
commingle. But none of these tremendous and far-flung
energy activities of space exerts the least influence
upon the phenomena of organized life -- the germ plasm
of living things and beings. These energy conditions of
space are germane to the essential environment of life
establishment, but they are not effective in the
subsequent modification of the inheritance factors of
the germ plasm as are some of the longer rays of radiant
energy. The implanted life of the Life Carriers is fully
resistant to all of this amazing flood of the short
space rays of universe energy.
58:3.5
All of these essential cosmic conditions had to evolve
to a favorable status before the Life Carriers could
actually begin the establishment of life on Urantia.
4. THE LIFE-DAWN ERA
58:4.1
That we are called Life Carriers should not confuse you.
We can and do carry life to the planets, but we brought
no life to Urantia. Urantia life is unique, original
with the planet. This sphere is a life-modification
world; all life appearing hereon was formulated by us
right here on the planet; and there is no other world in
all Satania, even in all Nebadon, that has a life
existence just like that of Urantia.
58:4.2
550,000,000
years ago the Life Carrier corps returned to Urantia. In
co-operation with spiritual powers and superphysical
forces we organized and initiated the original life
patterns of this world and planted them in the
hospitable waters of the realm. All planetary life
(aside from extraplanetary personalities) down to the
days of Caligastia, the Planetary Prince, had its origin
in our three original, identical, and simultaneous
marine-life implantations. These three life
implantations have been designated as: the
central or
Eurasian-African, the
eastern or
Australasian, and the
western,
embracing Greenland and the Americas.
58:4.3
500,000,000
years ago primitive marine vegetable life was well
established on Urantia. Greenland and the arctic land
mass, together with North and South America, were
beginning their long and slow westward drift. Africa
moved slightly south, creating an east and west trough,
the Mediterranean basin, between itself and the mother
body. Antarctica, Australia, and the land indicated by
the islands of the Pacific broke away on the south and
east and have drifted far away since that day.
58:4.4
We had planted the primitive form of marine life in the
sheltered tropic bays of the central seas of the
east-west cleavage of the breaking-up continental land
mass. Our purpose in making three marine-life
implantations was to insure that each great land mass
would carry this life with it, in its warm-water seas,
as the land subsequently separated. We foresaw that in
the later era of the emergence of land life large oceans
of water would separate these drifting continental land
masses.
5. THE CONTINENTAL DRIFT
58:5.1
The continental land drift continued. The earth's core
had become as dense and rigid as steel, being subjected
to a pressure of almost 25,000 tons to the square inch,
and owing to the enormous gravity pressure, it was and
still is very hot in the deep interior. The temperature
increases from the surface downward until at the center
it is slightly above the surface temperature of the sun.
58:5.2
The outer one thousand miles of the earth's mass
consists principally of different kinds of rock.
Underneath are the denser and heavier metallic elements.
Throughout the early and preatmospheric ages the world
was so nearly fluid in its molten and highly heated
state that the heavier metals sank deep into the
interior. Those found near the surface today represent
the exudate of ancient volcanoes, later and extensive
lava flows, and the more recent meteoric deposits.
58:5.3
The outer crust was about forty miles thick. This outer
shell was supported by, and rested directly upon, a
molten sea of basalt of varying thickness, a mobile
layer of molten lava held under high pressure but always
tending to flow hither and yon in equalization of
shifting planetary pressures, thereby tending to
stabilize the earth's crust.
58:5.4
Even today the continents continue to float upon this
noncrystallized cushiony sea of molten basalt. Were it
not for this protective condition, the more severe
earthquakes would literally shake the world to pieces.
Earthquakes are caused by sliding and shifting of the
solid outer crust and not by volcanoes.
58:5.5
The lava layers of the earth's crust, when cooled, form
granite. The average density of Urantia is a little more
than five and one-half times that of water; the density
of granite is less than three times that of water. The
earth's core is twelve times as dense as water.
58:5.6
The sea bottoms are more dense than the land masses, and
this is what keeps the continents above water. When the
sea bottoms are extruded above the sea level, they are
found to consist largely of basalt, a form of lava
considerably heavier than the granite of the land
masses. Again, if the continents were not lighter than
the ocean beds, gravity would draw the edges of the
oceans up onto the land, but such phenomena are not
observable.
58:5.7
The weight of the oceans is also a factor in the
increase of pressure on the sea beds. The lower but
comparatively heavier ocean beds, plus the weight of the
overlying water, approximate the weight of the higher
but much lighter continents. But all continents tend to
creep into the oceans. The continental pressure at
ocean-bottom levels is about 20,000 pounds to the square
inch. That is, this would be the pressure of a
continental mass standing 15,000 feet above the ocean
floor. The ocean-floor water pressure is only about
5,000 pounds to the square inch. These differential
pressures tend to cause the continents to slide toward
the ocean beds.
58:5.8
Depression of the ocean bottom during the prelife ages
had upthrust a solitary continental land mass to such a
height that its lateral pressure tended to cause the
eastern, western, and southern fringes to slide
downhill, over the underlying semiviscous lava beds,
into the waters of the surrounding Pacific Ocean. This
so fully compensated the continental pressure that a
wide break did not occur on the eastern shore of this
ancient Asiatic continent, but ever since has that
eastern coast line hovered over the precipice of its
adjoining oceanic depths, threatening to slide into a
watery grave.
6. THE TRANSITION PERIOD
58:6.1
450,000,000
years ago the
transition from vegetable to animal life occurred.
This metamorphosis took place in the shallow waters of
the sheltered tropic bays and lagoons of the extensive
shore lines of the separating continents. And this
development, all of which was inherent in the original
life patterns, came about gradually. There were many
transitional stages between the early primitive
vegetable forms of life and the later well-defined
animal organisms. Even today the transition slime molds
persist, and they can hardly be classified either as
plants or as animals.
58:6.2
Although the evolution of vegetable life can be traced
into animal life, and though there have been found
graduated series of plants and animals which
progressively lead up from the most simple to the most
complex and advanced organisms, you will not be able to
find such connecting links between the great divisions
of the animal kingdom nor between the highest of the
prehuman animal types and the dawn men of the human
races. These so-called "missing links" will forever
remain missing, for the simple reason that they never
existed.
58:6.3
From era to era radically new species of animal life
arise. They do not evolve as the result of the gradual
accumulation of small variations; they appear as
full-fledged and new orders of life, and they appear
suddenly.
58:6.4
The sudden
appearance of new species and diversified orders of
living organisms is wholly biologic, strictly natural.
There is nothing supernatural connected with these
genetic mutations.
58:6.5
At the proper degree of saltiness in the oceans animal
life evolved, and it was comparatively simple to allow
the briny waters to circulate through the animal bodies
of marine life. But when the oceans were contracted and
the percentage of salt was greatly increased, these same
animals evolved the ability to reduce the saltiness of
their body fluids just as those organisms which learned
to live in fresh water acquired the ability to maintain
the proper degree of sodium chloride in their body
fluids by ingenious techniques of salt conservation.
58:6.6
Study of the rock-embraced fossils of marine life
reveals the early adjustment struggles of these
primitive organisms. Plants and animals never cease to
make these adjustment experiments. Ever the environment
is changing, and always are living organisms striving to
accommodate themselves to these never-ending
fluctuations.
58:6.7
The physiologic equipment and the anatomic structure of
all new orders of life are in response to the action of
physical law, but the subsequent endowment of mind is a
bestowal of the adjutant mind-spirits in accordance with
innate brain capacity. Mind, while not a physical
evolution, is wholly dependent on the brain capacity
afforded by purely physical and evolutionary
developments.
58:6.8
Through almost endless cycles of gains and losses,
adjustments and readjustments, all living organisms
swing back and forth from age to age. Those that attain
cosmic unity persist, while those that fall short of
this goal cease to exist.
7. THE GEOLOGIC HISTORY BOOK
58:7.1
The vast group of rock systems which constituted the
outer crust of the world during the life-dawn or
Proterozoic era does not now appear at many points on
the earth's surface. And when it does emerge from below
all the accumulations of subsequent ages, there will be
found only the fossil remains of vegetable and early
primitive animal life. Some of these older
water-deposited rocks are commingled with subsequent
layers, and sometimes they yield fossil remains of some
of the earlier forms of vegetable life, while on the
topmost layers occasionally may be found some of the
more primitive forms of the early marine-animal
organisms. In many places these oldest stratified rock
layers, bearing the fossils of the early marine life,
both animal and vegetable, may be found directly on top
of the older undifferentiated stone.
58:7.2
Fossils of this era yield algae, corallike plants,
primitive Protozoa, and spongelike transition organisms.
But the absence of such fossils in the early rock layers
does not necessarily prove that living things were not
elsewhere in existence at the time of their deposition.
Life was sparse throughout these early times and only
slowly made its way over the face of the earth.
58:7.3
The rocks of this olden age are now at the earth's
surface, or very near the surface, over about one eighth
of the present land area. The average thickness of this
transition stone, the oldest stratified rock layers, is
about one and one-half miles. At some points these
ancient rock systems are as much as four miles thick,
but many of the layers which have been ascribed to this
era belong to later periods.
58:7.4
In North America this ancient and primitive
fossil-bearing stone layer comes to the surface over the
eastern, central, and northern regions of Canada. There
is also an intermittent east-west ridge of this rock
which extends from Pennsylvania and the ancient
Adirondack Mountains on west through Michigan,
Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Other ridges run from
Newfoundland to Alabama and from Alaska to Mexico.
58:7.5
The rocks of this era are exposed here and there all
over the world, but none are so easy of interpretation
as those about Lake Superior and in the Grand Canyon of
the Colorado River, where these primitive fossil-bearing
rocks, existing in several layers, testify to the
upheavals and surface fluctuations of those faraway
times.
58:7.6
This stone layer, the oldest fossil-bearing stratum in
the crust of the earth, has been crumpled, folded, and
grotesquely twisted as a result of the upheavals of
earthquakes and the early volcanoes. The lava flows of
this age brought much iron, copper, and lead up near the
planetary surface.
58:7.7
There are few places on the earth where such activities
are more graphically shown than in the St. Croix valley
of Wisconsin. In this region there occurred one hundred
and twenty-seven successive lava flows on land with
succeeding water submergence and consequent rock
deposition. Although much of the upper rock
sedimentation and intermittent lava flow is absent
today, and though the bottom of this system is buried
deep in the earth, nevertheless, about sixty-five or
seventy of these stratified records of past ages are now
exposed to view.
58:7.8
In these early ages when much land was near sea level,
there occurred many successive submergences and
emergences. The earth's crust was just entering upon its
later period of comparative stabilization. The
undulations, rises and dips, of the earlier continental
drift contributed to the frequency of the periodic
submergence of the great land masses.
58:7.9
During these times of primitive marine life, extensive
areas of the continental shores sank beneath the seas
from a few feet to half a mile. Much of the older
sandstone and conglomerates represents the sedimentary
accumulations of these ancient shores. The sedimentary
rocks belonging to this early stratification rest
directly upon those layers which date back far beyond
the origin of life, back to the early appearance of the
world-wide ocean.
58:7.10
Some of the upper layers of these transition rock
deposits contain small amounts of shale or slate of dark
colors, indicating the presence of organic carbon and
testifying to the existence of the ancestors of those
forms of plant life which overran the earth during the
succeeding Carboniferous or coal age. Much of the copper
in these rock layers results from water deposition. Some
is found in the cracks of the older rocks and is the
concentrate of the sluggish swamp water of some ancient
sheltered shore line. The iron mines of North America
and Europe are located in deposits and extrusions lying
partly in the older unstratified rocks and partly in
these later stratified rocks of the transition periods
of life formation.
58:7.11
This era witnesses the spread of life throughout the
waters of the world; marine life has become well
established on Urantia. The bottoms of the shallow and
extensive inland seas are being gradually overrun by a
profuse and luxuriant growth of vegetation, while the
shore-line waters are swarming with the simple forms of
animal life.
58:7.12
All of this story is graphically told within the fossil
pages of the vast "stone book" of world record. And the
pages of this gigantic biogeologic record unfailingly
tell the truth if you but acquire skill in their
interpretation. Many of these ancient sea beds are now
elevated high upon land, and their deposits of age upon
age tell the story of the life struggles of those early
days. It is literally true, as your poet has said, "The
dust we tread upon was once alive."
58:7.13
Presented by a member of the Urantia Life Carrier Corps
now resident on the planet.
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