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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 68
THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION
68:0.1
THIS is the beginning of the narrative of the long, long
forward struggle of the human species from a status that
was little better than an animal existence, through the
intervening ages, and down to the later times when a
real, though imperfect, civilization had evolved among
the higher races of mankind.
68:0.2
Civilization is a racial acquirement; it is not
biologically inherent; hence must all children be reared
in an environment of culture, while each succeeding
generation of youth must receive anew its education. The
superior qualities of civilization -- scientific,
philosophic, and religious -- are not transmitted from
one generation to another by direct inheritance. These
cultural achievements are preserved only by the
enlightened conservation of social inheritance.
68:0.3
Social evolution of the co-operative order was initiated
by the Dalamatia teachers, and for three hundred
thousand years mankind was nurtured in the idea of group
activities. The blue man most of all profited by these
early social teachings, the red man to some extent, and
the black man least of all. In more recent times the
yellow race and the white race have presented the most
advanced social development on Urantia.
1. PROTECTIVE SOCIALIZATION
68:1.1
When brought closely together, men often learn to like
one another, but primitive man was not naturally
overflowing with the spirit of brotherly feeling and the
desire for social contact with his fellows. Rather did
the early races learn by sad experience that "in union
there is strength"; and it is this lack of natural
brotherly attraction that now stands in the way of
immediate realization of the brotherhood of man on
Urantia.
68:1.2
Association early became the price of survival. The lone
man was helpless unless he bore a tribal mark which
testified that he belonged to a group which would
certainly avenge any assault made upon him. Even in the
days of Cain it was fatal to go abroad alone without
some mark of group association. Civilization has become
man's insurance against violent death, while the
premiums are paid by submission to society's numerous
law demands.
68:1.3
Primitive society was thus founded on the reciprocity of
necessity and on the enhanced safety of association. And
human society has evolved in agelong cycles as a result
of this isolation fear and by means of reluctant
co-operation.
68:1.4
Primitive human beings early learned that groups are
vastly greater and stronger than the mere sum of their
individual units. One hundred men united and working in
unison can move a great stone; a score of well-trained
guardians of the peace can restrain an angry mob. And so
society was born, not of mere association of numbers,
but rather as a result of the organization of
intelligent co-operators. But co-operation is not a
natural trait of man; he learns to co-operate first
through fear and then later because he discovers it is
most beneficial in meeting the difficulties of time and
guarding against the supposed perils of eternity.
68:1.5
The peoples who thus early organized themselves into a
primitive society became more successful in their
attacks on nature as well as in defense against their
fellows; they possessed greater survival possibilities;
hence has civilization steadily progressed on Urantia,
notwithstanding its many setbacks. And it is only
because of the enhancement of survival value in
association that man's many blunders have thus far
failed to stop or destroy human civilization.
68:1.6
That contemporary cultural society is a rather recent
phenomenon is well shown by the present-day survival of
such primitive social conditions as characterize the
Australian natives and the Bushmen and Pygmies of
Africa. Among these backward peoples may be observed
something of the early group hostility, personal
suspicion, and other highly antisocial traits which were
so characteristic of all primitive races. These
miserable remnants of the nonsocial peoples of ancient
times bear eloquent testimony to the fact that the
natural individualistic tendency of man cannot
successfully compete with the more potent and powerful
organizations and associations of social progression.
These backward and suspicious antisocial races that
speak a different dialect every forty or fifty miles
illustrate what a world you might now be living in but
for the combined teaching of the corporeal staff of the
Planetary Prince and the later labors of the Adamic
group of racial uplifters.
68:1.7
The modern phrase, "back to nature," is a delusion of
ignorance, a belief in the reality of the onetime
fictitious "golden age." The only basis for the legend
of the golden age is the historic fact of Dalamatia and
Eden. But these improved societies were far from the
realization of utopian dreams.
2. FACTORS IN SOCIAL PROGRESSION
68:2.1
Civilized society is the result of man's early efforts
to overcome his dislike of isolation. But this does not
necessarily signify mutual affection, and the present
turbulent state of certain primitive groups well
illustrates what the early tribes came up through. But
though the individuals of a civilization may collide
with each other and struggle against one another, and
though civilization itself may appear to be an
inconsistent mass of striving and struggling, it does
evidence earnest striving, not the deadly monotony of
stagnation.
68:2.2
While the level of intelligence has contributed
considerably to the rate of cultural progress, society
is essentially designed to lessen the risk element in
the individual's mode of living, and it has progressed
just as fast as it has succeeded in lessening pain and
increasing the pleasure element in life. Thus does the
whole social body push on slowly toward the goal of
destiny -- extinction or survival -- depending on
whether that goal is self-maintenance or
self-gratification. Self-maintenance originates society,
while excessive self-gratification destroys
civilization.
68:2.3
Society is concerned with self-perpetuation,
self-maintenance, and self-gratification, but human
self-realization is worthy of becoming the immediate
goal of many cultural groups.
68:2.4
The herd instinct in natural man is hardly sufficient to
account for the development of such a social
organization as now exists on Urantia. Though this
innate gregarious propensity lies at the bottom of human
society, much of man's sociability is an acquirement.
Two great influences which contributed to the early
association of human beings were food hunger and sex
love; these instinctive urges man shares with the animal
world. Two other emotions which drove human beings
together and held them together were vanity and fear,
more particularly ghost fear.
68:2.5
History is but the record of man's agelong food
struggle.
Primitive man only thought when he was hungry; food
saving was his first self-denial, self-discipline. With
the growth of society, food hunger ceased to be the only
incentive for mutual association. Numerous other sorts
of hunger, the realization of various needs, all led to
the closer association of mankind. But today society is
top-heavy with the overgrowth of supposed human needs.
Occidental civilization of the twentieth century groans
wearily under the tremendous overload of luxury and the
inordinate multiplication of human desires and longings.
Modern society is enduring the strain of one of its most
dangerous phases of far-flung interassociation and
highly complicated interdependence.
68:2.6
Hunger, vanity, and ghost fear were continuous in their
social pressure, but sex gratification was transient and
spasmodic. The sex urge alone did not impel primitive
men and women to assume the heavy burdens of home
maintenance. The early home was founded upon the sex
restlessness of the male when deprived of frequent
gratification and upon that devoted mother love of the
human female, which in measure she shares with the
females of all the higher animals. The presence of a
helpless baby determined the early differentiation of
male and female activities; the woman had to maintain a
settled residence where she could cultivate the soil.
And from earliest times, where woman was has always been
regarded as the home.
68:2.7
Woman thus early became indispensable to the evolving
social scheme, not so much because of the fleeting sex
passion as in consequence of
food requirement;
she was an essential partner in self-maintenance. She
was a food provider, a beast of burden, and a companion
who would stand great abuse without violent resentment,
and in addition to all of these desirable traits, she
was an ever-present means of sex gratification.
68:2.8
Almost everything of lasting value in civilization has
its roots in the family. The family was the first
successful peace group, the man and woman learning how
to adjust their antagonisms while at the same time
teaching the pursuits of peace to their children.
68:2.9
The function of marriage in evolution is the insurance
of race survival, not merely the realization of personal
happiness; self-maintenance and self-perpetuation are
the real objects of the home. Self-gratification is
incidental and not essential except as an incentive
insuring sex association. Nature demands survival, but
the arts of civilization continue to increase the
pleasures of marriage and the satisfactions of family
life.
68:2.10
If vanity be enlarged to cover pride, ambition, and
honor, then we may discern not only how these
propensities contribute to the formation of human
associations, but how they also hold men together, since
such emotions are futile without an audience to parade
before. Soon vanity associated with itself other
emotions and impulses which required a social arena
wherein they might exhibit and gratify themselves. This
group of emotions gave origin to the early beginnings of
all art, ceremonial, and all forms of sportive games and
contests.
68:2.11
Vanity contributed mightily to the birth of society; but
at the time of these revelations the devious strivings
of a vainglorious generation threaten to swamp and
submerge the whole complicated structure of a highly
specialized civilization. Pleasure-want has long since
superseded hunger-want; the legitimate social aims of
self-maintenance are rapidly translating themselves into
base and threatening forms of self-gratification.
Self-maintenance builds society; unbridled
self-gratification unfailingly destroys civilization.
3. SOCIALIZING INFLUENCE OF GHOST FEAR
68:3.1
Primitive desires produced the original society, but
ghost fear held it together and imparted an extrahuman
aspect to its existence. Common fear was physiological
in origin: fear of physical pain, unsatisfied hunger, or
some earthly calamity; but ghost fear was a new and
sublime sort of terror.
68:3.2
Probably the greatest single factor in the evolution of
human society was the ghost dream. Although most dreams
greatly perturbed the primitive mind, the ghost dream
actually terrorized early men, driving these
superstitious dreamers into each other's arms in willing
and earnest association for mutual protection against
the vague and unseen imaginary dangers of the spirit
world. The ghost dream was one of the earliest appearing
differences between the animal and human types of mind.
Animals do not visualize survival after death.
68:3.3
Except for this ghost factor, all society was founded on
fundamental needs and basic biologic urges. But ghost
fear introduced a new factor in civilization, a fear
which reaches out and away from the elemental needs of
the individual, and which rises far above even the
struggles to maintain the group. The dread of the
departed spirits of the dead brought to light a new and
amazing form of fear, an appalling and powerful terror,
which contributed to whipping the loose social orders of
early ages into the more thoroughly disciplined and
better controlled primitive groups of ancient times.
This senseless superstition, some of which still
persists, prepared the minds of men, through
superstitious fear of the unreal and the supernatural,
for the later discovery of "the fear of the Lord which
is the beginning of wisdom." The baseless fears of
evolution are designed to be supplanted by the awe for
Deity inspired by revelation. The early cult of ghost
fear became a powerful social bond, and ever since that
far-distant day mankind has been striving more or less
for the attainment of spirituality.
68:3.4
Hunger and love drove men together; vanity and ghost
fear held them together. But these emotions alone,
without the influence of peace-promoting revelations,
are unable to endure the strain of the suspicions and
irritations of human interassociations. Without help
from superhuman sources the strain of society breaks
down upon reaching certain limits, and these very
influences of social mobilization -- hunger, love,
vanity, and fear -- conspire to plunge mankind into war
and bloodshed.
68:3.5
The peace tendency of the human race is not a natural
endowment; it is derived from the teachings of revealed
religion, from the accumulated experience of the
progressive races, but more especially from the
teachings of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
4. EVOLUTION OF THE MORES
68:4.1
All modern social institutions arise from the evolution
of the primitive customs of your savage ancestors; the
conventions of today are the modified and expanded
customs of yesterday. What habit is to the individual,
custom is to the group; and group customs develop into
folkways or tribal traditions -- mass conventions. From
these early beginnings all of the institutions of
present-day human society take their humble origin.
68:4.2
It must be borne in mind that the mores originated in an
effort to adjust group living to the conditions of mass
existence; the mores were man's first social
institution. And all of these tribal reactions grew out
of the effort to avoid pain and humiliation while at the
same time seeking to enjoy pleasure and power. The
origin of folkways, like the origin of languages, is
always unconscious and unintentional and therefore
always shrouded in mystery.
68:4.3
Ghost fear drove primitive man to envision the
supernatural and thus securely laid the foundations for
those powerful social influences of ethics and religion
which in turn preserved inviolate the mores and customs
of society from generation to generation. The one thing
which early established and crystallized the mores was
the belief that the dead were jealous of the ways by
which they had lived and died; therefore would they
visit dire punishment upon those living mortals who
dared to treat with careless disdain the rules of living
which they had honored when in the flesh. All this is
best illustrated by the present reverence of the yellow
race for their ancestors. Later developing primitive
religion greatly reinforced ghost fear in stabilizing
the mores, but advancing civilization has increasingly
liberated mankind from the bondage of fear and the
slavery of superstition.
68:4.4
Prior to the liberating and liberalizing instruction of
the Dalamatia teachers, ancient man was held a helpless
victim of the ritual of the mores; the primitive savage
was hedged about by an endless ceremonial. Everything he
did from the time of awakening in the morning to the
moment he fell asleep in his cave at night had to be
done just so -- in accordance with the folkways of the
tribe. He was a slave to the tyranny of usage; his life
contained nothing free, spontaneous, or original. There
was no natural progress toward a higher mental, moral,
or social existence.
68:4.5
Early man was mightily gripped by custom; the savage was
a veritable slave to usage; but there have arisen ever
and anon those variations from type who have dared to
inaugurate new ways of thinking and improved methods of
living. Nevertheless, the inertia of primitive man
constitutes the biologic safety brake against
precipitation too suddenly into the ruinous
maladjustment of a too rapidly advancing civilization.
68:4.6
But these customs are not an unmitigated evil; their
evolution should continue. It is nearly fatal to the
continuance of civilization to undertake their wholesale
modification by radical revolution. Custom has been the
thread of continuity which has held civilization
together. The path of human history is strewn with the
remnants of discarded customs and obsolete social
practices; but no civilization has endured which
abandoned its mores except for the adoption of better
and more fit customs.
68:4.7
The survival of a society depends chiefly on the
progressive evolution of its mores. The process of
custom evolution grows out of the desire for
experimentation; new ideas are put forward --
competition ensues. A progressing civilization embraces
the progressive idea and endures; time and circumstance
finally select the fitter group for survival. But this
does not mean that each separate and isolated change in
the composition of human society has been for the
better. No! indeed no! for there have been many, many
retrogressions in the long forward struggle of Urantia
civilization.
5. LAND TECHNIQUES -- MAINTENANCE ARTS
68:5.1
Land is the stage of society; men are the actors. And
man must ever adjust his performances to conform to the
land situation. The evolution of the mores is always
dependent on the land-man ratio. This is true
notwithstanding the difficulty of its discernment. Man's
land technique, or maintenance arts, plus his standards
of living, equal the sum total of the folkways, the
mores. And the sum of man's adjustment to the life
demands equals his cultural civilization.
68:5.2
The earliest human cultures arose along the rivers of
the Eastern Hemisphere, and there were four great steps
in the forward march of civilization. They were:
68:5.3
1. The collection
stage. Food coercion, hunger, led to the first form
of industrial organization, the primitive food-gathering
lines. Sometimes such a line of hunger march would be
ten miles long as it passed over the land gleaning food.
This was the primitive nomadic stage of culture and is
the mode of life now followed by the African Bushmen.
68:5.4
2. The hunting
stage. The invention of weapon tools enabled man to
become a hunter and thus to gain considerable freedom
from food slavery. A thoughtful Andonite who had
severely bruised his fist in a serious combat
rediscovered the idea of using a long stick for his arm
and a piece of hard flint, bound on the end with sinews,
for his fist. Many tribes made independent discoveries
of this sort, and these various forms of hammers
represented one of the great forward steps in human
civilization. Today some Australian natives have
progressed little beyond this stage.
68:5.5
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.
68:5.6
3. The pastoral
stage. This phase of civilization was made possible
by the domestication of animals. The Arabs and the
natives of Africa are among the more recent pastoral
peoples.
68:5.7
Pastoral living afforded further relief from food
slavery; man learned to live on the interest of his
capital, the increase in his flocks; and this provided
more leisure for culture and progress.
68:5.8
Prepastoral society was one of sex co-operation, but the
spread of animal husbandry reduced women to the depths
of social slavery. In earlier times it was man's duty to
secure the animal food, woman's business to provide the
vegetable edibles. Therefore, when man entered the
pastoral era of his existence, woman's dignity fell
greatly. She must still toil to produce the vegetable
necessities of life, whereas the man need only go to his
herds to provide an abundance of animal food. Man thus
became relatively independent of woman; throughout the
entire pastoral age woman's status steadily declined. By
the close of this era she had become scarcely more than
a human animal, consigned to work and to bear human
offspring, much as the animals of the herd were expected
to labor and bring forth young. The men of the pastoral
ages had great love for their cattle; all the more pity
they could not have developed a deeper affection for
their wives.
68:5.9
4. The
agricultural stage. This era was brought about by
the domestication of plants, and it represents the
highest type of material civilization. Both Caligastia
and Adam endeavored to teach horticulture and
agriculture. Adam and Eve were gardeners, not shepherds,
and gardening was an advanced culture in those days. The
growing of plants exerts an ennobling influence on all
races of mankind.
68:5.10
Agriculture more than quadrupled the land-man ratio of
the world. It may be combined with the pastoral pursuits
of the former cultural stage. When the three stages
overlap, men hunt and women till the soil.
68:5.11
There has always been friction between the herders and
the tillers of the soil. The hunter and herder were
militant, warlike; the agriculturist is a more
peace-loving type. Association with animals suggests
struggle and force; association with plants instills
patience, quiet, and peace. Agriculture and
industrialism are the activities of peace. But the
weakness of both, as world social activities, is that
they lack excitement and adventure.
68:5.12
Human society has evolved from the hunting stage through
that of the herders to the territorial stage of
agriculture. And each stage of this progressive
civilization was accompanied by less and less of
nomadism; more and more man began to live at home.
68:5.13
And now is industry supplementing agriculture, with
consequently increased urbanization and multiplication
of nonagricultural groups of citizenship classes. But an
industrial era cannot hope to survive if its leaders
fail to recognize that even the highest social
developments must ever rest upon a sound agricultural
basis.
6. EVOLUTION OF CULTURE
68:6.1
Man is a creature of the soil, a child of nature; no
matter how earnestly he may try to escape from the land,
in the last reckoning he is certain to fail. "Dust you
are and to dust shall you return" is literally true of
all mankind. The basic struggle of man was, and is, and
ever shall be, for land. The first social associations
of primitive human beings were for the purpose of
winning these land struggles. The land-man ratio
underlies all social civilization.
68:6.2
Man's intelligence, by means of the arts and sciences,
increased the land yield; at the same time the natural
increase in offspring was somewhat brought under
control, and thus was provided the sustenance and
leisure to build a cultural civilization.
68:6.3
Human society is controlled by a law which decrees that
the population must vary directly in accordance with the
land arts and inversely with a given standard of living.
Throughout these early ages, even more than at present,
the law of supply and demand as concerned men and land
determined the estimated value of both. During the times
of plentiful land -- unoccupied territory -- the need
for men was great, and therefore the value of human life
was much enhanced; hence the loss of life was more
horrifying. During periods of land scarcity and
associated overpopulation, human life became
comparatively cheapened so that war, famine, and
pestilence were regarded with less concern.
68:6.4
When the land yield is reduced or the population is
increased, the inevitable struggle is renewed; the very
worst traits of human nature are brought to the surface.
The improvement of the land yield, the extension of the
mechanical arts, and the reduction of population all
tend to foster the development of the better side of
human nature.
68:6.5
Frontier society develops the unskilled side of
humanity; the fine arts and true scientific progress,
together with spiritual culture, have all thrived best
in the larger centers of life when supported by an
agricultural and industrial population slightly under
the land-man ratio. Cities always multiply the power of
their inhabitants for either good or evil.
68:6.6
The size of the family has always been influenced by the
standards of living. The higher the standard the smaller
the family, up to the point of established status or
gradual extinction.
68:6.7
All down through the ages the standards of living have
determined the quality of a surviving population in
contrast with mere quantity. Local class standards of
living give origin to new social castes, new mores. When
standards of living become too complicated or too highly
luxurious, they speedily become suicidal. Caste is the
direct result of the high social pressure of keen
competition produced by dense populations.
68:6.8
The early races often resorted to practices designed to
restrict population; all primitive tribes killed
deformed and sickly children. Girl babies were
frequently killed before the times of wife purchase.
Children were sometimes strangled at birth, but the
favorite method was exposure. The father of twins
usually insisted that one be killed since multiple
births were believed to be caused either by magic or by
infidelity. As a rule, however, twins of the same sex
were spared. While these taboos on twins were once
well-nigh universal, they were never a part of the
Andonite mores; these peoples always regarded twins as
omens of good luck.
68:6.9
Many races learned the technique of abortion, and this
practice became very common after the establishment of
the taboo on childbirth among the unmarried. It was long
the custom for a maiden to kill her offspring, but among
more civilized groups these illegitimate children became
the wards of the girl's mother. Many primitive clans
were virtually exterminated by the practice of both
abortion and infanticide. But regardless of the dictates
of the mores, very few children were ever destroyed
after having once been suckled -- maternal affection is
too strong.
68:6.10
Even in the twentieth century there persist remnants of
these primitive population controls. There is a tribe in
Australia whose mothers refuse to rear more than two or
three children. Not long since, one cannibalistic tribe
ate every fifth child born. In Madagascar some tribes
still destroy all children born on certain unlucky days,
resulting in the death of about twenty-five per cent of
all babies.
68:6.11
From a world standpoint, overpopulation has never been a
serious problem in the past, but if war is lessened and
science increasingly controls human diseases, it may
become a serious problem in the near future. At such a
time the great test of the wisdom of world leadership
will present itself. Will Urantia rulers have the
insight and courage to foster the multiplication of the
average or stabilized human being instead of the
extremes of the supernormal and the enormously
increasing groups of the subnormal? The normal man
should be fostered; he is the backbone of civilization
and the source of the mutant geniuses of the race. The
subnormal man should be kept under society's control; no
more should be produced than are required to administer
the lower levels of industry, those tasks requiring
intelligence above the animal level but making such
low-grade demands as to prove veritable slavery and
bondage for the higher types of mankind.
68:6.12
Presented by a Melchizedek sometime stationed on
Urantia.
*
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