The Urantia Book
PAPER 68
THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION
Presented by a Melchizedek sometime stationed on Urantia.
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.
