PAPER 63
THE FIRST HUMAN FAMILY
63:0.1 URANTIA was registered as an inhabited world
when the first two human beings -- the twins -- were eleven years old, and
before they had become the parents of the first-born of the second generation
of actual human beings. And the archangel message from Salvington, on this
occasion of formal planetary recognition, closed with these words:
63:0.2 "Man-mind has appeared on 606 of Satania, and
these parents of the new race shall be called Andon and Fonta.
And all archangels pray that these creatures may speedily be endowed with the
personal indwelling of the gift of the spirit of the Universal
Father."
63:0.3 Andon is the Nebadon name which signifies
"the first Fatherlike creature to exhibit human perfection hunger." Fonta
signifies "the first Sonlike creature to exhibit human perfection hunger."
Andon and Fonta never knew these names until they were bestowed upon them at
the time of fusion with their Thought Adjusters. Throughout their mortal
sojourn on Urantia they called each other Sonta-an and Sonta-en, Sonta-an
meaning "loved by mother," Sonta-en signifying "loved by father." They gave
themselves these names, and the meanings are significant of their mutual
regard and affection.
1. ANDON AND FONTA
63:1.1 In many respects, Andon and Fonta were the
most remarkable pair of human beings that have ever lived on the face of the
earth. This wonderful pair, the actual parents of all mankind, were in every
way superior to many of their immediate descendants, and they were radically
different from all of their ancestors, both immediate and remote.
63:1.2 The parents of this first human couple were
apparently little different from the average of their tribe, though they were
among its more intelligent members, that group which first learned to throw
stones and to use clubs in fighting. They also made use of sharp spicules of
stone, flint, and bone.
63:1.3 While still living with his parents, Andon
had fastened a sharp piece of flint on the end of a club, using animal tendons
for this purpose, and on no less than a dozen occasions he made good use of
such a weapon in saving both his own life and that of his equally adventurous
and inquisitive sister, who unfailingly accompanied him on all of his tours of
exploration.
63:1.4 The decision of Andon and Fonta to flee from
the Primates tribes implies a quality of mind far above the baser intelligence
which characterized so many of their later descendants who stooped to mate
with their retarded cousins of the simian tribes. But their vague feeling of
being something more than mere animals was due to the possession of
personality and was augmented by the indwelling presence of the Thought
Adjusters.
2. THE FLIGHT OF THE TWINS
63:2.1 After Andon and Fonta had decided to flee
northward, they succumbed to their fears for a time, especially the fear of
displeasing their father and immediate family. They envisaged being set upon
by hostile relatives and thus recognized the possibility of meeting death at
the hands of their already jealous tribesmen. As youngsters, the twins had
spent most of their time in each other's company and for this reason had never
been overly popular with their animal cousins of the Primates tribe. Nor had
they improved their standing in the tribe by building a separate, and a very
superior, tree home.
63:2.2 And it was in this new home among the
treetops, one night after they had been awakened by a violent storm, and as
they held each other in fearful and fond embrace, that they finally and fully
made up their minds to flee from the tribal habitat and the home
treetops.
63:2.3 They had already prepared a crude treetop
retreat some half-day's journey to the north. This was their secret and safe
hiding place for the first day away from the home forests. Notwithstanding
that the twins shared the Primates' deathly fear of being on the ground at
nighttime, they sallied forth shortly before nightfall on their northern trek.
While it required unusual courage for them to undertake this night journey,
even with a full moon, they correctly concluded that they were less likely to
be missed and pursued by their tribesmen and relatives. And they safely made
their previously prepared rendezvous shortly after midnight.
63:2.4 On their northward journey they discovered an
exposed flint deposit and, finding many stones suitably shaped for various
uses, gathered up a supply for the future. In attempting to chip these flints
so that they would be better adapted for certain purposes, Andon discovered
their sparking quality and conceived the idea of building fire. But the notion
did not take firm hold of him at the time as the climate was still salubrious
and there was little need of fire.
63:2.5 But the autumn sun was getting lower in the
sky, and as they journeyed northward, the nights grew cooler and cooler.
Already they had been forced to make use of animal skins for warmth. Before
they had been away from home one moon, Andon signified to his mate that he
thought he could make fire with the flint. They tried for two months to
utilize the flint spark for kindling a fire but only met with failure. Each
day this couple would strike the flints and endeavor to ignite the wood.
Finally, one evening about the time of the setting of the sun, the secret of
the technique was unraveled when it occurred to Fonta to climb a near-by tree
to secure an abandoned bird's nest. The nest was dry and highly inflammable
and consequently flared right up into a full blaze the moment the spark fell
upon it. They were so surprised and startled at their success that they almost
lost the fire, but they saved it by the addition of suitable fuel, and then
began the first search for firewood by the parents of all mankind.
63:2.6 This was one of the most joyous moments in
their short but eventful lives. All night long they sat up watching their fire
burn, vaguely realizing that they had made a discovery which would make it
possible for them to defy climate and thus forever to be independent of their
animal relatives of the southern lands. After three days' rest and enjoyment
of the fire, they journeyed
63:2.7 The Primates ancestors of Andon had often
replenished fire which had been kindled by lightning, but never before had the
creatures of earth possessed a method of starting fire at will. But it was a
long time before the twins learned that dry moss and other materials would
kindle fire just as well as birds' nests.
3. ANDON'S FAMILY
63:3.1 It was almost two years from the night of the
twins' departure from home before their first child was born. They named him
Sontad; and Sontad was the first creature to be born on Urantia who was
wrapped in protective coverings at the time of birth. The human race had
begun, and with this new evolution there appeared the instinct properly to
care for the increasingly enfeebled infants which would characterize the
progressive development of mind of the intellectual order as contrasted with
the more purely animal type.
63:3.2 Andon and Fonta had nineteen children in all,
and they lived to enjoy the association of almost half a hundred grandchildren
and half a dozen great-grandchildren. The family was domiciled in four
adjoining rock shelters, or semicaves, three of which were interconnected by
hallways which had been excavated in the soft limestone with flint tools
devised by Andon's children.
63:3.3 These early Andonites evinced a very marked
clannish spirit; they hunted in groups and never strayed very far from the
homesite. They seemed to realize that they were an isolated and unique group
of living beings and should therefore avoid becoming separated. This feeling
of intimate kinship was undoubtedly due to the enhanced mind ministry of the
adjutant spirits.
63:3.4 Andon and Fonta labored incessantly for the
nurture and uplift of the clan. They lived to the age of forty-two, when both
were killed at the time of an earthquake by the falling of an overhanging
rock. Five of their children and eleven grandchildren perished with them, and
almost a score of their descendants suffered serious injuries.
63:3.5 Upon the death of his parents, Sontad,
despite a seriously injured foot, immediately assumed the leadership of the
clan and was ably assisted by his wife, his eldest sister. Their first task
was to roll up stones to effectively entomb their dead parents, brothers,
sisters, and children. Undue significance should not attach to this act of
burial. Their ideas of survival after death were very vague and indefinite,
being largely derived from their fantastic and variegated dream life.
63:3.6 This family of Andon and Fonta held together
until the twentieth generation, when combined food competition and social
friction brought about the beginning of dispersion.
4. THE ANDONIC CLANS
63:4.1 Primitive man -- the Andonites -- had black
eyes and a swarthy complexion, something of a cross between yellow and red.
Melanin is a coloring substance which is found in the skins of all human
beings. It is the original Andonic skin pigment. In general appearance and
skin color these early Andonites more nearly resembled the present-day Eskimo
than any other type of living human beings. They were the first creatures to
use the skins of animals as a protection against cold; they had little more
hair on their bodies than present-day humans.
63:4.2 The tribal life of the animal ancestors of
these early men had foreshadowed the beginnings of numerous social
conventions, and with the expanding emotions and augmented brain powers of
these beings, there was an immediate development in social organization and a
new division of clan labor. They were exceedingly imitative, but the play
instinct was only slightly developed, and the sense of humor was almost
entirely absent. Primitive man smiled occasionally, but he never indulged in
hearty laughter. Humor was the legacy of the later Adamic race. These early
human beings were not so sensitive to pain nor so reactive to unpleasant
situations as were many of the later evolving mortals. Childbirth was not a
painful or distressing ordeal to Fonta and her immediate progeny.
63:4.3 They were a wonderful tribe. The males would
fight heroically for the safety of their mates and their offspring; the
females were affectionately devoted to their children. But their patriotism
was wholly limited to the immediate clan. They were very loyal to their
families; they would die without question in defense of their children, but
they were not able to grasp the idea of trying to make the world a better
place for their grandchildren. Altruism was as yet unborn in the human heart,
notwithstanding that all of the emotions essential to the birth of religion
were already present in these Urantia aborigines.
63:4.4 These early men possessed a touching
affection for their comrades and certainly had a real, although crude, idea of
friendship. It was a common sight in later times, during their constantly
recurring battles with the inferior tribes, to see one of these primitive men
valiantly fighting with one hand while he struggled on, trying to protect and
save an injured fellow warrior. Many of the most noble and highly human traits
of subsequent evolutionary development were touchingly foreshadowed in these
primitive peoples.
63:4.5 The original Andonic clan maintained an
unbroken line of leadership until the twenty-seventh generation, when, no male
offspring appearing among Sontad's direct descendants, two rival would-be
rulers of the clan fell to fighting for supremacy.
63:4.6 Before the extensive dispersion of the
Andonic clans a well-developed language had evolved from their early efforts
to intercommunicate. This language continued to grow, and almost daily
additions were made to it because of the new inventions and adaptations to
environment which were developed by these active, restless, and curious
people. And this language became the word of Urantia, the tongue of the early
human family, until the later appearance of the colored races.
63:4.7 As time passed, the Andonic clans grew in
number, and the contact of the expanding families developed friction and
misunderstandings. Only two things came to occupy the minds of these peoples:
hunting to obtain food and fighting to avenge themselves against some real or
supposed injustice or insult at the hands of the neighboring
tribes.
63:4.8 Family feuds increased, tribal wars broke
out, and serious losses were sustained among the very best elements of the
more able and advanced groups. Some of these losses were irreparable; some of
the most valuable strains of ability and intelligence were forever lost to the
world. This early race and its primitive civilization were threatened with
extinction by this incessant warfare of the clans.
63:4.9 It is impossible to induce such primitive
beings long to live together in peace. Man is the descendant of fighting
animals, and when closely associated, uncultured people irritate and offend
each other. The Life Carriers know this tendency among evolutionary creatures
and accordingly make provision for the eventual separation of developing human
beings into at least three, and more often six, distinct and separate races.
5. DISPERSION OF THE ANDONITES
63:5.1 The early Andon races did not penetrate very
far into Asia, and they did not at first enter Africa. The geography of those
times pointed them north, and farther and farther north these people journeyed
until they were hindered by the slowly advancing ice of the third
glacier.
63:5.2 Before this extensive ice sheet reached
France and the British Isles, the descendants of Andon and Fonta had pushed on
westward over Europe and had established more than one thousand separate
settlements along the great rivers leading to the then warm waters of the
North Sea.
63:5.3 These Andonic tribes were the early river
dwellers of France; they lived along the river Somme for tens of thousands of
years. The Somme is the one river unchanged by the glaciers, running down to
the sea in those days much as it does today. And that explains why so much
evidence of the Andonic descendants is found along the course of this river
valley.
63:5.4 These aborigines of Urantia were not tree
dwellers, though in emergencies they still betook themselves to the treetops.
They regularly dwelt under the shelter of overhanging cliffs along the rivers
and in hillside grottoes which afforded a good view of the approaches and
sheltered them from the elements. They could thus enjoy the comfort of their
fires without being too much inconvenienced by the smoke. They were not really
cave dwellers either, though in subsequent times the later ice sheets came
farther south and drove their descendants to the caves. They preferred to camp
near the edge of a forest and beside a stream.
63:5.5 They very early became remarkably clever in
disguising their partially sheltered abodes and showed great skill in
constructing stone sleeping chambers, dome-shaped stone huts, into which they
crawled at night. The entrance to such a hut was closed by rolling a stone in
front of it, a large stone which had been placed inside for this purpose
before the roof stones were finally put in place.
63:5.6 The Andonites were fearless and successful
hunters and, with the exception of wild berries and certain fruits of the
trees, lived exclusively on flesh. As Andon had invented the stone ax, so his
descendants early discovered and made effective use of the throwing stick and
the harpoon. At last a tool-creating mind was functioning in conjunction with
an implement-using hand, and these early humans became highly skillful in the
fashioning of flint tools. They traveled far and wide in search of flint, much
as present-day humans journey to the ends of the earth in quest of gold,
platinum, and diamonds.
63:5.7 And in many other ways these Andon tribes
manifested a degree of intelligence which their retrogressing descendants did
not attain in half a million years, though they did again and again rediscover
various methods of kindling fire.
6. ONAGAR -- THE FIRST TRUTH TEACHER
63:6.1 As the Andonic dispersion extended, the
cultural and spiritual status of the clans retrogressed for nearly ten
thousand years until the days of Onagar, who assumed the leadership of these
tribes, brought peace among them, and for the first time, led all of them in
the worship of the "Breath Giver to men and animals."
63:6.2 Andon's philosophy had been most confused; he
had barely escaped becoming a fire worshiper because of the great comfort
derived from his accidental discovery of fire. Reason, however, directed him
from his own discovery to the sun as a superior and more awe-inspiring source
of heat and light, but it was too remote, and so he failed to become a sun
worshiper.
63:6.3 The Andonites early developed a fear of the
elements -- thunder, lightning, rain, snow, hail, and ice. But hunger was the
constantly recurring urge of these early days, and since they largely
subsisted on animals, they eventually evolved a form of animal worship. To
Andon, the larger food animals were symbols of creative might and sustaining
power. From time to time it became the custom to designate various of these
larger animals as objects of worship. During the vogue of a particular animal,
crude outlines of it would be drawn on the walls of the caves, and later on,
as continued progress was made in the arts, such an animal god was engraved on
various ornaments.
63:6.4 Very early the Andonic peoples formed the
habit of refraining from eating the flesh of the animal of tribal veneration.
Presently, in order more suitably to impress the minds of their youths, they
evolved a ceremony of reverence which was carried out about the body of one of
these venerated animals; and still later on, this primitive performance
developed into the more elaborate sacrificial ceremonies of their descendants.
And this is the origin of sacrifices as a part of worship. This idea was
elaborated by Moses in the Hebrew ritual and was preserved, in principle, by
the Apostle Paul as the doctrine of atonement for sin by "the shedding of
blood."
63:6.5 That food was the all-important thing in the
lives of these primitive human beings is shown by the prayer taught these
simple folks by Onagar, their great teacher. And this prayer was:
63:6.6 "O Breath of Life, give us this day our daily
food, deliver us from the curse of the ice, save us from our forest enemies,
and with mercy receive us into the Great Beyond."
63:6.7 Onagar maintained headquarters on the
northern shores of the ancient Mediterranean in the region of the present
Caspian Sea at a settlement called Oban, the tarrying place on the westward
turning of the travel trail leading up northward from the Mesopotamian
southland. From Oban he sent out teachers to the remote settlements to spread
his new doctrines of one Deity and his concept of the hereafter, which he
called the Great Beyond. These emissaries of Onagar were the world's first
missionaries; they were also the first human beings to cook meat, the first
regularly to use fire in the preparation of food. They cooked flesh on the
ends of sticks and also on hot stones; later on they roasted large pieces in
the fire, but their descendants almost entirely reverted to the use of raw
flesh.
63:6.8 Onagar was born 983,323 years ago (from A.D.
1934), and he lived to be sixty-nine years of age. The record of the
achievements of this master mind and spiritual leader of the pre-Planetary
Prince days is a thrilling recital of the organization of these primitive
peoples into a real society. He instituted an efficient tribal government, the
like of which was not attained by succeeding generations in many millenniums.
Never again, until the arrival of the Planetary Prince, was there such a high
spiritual civilization on earth. These simple people had a real though
primitive religion, but it was subsequently lost to their deteriorating
descendants.
63:6.9 Although both Andon and Fonta had received
Thought Adjusters, as had many of their descendants, it was not until the days
of Onagar that the Adjusters and guardian seraphim came in great numbers to
Urantia. This was, indeed, the golden age of primitive man.
7. THE SURVIVAL OF ANDON AND FONTA
63:7.1 Andon and Fonta, the splendid founders of the
human race, received recognition at the time of the adjudication of Urantia
upon the arrival of the Planetary Prince, and in due time they emerged from
the regime of the mansion worlds with citizenship status on Jerusem. Although
they have never been permitted to return to Urantia, they are cognizant of the
history of the race they founded. They grieved over the Caligastia betrayal,
sorrowed because of the Adamic failure, but rejoiced exceedingly when
announcement was received that Michael had selected their world as the theater
for his final bestowal.
63:7.2 On Jerusem both Andon and Fonta were fused
with their Thought Adjusters, as also were several of their children,
including Sontad, but the majority of even their immediate descendants only
achieved Spirit fusion.
63:7.3 Andon and Fonta, shortly after their arrival
on Jerusem, received permission from the System Sovereign to return to the
first mansion world to serve with the morontia personalities who welcome the
pilgrims of time from Urantia to the heavenly spheres. And they have been
assigned indefinitely to this service. They sought to send greetings to
Urantia in connection with these revelations, but this request was wisely
denied them.
63:7.4 And this is the recital of the most heroic
and fascinating chapter in all the history of Urantia, the story of the
evolution, life struggles, death, and eternal survival of the unique parents
of all mankind.
63:7.5 Presented by
a Life Carrier resident on Urantia.
