Topic and Project Summaries

Shroud of Turin Summary
[Updated 04/30/08]
The Shroud of Turin Report is distinct from all the other UBtheNEWS reports. Typically, reports reflect The Urantia Book's unique quality of credibility; they demonstrate how science has caught up to it. In this case, given the broader context of all the reports published on UBtheNEWS, if anything, The Urantia Book gives more credibility to the authenticity of Shroud of Turin than the other way around.

The Urantia Book says the angels performed a time-accelerated elemental disintegration of Jesus' body and this has intriguing correlations with the image found on the Shroud of Turin. It says that Jesus' resurrected body was like that of angels and that his physical body still lay in the tomb after the resurrection and that the angels were given permission, upon request of an archangel, to cause the accelerated dissolution of his physical remains. This permission was requested and granted so that they would not have to witness the decay of his body. The correlations have primarily to do with the superficial nature of the image and current theories about corona discharge and nuclear medicine imaging . Additionally, there are intriguing correlations related to the Sudarium of Oviedo, a face napkin said to have covered Jesus' face as part of the burial process.

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Gobekli Tepe Summary

[3/9/10]

In 1994, almost forty years after The Urantia Book’s 1955 publication, excavations began at the Gobekli Tepe archaeological site in Turkey. This site has produced over 50 Stonehenge-type rock carvings and other artifacts, some of which date back to at least 12,000 years ago. A full excavation to the bottom of the site has not yet occurred. The artifacts are especially inconsistent with prevailing theories about the development of civilization. Every place else in the world where ancient civilizations have built structures with enormous stones, there is also evidence that they were settled communities that practiced herding and farming. Prevailing theories about this region suggest that around 11,000 years ago, primitive man was just beginning to evolve from being a hunter-gatherer to a herder-farmer. 

However, the discoveries at Gobekli Tepe are altogether consistent with The Urantia Book’s assertion that a well-developed herder-farmer civilization existed in this area, during this time period, and for more than 10,000 years previously. Additionally, there is strong evidence indicating that the site was intentionally buried about 8,000 years ago. This peculiar aspect of the Gobekli Tepe site, while difficult for archaeologists to explain, perfectly parallels The Urantia Book’s assertion that, at around this time, inferior and more barbaric tribes drove out this more peaceful and advanced, but declining, civilization.

The enormous Gobekli Tepe stones—at least 6,000 years older than Stonehenge and the pyramids—reflect a degree of cultural development and organization that defies explanation within the context of the more widely accepted theories on how civilization developed. And what further confounds scholars is that the stone structures get bigger as they get older. All of this is consistent with The Urantia Book’s version of history. It says the more advanced culture that lived in this area had been on the decline for over 10,000 years, as the result of a unique and unpredictable genetic shift that occurred in human history about 38,000 years ago.

Adding powerfully to the intrigue of this report is its interrelationship to the Adam and Eve Report and the Garden of Eden Report. These two reports involve some of the most impressive corroborations documented by UBtheNEWS. Because these three reports interrelate sequentially, it may be helpful to start at the beginning. The Adam and Eve Report, in particular, provides a foundation for appreciating The Urantia Book’s assertions about why and how a civilization with superior genetics got started around 38,000 years ago but was unable to maintain its distinctively advanced culture.

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Creating Fire Summary

[Updated 3/2/09]

The Urantia Book, which was first published in 1955, states “From the year A.D. 1934 back to the birth of the first two human beings is just 993,419 years.” It recounts that these first two human beings (Homo erectus) were a set of twins, a male and a female and that they were distinctly different, genetically superior mutations in comparison to their pre-human parents. According to The Urantia Book, they chose to separate themselves from their pre-human clan and that “On their northward journey they discovered an exposed flint deposit . . . Andon [the male] discovered their sparking quality and conceived the idea of building fire. . . 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.” These two ancestors of all mankind are said to have achieved this ability.

A 2004 discovery at the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov archaeological site in Israel provides strong evidence that human beings were able to use flint to create fire about 790,000 years ago. Prior to this discovery, the Terra Amata archaeological site in France, though very controversial, provided what was widely considered to be the best evidence for the early ability of human beings to create fire, suggesting that fire was being created sometime between 230,000 and 380,000 years ago. But undisputed evidence for the ability to create fire at will only goes back about 200,000 years. The evidence found at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, with its clusters of burnt flint at different levels, is considerably more definitive than what was found at Terra Amata. This 2004 discovery not only is consistent with The Urantia Book’s assertion that flint was initially used to make fire, but also was found in the general area where the first human beings are said to have lived and, by any analysis, pushes the date closer to what was given in The Urantia Book by hundreds of thousands of years.

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Early Migration to the Americas Summary
[Updated 6/29/08]
The Urantia Book states, “About eighty-five thousand years ago the comparatively pure remnants of the red race went en masse across to North America, and shortly thereafter the Bering land isthmus sank, thus isolating them.” When it was published in 1955, this statement contradicted the vast majority of scholarly opinion, which held that they arrived by this route about 12,000 years ago. Over the last several decades, new discoveries have been increasingly pushing this date further back in time. Much of the “old guard” opinion on this subject is still unwilling to concede a date prior to about 25,000 years ago. Nonetheless, numerous sites in both North and South America provide strong evidence for the presence of the Native Americans 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. Part of the problem with accepting the rather abundant archeological evidence that has been coming to the surface is that it conflicts with the widely held “out of Africa” theory. This topic is an excellent example of just how difficult it is for scholars who have invested their reputations in “old theories” to consider new evidence without bias.

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Early Migration to Britain Summary
[7/31/08]
The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (“AHOB project”) was launched in 2001 to revitalize the study of ancient archaeological sites in Britain. By 2005 AHOB researchers were able to establish that primitive man occupied Britain 700,000 years ago. This discovery came as quite a surprise the archaeological community. Prior to this recent development, the evidence for early human habitation only went back 500,000 years.

The Urantia Book, published in 1955, states that human habitation of Britain began approximately 900,000 years ago. Noting that there used to be a land bridge between Britain and France, it also remarks that, even though most of the evidence of human occupation is now submerged in the English Channel, there are still several sites near the coast bearing evidence of this early occupation. This is where recent discoveries have been made that push back the date of human habitation by 200,000 years. Additional work by the AHOB project is increasingly lending support to this aspect of The Urantia Book’s account of early human history. It is anticipated that this report will need to be updated numerous times in the next several years as the AHOB team continues to make new discoveries.

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Inner Ionosphere Summary
[Updated 4/13/07]
In discussing earth's atmosphere, The Urantia Book states the following, "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." Urantia Book enthusiasts and critics alike have long considered this statement to be a mistake because the longstanding understanding of the earth's atmosphere has been that the ionosphere exists above the stratosphere.

However, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, over thirty years after The Urantia Book's publication, observation of "blue jets" were conclusively documented and accepted as an atmospheric condition. Notwithstanding that this phenomenon is still not well understood, what has been learned about blue jets indicates that there must be an ionospheric layer below the stratosphere. Blue jets form above thunderclouds and often reach a height of about 25 miles above sea level. The long-recognized ionosphere, which exists above the stratosphere, begins at around 30 miles above sea level.

Calculations based on videos taken of blue jets, as well as other associated research, indicate that the ionic condition necessary to create their luminescent quality could not have its source in the thunderclouds over which they occur.

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Magnetic Sensitivity Summary
[Updated 8/15/08]

The Urantia Book states that all organisms have a biologic sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field and that this sensitivity is right on the edge of human consciousness. At the time of its publication in 1955, scientists did not generally believe that biologic organisms could have a mechanism that is sensitive to such a subtle electromagnetic field. Now many migratory and nonmigratory animals have been found to possess such sensitivity and some researchers assert that human beings also can sense the earth's magnetic field.

The Urantia Book asserts that the "bodies" responsible for this sensitivity were being discovered right around the time of The Urantia Book's narration, which it asserts was in the mid 1930's. In the mid 1930's scientists did discover that ampullae in a sharks snout had tiny inner ear type hairs and that there were nerves running from these ampullae to the brain. They could also tell that sharks were sensitive to electric fields. But it took until the 1960's to discover that the mechanism in these ampullae were extremely sensitive to electromagnetic fields.

Additionally, “In the 1960s, Caltech paleoecologist Heinz Lowenstam startled biologists and geologists alike with the discovery that many animals do what conventional science had considered impossible: they manufacture substances such as the iron-containing mineral magnetite [the most magnetically sensitive mineral on earth] within their bodies. Out of Lowenstam's work came the more recent finding that many migratory animals, including birds, bees, and whales, generate magnetite within their bodies and may owe their uncanny homing instincts to the presence of this "internal compass" that allows them to navigate by means of Earth's magnetic field.” Today, various biological mechanism have been discovered that play a role in allowing many different types of animals to be sensitive to the earth’s magnetic field.

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Pangaea to Plate Tectonics Summary
[Updated 4/9/07]
Not only does The Urantia Book say that the continents were once all connected as one land mass and that they broke up and then drifted apart, it also provides details about how this happened. Additionally, it addresses issues related to how various pressures affect the interrelationship of oceans, continents, the earth's crust, volcanoes, earthquakes, and mountain formation. Though the theory of continental drift had been around for a long time and some evidence in support of this theory had been developed prior to The Urantia Book's publication in 1955, the continental drift theory was very unpopular at the time of publication because scientists had not come up with an adequate explanation for how continents were able to move. In fact, seafloor spreading and plate tectonic theories, which brought continental drift theory into acceptance, had not yet developed.

Wikipedia puts it this way, "The acceptance of the theories of continental drift and sea floor spreading (the two key elements of plate tectonics) may be compared to the Copernican revolution in astronomy [when it was accepted that the planets move around the sun, not that everything moves around earth]. Within a matter of only several years geophysics and geology in particular were revolutionized. . . . What had been rejected for decades by any respectable scientific journal was eagerly accepted within a few short years in the 1960s and 1970s."

Going beyond a general description of the formation of the continents and mountain ranges, The Urantia Book also gives specific details about the sinking of a peninsula off the eastern coast of the Mediterranean some 33,000 years ago. Sonar technology had not developed sufficiently at the time of The Urantia Book's publication to provide a clear picture of the topography of the eastern Mediterranean basin. Today's more advanced sonar mapping reveals a topography between Cyrus and the coast of Syria that not only aligns with The Urantia Book' description, but also is located at the convergence of three highly active plates that produce an unusual crosscurrent of pressures. (Go to the Garden of Eden for a complete explanation about this now sunken peninsula.)

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Sierra Mountains Summary
[Updated 6/29/08]
A longstanding controversy has existed over when the Sierra Mountains were formed. Two schools of thought developed, referred to as the Old Sierras and the New Sierras theories. The Old Sierras theory holds that the Sierra Mountains formed about 50 million years ago; the New Sierras theory asserts that they are only about 5 million years old. Though the controversy is not entirely laid to rest by research published in 2006, this new approach to dating the mountains employs a technology that is much more specific than previous methodologies and has been widely accepted as reliable when used in other applications. The results are harmonious with the Old Sierras theory and what was asserted by The Urantia Book in 1955.

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Chromosome Count

[10/30/08]

The authors of The Urantia Book assert “there are forty-eight units of pattern control—trait determiners—in the sex cells of human reproduction.” In 1955, when the book was first published, the general scientific community believed that human beings have forty-eight chromosomes; in 1956 researchers determined that there are, in fact, forty-six chromosomes. The sex cells are distinct from other (somatic) cells. This distinction, taken in light of the reference to the total number of “units of pattern control,” supports an interpretation of The Urantia Book that is consistent with the now universal acceptance of forty-six as the correct number of human chromosomes.

The Urantia Book not only avoided supporting science that was incorrect at the time of publication, but also provided specific information that turned out to be consistent with what was about to be discovered shortly after its publication.

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Project Summaries

Adamson's Civilization Project Summary
[Updated 7/13/07]
According to The Urantia Book, Adamson, the first son of Adam and Eve, started a civilization to the east of the southern end of the Caspian Sea. Vestiges of this civilization are said to still exist. The Adamson Project is about discovering these remains. The discovery would rewrite history because finding these remains would provide evidence of an advanced civilization existing over 37,000 years ago.

Information provided in The Urantia Book indicates that the location of Adamson's civilization is probably in Iran. Additionally, unusual circumstances, detailed in the "Get a clue; then FOLLOW IT!" article, have also provided clues that point towards Iran.

Naturally, the success of this project will depend on the cooperation of certain people in the Iranian government and archaeological community. Though it has taken on a broader scope at this point, UBtheNEWS was originally started to assist Iranians who might be helpful to this project in appreciating the credibility of The Urantia Book. The Adamson Project Journal provides ongoing updates on the progress of this project.

Read more about the Adamson's Civilization Project...