PAPER 78
- THE VIOLET RACE AFTER THE DAYS OF ADAM
The second Eden was the
cradle of civilization for almost thirty thousand years.
Here in Mesopotamia the Adamic peoples held forth, sending
out their progeny to the ends of the earth, and latterly, as
amalgamated with the Nodite and Sangik tribes, were known as
the Andites. From this region went those men and women who
initiated the doings of historic times, and who have so
enormously accelerated cultural progress on Urantia.
This paper depicts the
planetary history of the violet race, beginning soon after
the default of Adam, about 35,000 B.C., and extending down
through its amalgamation with the Nodite and Sangik races,
about 15,000 B.C., to form the Andite peoples and on to its
final disappearance from the Mesopotamian homelands, about
2000 B.C.
1. RACIAL AND
CULTURAL DISTRIBUTION
Although the minds and
morals of the races were at a low level at the time of
Adam's arrival, physical evolution had gone on quite
unaffected by the exigencies of the Caligastia rebellion.
Adam's contribution to the biologic status of the races,
notwithstanding the partial failure of the undertaking,
enormously upstepped the people of Urantia.
Adam and Eve also
contributed much that was of value to the social, moral, and
intellectual progress of mankind; civilization was immensely
quickened by the presence of their offspring. But
thirty-five thousand years ago the world at large possessed
little culture. Certain centers of civilization existed here
and there, but most of Urantia languished in savagery.
Racial and cultural distribution was as follows:
1. The violet
race--Adamites and Adamsonites. The chief center of
Adamite culture was in the second garden, located in the
triangle of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; this was indeed
the cradle of Occidental and Indian civilizations. The
secondary or northern center of the violet race was the
Adamsonite headquarters, situated east of the southern shore
of the Caspian Sea near the Kopet mountains. From these two
centers there went forth to the surrounding lands the
culture and life plasm which so immediately quickened all
the races.
2. Pre-Sumerians and
other Nodites. There were also present in Mesopotamia,
near the mouth of the rivers, remnants of the ancient
culture of the days of Dalamatia. With the passing
millenniums, this group became thoroughly admixed with the
Adamites to the north, but they never entirely lost their
Nodite traditions. Various other Nodite groups that had
settled in the Levant were, in general, absorbed by the
later expanding violet race.
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3. The Andonites
maintained five or six fairly representative settlements to
the north and east of the Adamson headquarters. They were
also scattered throughout Turkestan, while isolated islands
of them persisted throughout Eurasia, especially in
mountainous regions. These aborigines still held the
northlands of the Eurasian continent, together with Iceland
and Greenland, but they had long since been driven from the
plains of Europe by the blue man and from the river valleys
of farther Asia by the expanding yellow race.
4. The red man
occupied the Americas, having been driven out of Asia over
fifty thousand years before the arrival of Adam.
5. The yellow race.
The Chinese peoples were well established in control of
eastern Asia. Their most advanced settlements were situated
to the northwest of modern China in regions bordering on
Tibet.
6. The blue race.
The blue men were scattered all over Europe, but their
better centers of culture were situated in the then fertile
valleys of the Mediterranean basin and in northwestern
Europe. Neanderthal absorption had greatly retarded the
culture of the blue man, but he was otherwise the most
aggressive, adventurous, and exploratory of all the
evolutionary peoples of Eurasia.
7. Pre-Dravidian India.
The complex mixture of races in India--embracing every race
on earth, but especially the green, orange, and
black--maintained a culture slightly above that of the
outlying regions.
8. The Sahara
civilization. The superior elements of the indigo race
had their most progressive settlements in what is now the
great Sahara desert. This indigo-black group carried
extensive strains of the submerged orange and green races.
9. The Mediterranean
basin. The most highly blended race outside of India
occupied what is now the Mediterranean basin. Here blue men
from the north and Saharans from the south met and mingled
with Nodites and Adamites from the east.
This was the picture of
the world prior to the beginnings of the great expansions of
the violet race, about twenty-five thousand years ago. The
hope of future civilization lay in the second garden between
the rivers of Mesopotamia. Here in southwestern Asia there
existed the potential of a great civilization, the
possibility of the spread to the world of the ideas and
ideals which had been salvaged from the days of Dalamatia
and the times of Eden.
Adam and Eve had left
behind a limited but potent progeny, and the celestial
observers on Urantia waited anxiously to find out how these
descendants of the erring Material Son and Daughter would
acquit themselves.
2. THE ADAMITES
IN THE SECOND GARDEN
For thousands of years the
sons of Adam labored along the rivers of Mesopotamia,
working out their irrigation and flood-control problems to
the south, perfecting their defenses to the north, and
attempting to preserve their traditions of the glory of the
first Eden.
The heroism displayed in
the leadership of the second garden constitutes one of the
amazing and inspiring epics of Urantia's history. These
splendid souls never wholly lost sight of the purpose of the
Adamic mission, and therefore did they valiantly fight off
the influences of the surrounding and inferior tribes
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while they willingly sent
forth their choicest sons and daughters in a steady stream
as emissaries to the races of earth. Sometimes this
expansion was depleting to the home culture, but always
these superior peoples would rehabilitate themselves.
The civilization, society,
and cultural status of the Adamites were far above the
general level of the evolutionary races of Urantia. Only
among the old settlements of Van and Amadon and the
Adamsonites was there a civilization in any way comparable.
But the civilization of the second Eden was an artificial
structure--it had not been evolved--and was therefore
doomed to deteriorate until it reached a natural
evolutionary level.
Adam left a great
intellectual and spiritual culture behind him, but it was
not advanced in mechanical appliances since every
civilization is limited by available natural resources,
inherent genius, and sufficient leisure to insure inventive
fruition. The civilization of the violet race was predicated
on the presence of Adam and on the traditions of the first
Eden. After Adam's death and as these traditions grew dim
through the passing millenniums, the cultural level of the
Adamites steadily deteriorated until it reached a state of
reciprocal balance with the status of the surrounding
peoples and the naturally evolving cultural capacities of
the violet race.
But the Adamites were a
real nation around 19,000 B.C., numbering four and a half
million, and already they had poured forth millions of their
progeny into the surrounding peoples.
3. EARLY
EXPANSIONS OF THE ADAMITES
The violet race retained
the Edenic traditions of peacefulness for many millenniums,
which explains their long delay in making territorial
conquests. When they suffered from population pressure,
instead of making war to secure more territory, they sent
forth their excess inhabitants as teachers to the other
races. The cultural effect of these earlier migrations was
not enduring, but the absorption of the Adamite teachers,
traders, and explorers was biologically invigorating to the
surrounding peoples.
Some of the Adamites early
journeyed westward to the valley of the Nile; others
penetrated eastward into Asia, but these were a minority.
The mass movement of the later days was extensively
northward and thence westward. It was, in the main, a
gradual but unremitting northward push, the greater number
making their way north and then circling westward around the
Caspian Sea into Europe.
About twenty-five thousand
years ago many of the purer elements of the Adamites were
well on their northern trek. And as they penetrated
northward, they became less and less Adamic until, by the
times of their occupation of Turkestan, they had become
thoroughly admixed with the other races, particularly the
Nodites. Very few of the pure-line violet peoples ever
penetrated far into Europe or Asia.
From about 30,000 to
10,000 B.C. epoch-making racial mixtures were taking place
throughout southwestern Asia. The highland inhabitants of
Turkestan were a virile and vigorous people. To the
northwest of India much of the culture of the days of Van
persisted. Still to the north of these settlements the best
of the early Andonites had been preserved. And both of these
superior races of culture and character were absorbed by the
northward-moving Adamites. This
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amalgamation led to the
adoption of many new ideas; it facilitated the progress of
civilization and greatly advanced all phases of art,
science, and social culture.
As the period of the early
Adamic migrations ended, about 15,000 B.C., there were
already more descendants of Adam in Europe and central Asia
than anywhere else in the world, even than in Mesopotamia.
The European blue races had been largely infiltrated. The
lands now called Russia and Turkestan were occupied
throughout their southern stretches by a great reservoir of
the Adamites mixed with Nodites, Andonites, and red and
yellow Sangiks. Southern Europe and the Mediterranean fringe
were occupied by a mixed race of Andonite and Sangik
peoples--orange, green, and indigo--with a sprinkling of the
Adamite stock. Asia Minor and the central-eastern European
lands were held by tribes that were predominantly Andonite.
A blended colored race,
about this time greatly reinforced by arrivals from
Mesopotamia, held forth in Egypt and prepared to take over
the disappearing culture of the Euphrates valley. The black
peoples were moving farther south in Africa and, like the
red race, were virtually isolated.
The Saharan civilization
had been disrupted by drought and that of the Mediterranean
basin by flood. The blue races had, as yet, failed to
develop an advanced culture. The Andonites were still
scattered over the Arctic and central Asian regions. The
green and orange races had been exterminated as such. The
indigo race was moving south in Africa, there to begin its
slow but long-continued racial deterioration.
The peoples of India lay
stagnant, with a civilization that was unprogressing; the
yellow man was consolidating his holdings in central Asia;
the brown man had not yet begun his civilization on the
near-by islands of the Pacific.
These racial
distributions, associated with extensive climatic changes,
set the world stage for the inauguration of the Andite era
of Urantia civilization. These early migrations extended
over a period of ten thousand years, from 25,000 to 15,000
B.C. The later or Andite migrations extended from about
15,000 to 6000 B.C.
It took so long for the
earlier waves of Adamites to pass over Eurasia that their
culture was largely lost in transit. Only the later Andites
moved with sufficient speed to retain the Edenic culture at
any great distance from Mesopotamia.
4. THE ANDITES
The Andite races were the
primary blends of the pure-line violet race and the Nodites
plus the evolutionary peoples. In general, Andites should be
thought of as having a far greater percentage of Adamic
blood than the modern races. In the main, the term Andite is
used to designate those peoples whose racial inheritance was
from one-eighth to one-sixth violet. Modern Urantians, even
the northern white races, contain much less than this
percentage of the blood of Adam.
The earliest Andite
peoples took origin in the regions adjacent to Mesopotamia
more than twenty-five thousand years ago and consisted of a
blend of the Adamites and Nodites. The second garden was
surrounded by concentric circles of diminishing violet
blood, and it was on the periphery of this racial melting
pot that the Andite race was born. Later on, when the
migrating Adamites
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and Nodites entered the then
fertile regions of Turkestan, they soon blended with the
superior inhabitants, and the resultant race mixture
extended the Andite type northward.
The Andites were the best
all-round human stock to appear on Urantia since the days of
the pure-line violet peoples. They embraced most of the
highest types of the surviving remnants of the Adamite and
Nodite races and, later, some of the best strains of the
yellow, blue, and green men.
These early Andites were
not Aryan; they were pre-Aryan. They were not white; they
were pre-white. They were neither an Occidental nor an
Oriental people. But it is Andite inheritance that gives to
the polyglot mixture of the so-called white races that
generalized homogeneity which has been called Caucasoid.
The purer strains of the
violet race had retained the Adamic tradition of
peace-seeking, which explains why the earlier race movements
had been more in the nature of peaceful migrations. But as
the Adamites united with the Nodite stocks, who were by this
time a belligerent race, their Andite descendants became,
for their day and age, the most skillful and sagacious
militarists ever to live on Urantia. Thenceforth the
movements of the Mesopotamians grew increasingly military in
character and became more akin to actual conquests.
These Andites were
adventurous; they had roving dispositions. An increase of
either Sangik or Andonite stock tended to stabilize them.
But even so, their later descendants never stopped until
they had circumnavigated the globe and discovered the last
remote continent.
5. THE ANDITE
MIGRATIONS
For twenty thousand years
the culture of the second garden persisted, but it
experienced a steady decline until about 15,000 B.C., when
the regeneration of the Sethite priesthood and the
leadership of Amosad inaugurated a brilliant era. The
massive waves of civilization which later spread over
Eurasia immediately followed the great renaissance of the
Garden consequent upon the extensive union of the Adamites
with the surrounding mixed Nodites to form the Andites.
These Andites inaugurated
new advances throughout Eurasia and North Africa. From
Mesopotamia through Sinkiang the Andite culture was
dominant, and the steady migration toward Europe was
continuously offset by new arrivals from Mesopotamia. But it
is hardly correct to speak of the Andites as a race in
Mesopotamia proper until near the beginning of the terminal
migrations of the mixed descendants of Adam. By this time
even the races in the second garden had become so blended
that they could no longer be considered Adamites.
The civilization of
Turkestan was constantly being revived and refreshed by the
newcomers from Mesopotamia, especially by the later Andite
cavalrymen. The so-called Aryan mother tongue was in process
of formation in the highlands of Turkestan; it was a blend
of the Andonic dialect of that region with the language of
the Adamsonites and later Andites. Many modern languages are
derived from this early speech of these central Asian tribes
who conquered Europe, India, and the upper stretches of the
Mesopotamian plains. This ancient language gave the
Occidental tongues all of that similarity which is called
Aryan.
By 12,000 B.C. three
quarters of the Andite stock of the world was resident in
northern and eastern Europe, and when the later and final
exodus from
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Mesopotamia took place,
sixty-five per cent of these last waves of emigration
entered Europe.
The Andites not only
migrated to Europe but to northern China and India, while
many groups penetrated to the ends of the earth as
missionaries, teachers, and traders. They contributed
considerably to the northern groups of the Saharan Sangik
peoples. But only a few teachers and traders ever penetrated
farther south in Africa than the headwaters of the Nile.
Later on, mixed Andites and Egyptians followed down both the
east and west coasts of Africa well below the equator, but
they did not reach Madagascar.
These Andites were the
so-called Dravidian and later Aryan conquerors of India; and
their presence in central Asia greatly upstepped the
ancestors of the Turanians. Many of this race journeyed to
China by way of both Sinkiang and Tibet and added desirable
qualities to the later Chinese stocks. From time to time
small groups made their way into Japan, Formosa, the East
Indies, and southern China, though very few entered southern
China by the coastal route.
One hundred and thirty-two
of this race, embarking in a fleet of small boats from
Japan, eventually reached South America and by intermarriage
with the natives of the Andes established the ancestry of
the later rulers of the Incas. They crossed the Pacific by
easy stages, tarrying on the many islands they found along
the way. The islands of the Polynesian group were both more
numerous and larger then than now, and these Andite sailors,
together with some who followed them, biologically modified
the native groups in transit. Many flourishing centers of
civilization grew up on these now submerged lands as a
result of Andite penetration. Easter Island was long a
religious and administrative center of one of these lost
groups. But of the Andites who navigated the Pacific of long
ago none but the one hundred and thirty-two ever reached the
mainland of the Americas.
The migratory conquests of
the Andites continued on down to their final dispersions,
from 8000 to 6000 B.C. As they poured out of Mesopotamia,
they continuously depleted the biologic reserves of their
homelands while markedly strengthening the surrounding
peoples. And to every nation to which they journeyed, they
contributed humor, art, adventure, music, and manufacture.
They were skillful domesticators of animals and expert
agriculturists. For the time being, at least, their presence
usually improved the religious beliefs and moral practices
of the older races. And so the culture of Mesopotamia
quietly spread out over Europe, India, China, northern
Africa, and the Pacific Islands.
6. THE LAST
ANDITE DISPERSIONS
The last three waves of
Andites poured out of Mesopotamia between 8000 and 6000 B.C.
These three great waves of culture were forced out of
Mesopotamia by the pressure of the hill tribes to the east
and the harassment of the plainsmen of the west. The
inhabitants of the Euphrates valley and adjacent territory
went forth in their final exodus in several directions:
Sixty-five per cent
entered Europe by the Caspian Sea route to conquer and
amalgamate with the newly appearing white races--the blend
of the blue men and the earlier Andites.
Ten per cent, including a
large group of the Sethite priests, moved eastward through
the Elamite highlands to the Iranian plateau and Turkestan.
Many of
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their descendants were later
driven into India with their Aryan brethren from the regions
to the north.
Ten per cent of the
Mesopotamians turned eastward in their northern trek,
entering Sinkiang, where they blended with the Andite-yellow
inhabitants. The majority of the able offspring of this
racial union later entered China and contributed much to the
immediate improvement of the northern division of the yellow
race.
Ten per cent of these
fleeing Andites made their way across Arabia and entered
Egypt.
Five per cent of the
Andites, the very superior culture of the coastal district
about the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates who had kept
themselves free from intermarriage with the inferior
neighboring tribesmen, refused to leave their homes. This
group represented the survival of many superior Nodite and
Adamite strains.
The Andites had almost
entirely evacuated this region by 6000 B.C., though their
descendants, largely mixed with the surrounding Sangik races
and the Andonites of Asia Minor, were there to give battle
to the northern and eastern invaders at a much later date.
The cultural age of the
second garden was terminated by the increasing infiltration
of the surrounding inferior stocks. Civilization moved
westward to the Nile and the Mediterranean islands, where it
continued to thrive and advance long after its fountainhead
in Mesopotamia had deteriorated. And this unchecked influx
of inferior peoples prepared the way for the later conquest
of all Mesopotamia by the northern barbarians who drove out
the residual strains of ability. Even in later years the
cultured residue still resented the presence of these
ignorant and uncouth invaders.
7. THE FLOODS IN
MESOPOTAMIA
The river dwellers were
accustomed to rivers overflowing their banks at certain
seasons; these periodic floods were annual events in their
lives. But new perils threatened the valley of Mesopotamia
as a result of progressive geologic changes to the north.
For thousands of years
after the submergence of the first Eden the mountains about
the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and those to the
northwest and northeast of Mesopotamia continued to rise.
This elevation of the highlands was greatly accelerated
about 5000 B.C., and this, together with greatly increased
snowfall on the northern mountains, caused unprecedented
floods each spring throughout the Euphrates valley. These
spring floods grew increasingly worse so that eventually the
inhabitants of the river regions were driven to the eastern
highlands. For almost a thousand years scores of cities were
practically deserted because of these extensive deluges.
Almost five thousand years
later, as the Hebrew priests in Babylonian captivity sought
to trace the Jewish people back to Adam, they found great
difficulty in piecing the story together; and it occurred to
one of them to abandon the effort, to let the whole world
drown in its wickedness at the time of Noah's flood, and
thus to be in a better position to trace Abraham right back
to one of the three surviving sons of Noah.
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The traditions of a time when
water covered the whole of the earth's surface are
universal. Many races harbor the story of a world-wide flood
some time during past ages. The Biblical story of Noah, the
ark, and the flood is an invention of the Hebrew priesthood
during the Babylonian captivity. There has never been a
universal flood since life was established on Urantia. The
only time the surface of the earth was completely covered by
water was during those Archeozoic ages before the land had
begun to appear.
But Noah really lived; he
was a wine maker of Aram, a river settlement near Erech. He
kept a written record of the days of the river's rise from
year to year. He brought much ridicule upon himself by going
up and down the river valley advocating that all houses be
built of wood, boat fashion, and that the family animals be
put on board each night as the flood season approached. He
would go to the neighboring river settlements every year and
warn them that in so many days the floods would come.
Finally a year came in which the annual floods were greatly
augmented by unusually heavy rainfall so that the sudden
rise of the waters wiped out the entire village; only Noah
and his immediate family were saved in their houseboat.
These floods completed the
disruption of Andite civilization. With the ending of this
period of deluge, the second garden was no more. Only in the
south and among the Sumerians did any trace of the former
glory remain.
The remnants of this, one
of the oldest civilizations, are to be found in these
regions of Mesopotamia and to the northeast and northwest.
But still older vestiges of the days of Dalamatia exist
under the waters of the Persian Gulf, and the first Eden
lies submerged under the eastern end of the Mediterranean
Sea.
8. THE
SUMERIANS--LAST OF THE ANDITES
When the last Andite
dispersion broke the biologic backbone of Mesopotamian
civilization, a small minority of this superior race
remained in their homeland near the mouths of the rivers.
These were the Sumerians, and by 6000 B.C. they had become
largely Andite in extraction, though their culture was more
exclusively Nodite in character, and they clung to the
ancient traditions of Dalamatia. Nonetheless, these
Sumerians of the coastal regions were the last of the
Andites in Mesopotamia. But the races of Mesopotamia were
already thoroughly blended by this late date, as is
evidenced by the skull types found in the graves of this
era.
It was during the
floodtimes that Susa so greatly prospered. The first and
lower city was inundated so that the second or higher town
succeeded the lower as the headquarters for the peculiar
artcrafts of that day. With the later diminution of these
floods, Ur became the center of the pottery industry. About
seven thousand years ago Ur was on the Persian Gulf, the
river deposits having since built up the land to its present
limits. These settlements suffered less from the floods
because of better controlling works and the widening mouths
of the rivers.
The peaceful grain growers
of the Euphrates and Tigris valleys had long been harassed
by the raids of the barbarians of Turkestan and the Iranian
plateau. But now a concerted invasion of the Euphrates
valley was brought about by the increasing drought of the
highland pastures. And this invasion was all the
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more serious because these
surrounding herdsmen and hunters possessed large numbers of
tamed horses. It was the possession of horses which gave
them a tremendous military advantage over their rich
neighbors to the south. In a short time they overran all
Mesopotamia, driving forth the last waves of culture which
spread out over all of Europe, western Asia, and northern
Africa.
These conquerors of
Mesopotamia carried in their ranks many of the better Andite
strains of the mixed northern races of Turkestan, including
some of the Adamson stock. These less advanced but more
vigorous tribes from the north quickly and willingly
assimilated the residue of the civilization of Mesopotamia
and presently developed into those mixed peoples found in
the Euphrates valley at the beginning of historic annals.
They quickly revived many phases of the passing civilization
of Mesopotamia, adopting the arts of the valley tribes and
much of the culture of the Sumerians. They even sought to
build a third tower of Babel and later adopted the term as
their national name.
When these barbarian
cavalrymen from the northeast overran the whole Euphrates
valley, they did not conquer the remnants of the Andites who
dwelt about the mouth of the river on the Persian Gulf.
These Sumerians were able to defend themselves because of
superior intelligence, better weapons, and their extensive
system of military canals, which were an adjunct to their
irrigation scheme of interconnecting pools. They were a
united people because they had a uniform group religion.
They were thus able to maintain their racial and national
integrity long after their neighbors to the northwest were
broken up into isolated city-states. No one of these city
groups was able to overcome the united Sumerians.
And the invaders from the
north soon learned to trust and prize these peace-loving
Sumerians as able teachers and administrators. They were
greatly respected and sought after as teachers of art and
industry, as directors of commerce, and as civil rulers by
all peoples to the north and from Egypt in the west to India
in the east.
After the breakup of the
early Sumerian confederation the later city-states were
ruled by the apostate descendants of the Sethite priests.
Only when these priests made conquests of the neighboring
cities did they call themselves kings. The later city kings
failed to form powerful confederations before the days of
Sargon because of deity jealousy. Each city believed its
municipal god to be superior to all other gods, and
therefore they refused to subordinate themselves to a common
leader.
The end of this long
period of the weak rule of the city priests was terminated
by Sargon, the priest of Kish, who proclaimed himself king
and started out on the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia
and adjoining lands. And for the time, this ended the
city-states, priest-ruled and priest-ridden, each city
having its own municipal god and its own ceremonial
practices.
After the breakup of this
Kish confederation there ensued a long period of constant
warfare between these valley cities for supremacy. And the
rulership variously shifted between Sumer, Akkad, Kish,
Erech, Ur, and Susa.
About 2500 B.C. the
Sumerians suffered severe reverses at the hands of the
northern Suites and Guites. Lagash, the Sumerian capital
built on flood mounds, fell. Erech held out for thirty years
after the fall of Akkad. By the time of the establishment of
the rule of Hammurabi the Sumerians had become absorbed into
the ranks of the northern Semites, and the Mesopotamian
Andites passed from the pages of history.
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From 2500 to 2000 B.C. the
nomads were on a rampage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The Nerites constituted the final eruption of the Caspian
group of the Mesopotamian descendants of the blended
Andonite and Andite races. What the barbarians failed to do
to effect the ruination of Mesopotamia, subsequent climatic
changes succeeded in accomplishing.
And this is the story of
the violet race after the days of Adam and of the fate of
their homeland between the Tigris and Euphrates. Their
ancient civilization finally fell due to the emigration of
superior peoples and the immigration of their inferior
neighbors. But long before the barbarian cavalrymen
conquered the valley, much of the Garden culture had spread
to Asia, Africa, and Europe, there to produce the ferments
which have resulted in the twentieth-century civilization of
Urantia.
[Presented by an Archangel
of Nebadon.] |