Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 62
THE DAWN RACES OF EARLY MAN
1. About one million years ago the immediate ancestors of mankind made their appearance by three successive and sudden mutations stemming from early stock of the lemur type of placental mammal.
2. A little more than one million years ago the Mesopotamian dawn mammals, the direct descendants of the North American lemur type of placental mammal, suddenly appeared. They were active little creatures, almost three feet tall.. They had a primitive opposable thumb as well as a highly useful grasping big toe.. . These dawn mammals attained full growth when three or four years of age, having a potential life span, on the average, of about twenty years.
3. The members of this new species had the largest brains for their size of any animal that had theretofore existed on earth ... They would fight fiercely in defense of their kindred and were quite tender in family associations ... They were very affectionate and touchingly loyal to their mates ... Being small of stature and having keen minds to realize the dangers of their forest habitat, they developed an extraordinary fear... The beginning of the fear tendencies of mankind more specifically dates from these days.
4. They were, indeed, highly gregarious but nevertheless exceedingly pugnacious... Their bellicose natures, however, served a good purpose; superior groups did not hesitate to make war on their inferior neighbors, and thus, by selective survival, the species was progressively improved.
5. It was just seventy generations after this new tribe had taken origin from the highest type of lemur ancestor that the next epoch‑making development occurred‑the sudden differentiation of the ancestors of the next vital step in the evolution of human beings on Urantia.
6. These children grew to be a little over four feet in height. They were in every way larger than their parents, having longer legs and shorter arms. They had almost perfectly opposite thumbs, just about as well adapted for diversified work as the present human thumb. They walked upright, having feet almost as well suited for walking as those of the later human races.
7. The twins early displayed superior intelligence and were soon recognized as the heads of the whole tribe of dawn mammals, really instituting a primitive form of social organization and a crude economic division of labor ... When the numbers of this new and superior group grew great, war, relentless war, broke out; and when the terrible struggle was over, not a single individual of the pre‑existent and ancestral race of dawn mammals remained alive.
8. Compared with the ancestral species, the mid‑mammals were an improvement in every way... these mid‑mammals were capable of showing disgust in certain repulsive situations. They further possessed a well‑defined hoarding instinct... These mid‑mammals were the first to exhibit a definite construction propensity, as shown in their rivalry in the building of both treetop homes and their many‑tunneled subterranean retreats; they were the first species of mammals ever to provide for safety in both arboreal and underground shelters.
9. You can hardly realize by what narrow margins your prehuman ancestors missed extinction from time to time. Had the ancestral frog of all humanity jumped two inches less on a certain occasion, the whole course of evolution would have been markedly changed. The immediate lemurlike mother of the dawn‑mammal species escaped death no less than five times by mere hairbreadth margins before she gave birth to the father of the new and higher mammalian order. But the closest call of all was when lightning struck the tree in which the prospective mother of the Primates twins was sleeping. Both of these mid‑mammal parents were severely shocked and badly burned.; three of their seven children were killed by this bolt from the skies.
10. Soon after the completion of their home, this couple ... found themselves the proud parents of twins ... they were the first of the new species of Primates constituting the next vital step in prehuman evolution.
11. Contemporaneously with the birth of these Primates twin s...a couple that were both mentally and physically inferior also gave birth to twins... These retarded twins became the founders of the modem simian tribes ... And so it may be readily seen that man and the ape are related only in that they sprang from the mid‑mammals.
12. Going back to the birth of the superior twins... they had still less hair on their bodies than their parents and, when very young, insisted on walking upright... They attained a height of over five feet, and their heads grew larger in comparison with others among the tribe. While early learning to communicate with each other by means of signs and sounds, they were never able to make their people understand these new symbols.
13. When about fourteen years of age, they fled from the tribe, going west to raise their family and establish the new species of Primates ... The skeletal proportions of this new species were very similar to those of the primitive human races ... They largely abandoned tree life, though continuing to resort to the treetops as a safety measure at night.. . They were, indeed, splendid and superior animals, reaching maturity at about ten years of age and having a natural life span of about forty years.
14. And now, after almost nine hundred generations of development ... the Primates suddenly gave birth to two remarkable creatures, the first true human beings ... The Primates tribes were the last vital link in the evolution of man, but in less than five thousand years not a. single individual of these extraordinary tribes was left.
15. From the year A.D. 1934 back to the birth of the first two human beings is just 993,419 years. These two remarkable creatures were true human beings... These first human beings (and their descendants) reached full maturity at twelve years of age and possessed a potential life span of about seventy‑five years. Many new emotions early appeared in these human twins. They experienced admiration for both objects and other beings and exhibited considerable vanity. But the most remarkable advance in emotional development was the sudden appearance of a new group of really human feelings, the worshipful group, embracing awe, reverence, humility, and even a primitive form of gratitude.
16. These first two humans‑the twins‑were a great trial to their Primates parents. They were so curious and adventurous that they nearly lost their lives on numerous occasions before they were eight years old... Very early they learned to engage in verbal communication ... But try as hard as they might, they were able to teach only a few of their new signs and symbols to their parents.
17. When about nine years of age, they journeyed off down the river one bright day and held a momentous conference. Every celestial intelligence stationed on Urantia, including myself, was present as an observer of the transactions of this noontide tryst. On this eventful day they arrived at an understanding to live with and for each other.
18. While we were all greatly concerned with what these two little savages were planning, we were powerless to control the working of their minds... And so, by reason of their own intelligent choice, the twins did migrate, and because of our supervision they migrated northward to a secluded region where they escaped the possibility of biologic degradation through admixture with their inferior relatives of the Primates tribes.
19. Shortly before their departure from the home forests they lost their mother in a gibbon raid she fearlessly gave her life in the attempt to save the wonderful pair. Nor was her sacrifice in vain, for she held off the enemy until the father arrived with reinforcements and put the invaders to rout. Soon after this young couple forsook their associates to found the human race, their Primates father became disconsolate... life did not seem worth living among his ordinary fellows; so he wandered off into the forest, was set upon by hostile gibbons and beaten to death.
20. We, the Life Carriers on Urantia, had passed through the long vigil of watchful waiting since the day we first planted the life plasm in the planetary waters, and naturally the appearance of the first really intelligent and volitional beings brought to us great joy and. supreme satisfaction.
21. Imagine our joy one day‑the twins were about ten years old‑when the spirit of worship made its first contact with the mind of the female twin and shortly thereafter with the male... and when, about a year later, they finally resolved, as a result of meditative thought and purposeful decision, to flee from home and journey north, then did the spirit of wisdom begin to function on Urantia and in these two new recognized human minds.
22. At noon, the day after the runaway of the twins, there occurred the initial test flash of the universe circuit signals at the planetary reception‑focus of Urantia. We were, of course, all astir with the realization that a great event was impending; but since this world was a life‑experiment station, we had not the slightest idea of just how we would be apprised of the recognition of intelligent life on the planet. But we were not long in suspense. On the third day after the elopement of the twins... there arrived the Nebadon archangel of initial planetary circuit establishment.
24. The first message from Salvington.. .dictated by the chief of the archangel corps, said: "To the Life Carriers on Urantia‑Greetings! We transmit assurance of great pleasure on Salvington, Edentia, and Jerusem in honor of the registration on the headquarters of Nebadon of the signal of the existence on Urantia of mind of will dignity. The purposeful decision of the twins to flee northward... is the first decision of mind‑the human type of mind‑on Urantia and automatically establishes the circuit of communication over which this initial message of acknowledgment is transmitting."
25. Next over this new circuit came the greetings of the Most Highs of Edentia, containing instructions for the resident Life Carriers forbidding us to interfere with the pattern of life we had established .... And no sooner had the Most Highs left off speaking than the beautiful message of Lucifer, then sovereign of the Satania system, began to planetize... These messages from Salvington, Edentia, and Jerusem formally marked the termination of the Life Carriers' agelong supervision of the planet ... we realized that our work was finished, and our group prepared to depart. Urantia being a life‑modification world, permission was granted to leave behind two senior Life Carriers with twelve assistants, and I was chosen as one of this group and have ever since been on Urantia.
26. It is just 993,408 years ago (from the year AD. 1934) that Urantia was formally recognized as a planet of human habitation in the universe of Nebadon. Biologic evolution had once again achieved the human levels of will dignity; man had arrived on planet 606 of Satania.
Discussion Questions
1. Why have some scientists in recent times suggested that man evolved from the simian tribes?
2. To what extent are the fear tendencies of the dawn mammals helping or hindering human beings today?
3. Do you think the twins founding the mid‑mammals and the primates were random natural occurrences or directed by some form of intelligence?
4. Is it likely that some of the early ancestors of human beings discovered by scientists were actually primates?
5. Why do you think all of the immediate ancestors of human beings became extinct while the simian tribes survived?
6. Why would the recognition of human intelligence on a life‑experiment planet be different than on a normal planet?
7. Why do you think the Life Carriers are permitted to manipulate the environment and shield the life plasm of prehuman development?
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