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Urantia Book Paper 79 Andite Expansion In The Orient
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
...
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Paper 79 Andite Expansion In The Orient
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Introduction
ASIA is the homeland of the human race. It was on a southern peninsula of this
continent that Andon and Fonta were born; in the highlands of what is now
Afghanistan, their descendant Badonan founded a primitive center of culture
that persisted for over one-half million years. Here at this eastern focus of
the human race the Sangik peoples differentiated from the Andonic stock, and
Asia was their first home, their first hunting ground, their first battlefield.
Southwestern Asia witnessed the successive civilizations of Dalamatians,
Nodites, Adamites, and Andites, and from these regions the potentials of modern
civilization spread to the world.
1. THE ANDITES OF TURKESTAN
For over twenty-five thousand years, on down to nearly 2000 B.C., the heart of
Eurasia was predominantly, though diminishingly, Andite. In the lowlands of
Turkestan the Andites made the westward turning around the inland lakes into
Europe, while from the highlands of this region they infiltrated eastward.
Eastern Turkestan (Sinkiang) and, to a lesser extent, Tibet were the ancient
gateways through which these peoples of Mesopotamia penetrated the mountains to
the northern lands of the yellow men. The Andite infiltration of India
proceeded from the Turkestan highlands into the Punjab and from the Iranian
grazing lands through Baluchistan. These earlier migrations were in no sense
conquests; they were, rather, the continual drifting of the Andite tribes into
western India and China.
For almost fifteen thousand years centers of mixed Andite culture persisted in
the basin of the Tarim River in Sinkiang and to the south in the highland
regions of Tibet, where the Andites and Andonites had extensively mingled. The
Tarim valley was the easternmost outpost of the true Andite culture. Here they
built their settlements and entered into trade relations with the progressive
Chinese to the east and with the Andonites to the north. In those days the
Tarim region was a fertile land; the rainfall was plentiful. To the east the
Gobi was an open grassland where the herders were gradually turning to
agriculture. This civilization perished when the rain winds shifted to the
southeast, but in its day it rivaled Mesopotamia itself.
By 8000 B.C. the slowly increasing aridity of the highland regions of central
Asia began to drive the Andites to the river bottoms and the seashores. This
increasing drought not only drove them to the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates,
Indus, and Yellow rivers, but it produced a new development in Andite
civilization. A new class of men, the traders, began to appear in large
numbers.
top of page - 879
When climatic conditions made hunting unprofitable for the migrating Andites,
they did not follow the evolutionary course of the older races by becoming
herders. Commerce and urban life made their appearance. From Egypt through
Mesopotamia and Turkestan to the rivers of China and India, the more highly
civilized tribes began to assemble in cities devoted to manufacture and trade.
Adonia became the central Asian commercial metropolis, being located near the
present city of Ashkhabad. Commerce in stone, metal, wood, and pottery was
accelerated on both land and water.
But ever-increasing drought gradually brought about the great Andite exodus
from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of migration began
to veer from northward to southward, and the Babylonian cavalrymen began to
push into Mesopotamia.
Increasing aridity in central Asia further operated to reduce population and to
render these people less warlike; and when the diminishing rainfall to the
north forced the nomadic Andonites southward, there was a tremendous exodus of
Andites from Turkestan. This is the terminal movement of the so-called Aryans
into the Levant and India. It culminated that long dispersal of the mixed
descendants of Adam during which every Asiatic and most of the island peoples
of the Pacific were to some extent improved by these superior races.
Thus, while they dispersed over the Eastern Hemisphere, the Andites were
dispossessed of their homelands in Mesopotamia and Turkestan, for it was this
extensive southward movement of Andonites that diluted the Andites in central
Asia nearly to the vanishing point.
But even in the twentieth century after Christ there are traces of Andite blood
among the Turanian and Tibetan peoples, as is witnessed by the blond types
occasionally found in these regions. The early Chinese annals record the
presence of the red-haired nomads to the north of the peaceful settlements of
the Yellow River, and there still remain paintings which faithfully record the
presence of both the blond-Andite and the brunet-Mongolian types in the Tarim
basin of long ago.
The last great manifestation of the submerged military genius of the central
Asiatic Andites was in A.D. 1200, when the Mongols under Genghis Khan began the
conquest of the greater portion of the Asiatic continent. And like the Andites
of old, these warriors proclaimed the existence of "one God in heaven." The
early breakup of their empire long delayed cultural intercourse between
Occident and Orient and greatly handicapped the growth of the monotheistic
concept in Asia.
2. THE ANDITE CONQUEST OF INDIA
India is the only locality where all the Urantia races were blended, the Andite
invasion adding the last stock. In the highlands northwest of India the Sangik
races came into existence, and without exception members of each penetrated the
subcontinent of India in their early days, leaving behind them the most
heterogeneous race mixture ever to exist on Urantia. Ancient India acted as a
catch basin for the migrating races. The base of the peninsula was formerly
somewhat narrower than now, much of the deltas of the Ganges and Indus being
the work of the last fifty thousand years.
The earliest race mixtures in India were a blending of the migrating red and
yellow races with the aboriginal Andonites. This group was later weakened by
top of page - 880
absorbing the greater portion of the extinct eastern green peoples as well as
large numbers of the orange race, was slightly improved through limited
admixture with the blue man, but suffered exceedingly through assimilation of
large numbers of the indigo race. But the so-called aborigines of India are
hardly representative of these early people; they are rather the most inferior
southern and eastern fringe, which was never fully absorbed by either the early
Andites or their later appearing Aryan cousins.
By 20,000 B.C. the population of western India had already become tinged with
the Adamic blood, and never in the history of Urantia did any one people
combine so many different races. But it was unfortunate that the secondary
Sangik strains predominated, and it was a real calamity that both the blue and
the red man were so largely missing from this racial melting pot of long ago;
more of the primary Sangik strains would have contributed very much toward the
enhancement of what might have been an even greater civilization. As it
developed, the red man was destroying himself in the Americas, the blue man was
disporting himself in Europe, and the early descendants of Adam (and most of
the later ones) exhibited little desire to admix with the darker colored
peoples, whether in India, Africa, or elsewhere.
About 15,000 B.C. increasing population pressure throughout Turkestan and Iran
occasioned the first really extensive Andite movement toward India. For over
fifteen centuries these superior peoples poured in through the highlands of
Baluchistan, spreading out over the valleys of the Indus and Ganges and slowly
moving southward into the Deccan. This Andite pressure from the northwest drove
many of the southern and eastern inferiors into Burma and southern China but
not sufficiently to save the invaders from racial obliteration.
The failure of India to achieve the hegemony of Eurasia was largely a matter of
topography; population pressure from the north only crowded the majority of the
people southward into the decreasing territory of the Deccan, surrounded on all
sides by the sea. Had there been adjacent lands for emigration, then would the
inferiors have been crowded out in all directions, and the superior stocks
would have achieved a higher civilization.
As it was, these earlier Andite conquerors made a desperate attempt to preserve
their identity and stem the tide of racial engulfment by the establishment of
rigid restrictions regarding intermarriage. Nonetheless, the Andites had become
submerged by 10,000 B.C., but the whole mass of the people had been markedly
improved by this absorption.
Race mixture is always advantageous in that it favors versatility of culture
and makes for a progressive civilization, but if the inferior elements of
racial stocks predominate, such achievements will be short-lived. A polyglot
culture can be preserved only if the superior stocks reproduce themselves in a
safe margin over the inferior. Unrestrained multiplication of inferiors, with
decreasing reproduction of superiors, is unfailingly suicidal of cultural
civilization.
Had the Andite conquerors been in numbers three times what they were, or had
they driven out or destroyed the least desirable third of the mixed
orange-green-indigo inhabitants, then would India have become one of the
world's leading centers of cultural civilization and undoubtedly would have
attracted more of the later waves of Mesopotamians that flowed into Turkestan
and thence northward to Europe.
top of page - 881
3. DRAVIDIAN INDIA
The blending of the Andite conquerors of India with the native stock eventually
resulted in that mixed people which has been called Dravidian. The earlier and
purer Dravidians possessed a great capacity for cultural achievement, which was
continuously weakened as their Andite inheritance became progressively
attenuated. And this is what doomed the budding civilization of India almost
twelve thousand years ago. But the infusion of even this small amount of the
blood of Adam produced a marked acceleration in social development. This
composite stock immediately produced the most versatile civilization then on
earth.
Not long after conquering India, the Dravidian Andites lost their racial and
cultural contact with Mesopotamia, but the later opening up of the sea lanes
and the caravan routes re-established these connections; and at no time within
the last ten thousand years has India ever been entirely out of touch with
Mesopotamia on the west and China to the east, although the mountain barriers
greatly favored western intercourse.
The superior culture and religious leanings of the peoples of India date from
the early times of Dravidian domination and are due, in part, to the fact that
so many of the Sethite priesthood entered India, both in the earlier Andite and
in the later Aryan invasions. The thread of monotheism running through the
religious history of India thus stems from the teachings of the Adamites in the
second garden.
As early as 16,000 B.C. a company of one hundred Sethite priests entered India
and very nearly achieved the religious conquest of the western half of that
polyglot people. But their religion did not persist. Within five thousand years
their doctrines of the Paradise Trinity had degenerated into the triune symbol
of the fire god.
But for more than seven thousand years, down to the end of the Andite
migrations, the religious status of the inhabitants of India was far above that
of the world at large. During these times India bid fair to produce the leading
cultural, religious, philosophic, and commercial civilization of the world. And
but for the complete submergence of the Andites by the peoples of the south,
this destiny would probably have been realized.
The Dravidian centers of culture were located in the river valleys, principally
of the Indus and Ganges, and in the Deccan along the three great rivers flowing
through the Eastern Ghats to the sea. The settlements along the seacoast of the
Western Ghats owed their prominence to maritime relationships with Sumeria.
The Dravidians were among the earliest peoples to build cities and to engage in
an extensive export and import business, both by land and sea. By 7000 B.C.
camel trains were making regular trips to distant Mesopotamia; Dravidian
shipping was pushing coastwise across the Arabian Sea to the Sumerian cities of
the Persian Gulf and was venturing on the waters of the Bay of Bengal as far as
the East Indies. An alphabet, together with the art of writing, was imported
from Sumeria by these seafarers and merchants.
These commercial relationships greatly contributed to the further
diversification of a cosmopolitan culture, resulting in the early appearance of
many of the refinements and even luxuries of urban life. When the later
appearing Aryans
top of page - 882
entered India, they did not recognize in the Dravidians their Andite cousins
submerged in the Sangik races, but they did find a well-advanced civilization.
Despite biologic limitations, the Dravidians founded a superior civilization.
It was well diffused throughout all India and has survived on down to modern
times in the Deccan.
4. THE ARYAN INVASION OF INDIA
The second Andite penetration of India was the Aryan invasion during a period
of almost five hundred years in the middle of the third millennium before
Christ. This migration marked the terminal exodus of the Andites from their
homelands in Turkestan.
The early Aryan centers were scattered over the northern half of India, notably
in the northwest. These invaders never completed the conquest of the country
and subsequently met their undoing in this neglect since their lesser numbers
made them vulnerable to absorption by the Dravidians of the south, who
subsequently overran the entire peninsula except the Himalayan provinces.
The Aryans made very little racial impression on India except in the northern
provinces. In the Deccan their influence was cultural and religious more than
racial. The greater persistence of the so-called Aryan blood in northern India
is not only due to their presence in these regions in greater numbers but also
because they were reinforced by later conquerors, traders, and missionaries.
Right on down to the first century before Christ there was a continuous
infiltration of Aryan blood into the Punjab, the last influx being attendant
upon the campaigns of the Hellenistic peoples.
On the Gangetic plain Aryan and Dravidian eventually mingled to produce a high
culture, and this center was later reinforced by contributions from the
northeast, coming from China.
In India many types of social organizations flourished from time to time, from
the semidemocratic systems of the Aryans to despotic and monarchial forms of
government. But the most characteristic feature of society was the persistence
of the great social castes that were instituted by the Aryans in an effort to
perpetuate racial identity. This elaborate caste system has been preserved on
down to the present time.
Of the four great castes, all but the first were established in the futile
effort to prevent racial amalgamation of the Aryan conquerors with their
inferior subjects. But the premier caste, the teacher-priests, stems from the
Sethites; the Brahmans of the twentieth century after Christ are the lineal
cultural descendants of the priests of the second garden, albeit their
teachings differ greatly from those of their illustrious predecessors.
When the Aryans entered India, they brought with them their concepts of Deity
as they had been preserved in the lingering traditions of the religion of the
second garden. But the Brahman priests were never able to withstand the pagan
momentum built up by the sudden contact with the inferior religions of the
Deccan after the racial obliteration of the Aryans. Thus the vast majority of
the population fell into the bondage of the enslaving superstitions of inferior
religions; and so it was that India failed to produce the high civilization
which had been foreshadowed in earlier times.
The spiritual awakening of the sixth century before Christ did not persist in
India, having died out even before the Mohammedan invasion. But someday
top of page - 883
a greater Gautama may arise to lead all India in the search for the living God,
and then the world will observe the fruition of the cultural potentialities of
a versatile people so long comatose under the benumbing influence of an
unprogressing spiritual vision.
Culture does rest on a biologic foundation, but caste alone could not
perpetuate the Aryan culture, for religion, true religion, is the indispensable
source of that higher energy which drives men to establish a superior
civilization based on human brotherhood.
5. RED MAN AND YELLOW MAN
While the story of India is that of Andite conquest and eventual submergence in
the older evolutionary peoples, the narrative of eastern Asia is more properly
that of the primary Sangiks, particularly the red man and the yellow man. These
two races largely escaped that admixture with the debased Neanderthal strain
which so greatly retarded the blue man in Europe, thus preserving the superior
potential of the primary Sangik type.
While the early Neanderthalers were spread out over the entire breadth of
Eurasia, the eastern wing was the more contaminated with debased animal
strains. These subhuman types were pushed south by the fifth glacier, the same
ice sheet which so long blocked Sangik migration into eastern Asia. And when
the red man moved northeast around the highlands of India, he found
northeastern Asia free from these subhuman types. The tribal organization of
the red races was formed earlier than that of any other peoples, and they were
the first to migrate from the central Asian focus of the Sangiks. The inferior
Neanderthal strains were destroyed or driven off the mainland by the later
migrating yellow tribes. But the red man had reigned supreme in eastern Asia
for almost one hundred thousand years before the yellow tribes arrived.
More than three hundred thousand years ago the main body of the yellow race
entered China from the south as coastwise migrants. Each millennium they
penetrated farther and farther inland, but they did not make contact with their
migrating Tibetan brethren until comparatively recent times.
Growing population pressure caused the northward-moving yellow race to begin to
push into the hunting grounds of the red man. This encroachment, coupled with
natural racial antagonism, culminated in increasing hostilities, and thus began
the crucial struggle for the fertile lands of farther Asia.
The story of this agelong contest between the red and yellow races is an epic
of Urantia history. For over two hundred thousand years these two superior
races waged bitter and unremitting warfare. In the earlier struggles the red
men were generally successful, their raiding parties spreading havoc among the
yellow settlements. But the yellow man was an apt pupil in the art of warfare,
and he early manifested a marked ability to live peaceably with his
compatriots; the Chinese were the first to learn that in union there is
strength. The red tribes continued their internecine conflicts, and presently
they began to suffer repeated defeats at the aggressive hands of the relentless
Chinese, who continued their inexorable march northward.
One hundred thousand years ago the decimated tribes of the red race were
fighting with their backs to the retreating ice of the last glacier, and when
the land passage to the east, over the Bering isthmus, became passable, these
tribes
top of page - 884
were not slow in forsaking the inhospitable shores of the Asiatic continent. It
is eighty-five thousand years since the last of the pure red men departed from
Asia, but the long struggle left its genetic imprint upon the victorious yellow
race. The northern Chinese peoples, together with the Andonite Siberians,
assimilated much of the red stock and were in considerable measure benefited
thereby.
The North American Indians never came in contact with even the Andite offspring
of Adam and Eve, having been dispossessed of their Asiatic homelands some fifty
thousand years before the coming of Adam. During the age of Andite migrations
the pure red strains were spreading out over North America as nomadic tribes,
hunters who practiced agriculture to a small extent. These races and cultural
groups remained almost completely isolated from the remainder of the world from
their arrival in the Americas down to the end of the first millennium of the
Christian era, when they were discovered by the white races of Europe. Up to
that time the Eskimos were the nearest to white men the northern tribes of red
men had ever seen.
The red and the yellow races are the only human stocks that ever achieved a
high degree of civilization apart from the influences of the Andites. The
oldest Amerindian culture was the Onamonalonton center in California, but this
had long since vanished by 35,000 B.C. In Mexico, Central America, and in the
mountains of South America the later and more enduring civilizations were
founded by a race predominantly red but containing a considerable admixture of
the yellow, orange, and blue.
These civilizations were evolutionary products of the Sangiks, notwithstanding
that traces of Andite blood reached Peru. Excepting the Eskimos in North
America and a few Polynesian Andites in South America, the peoples of the
Western Hemisphere had no contact with the rest of the world until the end of
the first millennium after Christ. In the original Melchizedek plan for the
improvement of the Urantia races it had been stipulated that one million of the
pure-line descendants of Adam should go to upstep the red men of the Americas.
6. DAWN OF CHINESE CIVILIZATION
Sometime after driving the red man across to North America, the expanding
Chinese cleared the Andonites from the river valleys of eastern Asia, pushing
them north into Siberia and west into Turkestan, where they were soon to come
in contact with the superior culture of the Andites.
In Burma and the peninsula of Indo-China the cultures of India and China mixed
and blended to produce the successive civilizations of those regions. Here the
vanished green race has persisted in larger proportion than anywhere else in
the world.
Many different races occupied the islands of the Pacific. In general, the
southern and then more extensive islands were occupied by peoples carrying a
heavy percentage of green and indigo blood. The northern islands were held by
Andonites and, later on, by races embracing large proportions of the yellow and
red stocks. The ancestors of the Japanese people were not driven off the
mainland until 12,000 B.C., when they were dislodged by a powerful
southern-coastwise thrust of the northern Chinese tribes. Their final exodus
was not so much due to population pressure as to the initiative of a chieftain
whom they came to regard as a divine personage.
top of page - 885
Like the peoples of India and the Levant, victorious tribes of the yellow man
established their earliest centers along the coast and up the rivers. The
coastal settlements fared poorly in later years as the increasing floods and
the shifting courses of the rivers made the lowland cities untenable.
Twenty thousand years ago the ancestors of the Chinese had built up a dozen
strong centers of primitive culture and learning, especially along the Yellow
River and the Yangtze. And now these centers began to be reinforced by the
arrival of a steady stream of superior blended peoples from Sinkiang and Tibet.
The migration from Tibet to the Yangtze valley was not so extensive as in the
north, neither were the Tibetan centers so advanced as those of the Tarim
basin. But both movements carried a certain amount of Andite blood eastward to
the river settlements.
The superiority of the ancient yellow race was due to four great factors:
1. Genetic. Unlike their blue cousins in Europe, both the red and yellow races
had largely escaped mixture with debased human stocks. The northern Chinese,
already strengthened by small amounts of the superior red and Andonic strains,
were soon to benefit by a considerable influx of Andite blood. The southern
Chinese did not fare so well in this regard, and they had long suffered from
absorption of the green race, while later on they were to be further weakened
by the infiltration of the swarms of inferior peoples crowded out of India by
the Dravidian-Andite invasion. And today in China there is a definite
difference between the northern and southern races.
2. Social. The yellow race early learned the value of peace among themselves.
Their internal peaceableness so contributed to population increase as to insure
the spread of their civilization among many millions. From 25,000 to 5000 B.C.
the highest mass civilization on Urantia was in central and northern China. The
yellow man was first to achieve a racial solidarity--the first to attain a
large-scale cultural, social, and political civilization.
The Chinese of 15,000 B.C. were aggressive militarists; they had not been
weakened by an overreverence for the past, and numbering less than twelve
million, they formed a compact body speaking a common language. During this age
they built up a real nation, much more united and homogeneous than their
political unions of historic times.
3. Spiritual. During the age of Andite migrations the Chinese were among the
more spiritual peoples of earth. Long adherence to the worship of the One Truth
proclaimed by Singlangton kept them ahead of most of the other races. The
stimulus of a progressive and advanced religion is often a decisive factor in
cultural development; as India languished, so China forged ahead under the
invigorating stimulus of a religion in which truth was enshrined as the supreme
Deity.
This worship of truth was provocative of research and fearless exploration of
the laws of nature and the potentials of mankind. The Chinese of even six
thousand years ago were still keen students and aggressive in their pursuit of
truth.
4. Geographic. China is protected by the mountains to the west and the Pacific
to the east. Only in the north is the way open to attack, and from the days of
the red man to the coming of the later descendants of the Andites, the north
was not occupied by any aggressive race.
top of page - 886
And but for the mountain barriers and the later decline in spiritual culture,
the yellow race undoubtedly would have attracted to itself the larger part of
the Andite migrations from Turkestan and unquestionably would have quickly
dominated world civilization.
7. THE ANDITES ENTER CHINA
About fifteen thousand years ago the Andites, in considerable numbers, were
traversing the pass of Ti Tao and spreading out over the upper valley of the
Yellow River among the Chinese settlements of Kansu. Presently they penetrated
eastward to Honan, where the most progressive settlements were situated. This
infiltration from the west was about half Andonite and half Andite.
The northern centers of culture along the Yellow River had always been more
progressive than the southern settlements on the Yangtze. Within a few thousand
years after the arrival of even the small numbers of these superior mortals,
the settlements along the Yellow River had forged ahead of the Yangtze villages
and had achieved an advanced position over their brethren in the south which
has ever since been maintained.
It was not that there were so many of the Andites, nor that their culture was
so superior, but amalgamation with them produced a more versatile stock. The
northern Chinese received just enough of the Andite strain to mildly stimulate
their innately able minds but not enough to fire them with the restless,
exploratory curiosity so characteristic of the northern white races. This more
limited infusion of Andite inheritance was less disturbing to the innate
stability of the Sangik type.
The later waves of Andites brought with them certain of the cultural advances
of Mesopotamia; this is especially true of the last waves of migration from the
west. They greatly improved the economic and educational practices of the
northern Chinese; and while their influence upon the religious culture of the
yellow race was short-lived, their later descendants contributed much to a
subsequent spiritual awakening. But the Andite traditions of the beauty of Eden
and Dalamatia did influence Chinese traditions; early Chinese legends place
"the land of the gods" in the west.
The Chinese people did not begin to build cities and engage in manufacture
until after 10,000 B.C., subsequent to the climatic changes in Turkestan and
the arrival of the later Andite immigrants. The infusion of this new blood did
not add so much to the civilization of the yellow man as it stimulated the
further and rapid development of the latent tendencies of the superior Chinese
stocks. From Honan to Shensi the potentials of an advanced civilization were
coming to fruit. Metalworking and all the arts of manufacture date from these
days.
The similarities between certain of the early Chinese and Mesopotamian methods
of time reckoning, astronomy, and governmental administration were due to the
commercial relationships between these two remotely situated centers. Chinese
merchants traveled the overland routes through Turkestan to Mesopotamia even in
the days of the Sumerians. Nor was this exchange one-sided--the valley of the
Euphrates benefited considerably thereby, as did the peoples of the Gangetic
plain. But the climatic changes and the nomadic invasions of the third
millennium before Christ greatly reduced the volume of trade passing over the
caravan trails of central Asia.
top of page - 887
8. LATER CHINESE CIVILIZATION
While the red man suffered from too much warfare, it is not altogether amiss to
say that the development of statehood among the Chinese was delayed by the
thoroughness of their conquest of Asia. They had a great potential of racial
solidarity, but it failed properly to develop because the continuous driving
stimulus of the ever-present danger of external aggression was lacking.
With the completion of the conquest of eastern Asia the ancient military state
gradually disintegrated--past wars were forgotten. Of the epic struggle with
the red race there persisted only the hazy tradition of an ancient contest with
the archer peoples. The Chinese early turned to agricultural pursuits, which
contributed further to their pacific tendencies, while a population well below
the land-man ratio for agriculture still further contributed to the growing
peacefulness of the country.
Consciousness of past achievements (somewhat diminished in the present), the
conservatism of an overwhelmingly agricultural people, and a well-developed
family life equaled the birth of ancestor veneration, culminating in the custom
of so honoring the men of the past as to border on worship. A very similar
attitude prevailed among the white races in Europe for some five hundred years
following the disruption of Graeco-Roman civilization.
The belief in, and worship of, the "One Truth" as taught by Singlangton never
entirely died out; but as time passed, the search for new and higher truth
became overshadowed by a growing tendency to venerate that which was already
established. Slowly the genius of the yellow race became diverted from the
pursuit of the unknown to the preservation of the known. And this is the reason
for the stagnation of what had been the world's most rapidly progressing
civilization.
Between 4000 and 500 B.C. the political reunification of the yellow race was
consummated, but the cultural union of the Yangtze and Yellow river centers had
already been effected. This political reunification of the later tribal groups
was not without conflict, but the societal opinion of war remained low;
ancestor worship, increasing dialects, and no call for military action for
thousands upon thousands of years had rendered this people ultrapeaceful.
Despite failure to fulfill the promise of an early development of advanced
statehood, the yellow race did progressively move forward in the realization of
the arts of civilization, especially in the realms of agriculture and
horticulture. The hydraulic problems faced by the agriculturists in Shensi and
Honan demanded group co-operation for solution. Such irrigation and
soil-conservation difficulties contributed in no small measure to the
development of interdependence with the consequent promotion of peace among
farming groups.
Soon developments in writing, together with the establishment of schools,
contributed to the dissemination of knowledge on a previously unequaled scale.
But the cumbersome nature of the ideographic writing system placed a numerical
limit upon the learned classes despite the early appearance of printing. And
above all else, the process of social standardization and religio-philosophic
dogmatization continued apace. The religious development of ancestor veneration
became further complicated by a flood of superstitions involving nature
worship, but lingering vestiges of a real concept of God remained preserved in
the imperial worship of Shang-ti.
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The great weakness of ancestor veneration is that it promotes a
backward-looking philosophy. However wise it may be to glean wisdom from the
past, it is folly to regard the past as the exclusive source of truth. Truth is
relative and expanding; it lives always in the present, achieving new
expression in each generation of men--even in each human life.
The great strength in a veneration of ancestry is the value that such an
attitude places upon the family. The amazing stability and persistence of
Chinese culture is a consequence of the paramount position accorded the family,
for civilization is directly dependent on the effective functioning of the
family; and in China the family attained a social importance, even a religious
significance, approached by few other peoples.
The filial devotion and family loyalty exacted by the growing cult of ancestor
worship insured the building up of superior family relationships and of
enduring family groups, all of which facilitated the following factors in the
preservation of civilization:
1. Conservation of property and wealth.
2. Pooling of the experience of more than one generation.
3. Efficient education of children in the arts and sciences of the past.
4. Development of a strong sense of duty, the enhancement of morality, and the
augmentation of ethical sensitivity.
The formative period of Chinese civilization, opening with the coming of the
Andites, continues on down to the great ethical, moral, and semireligious
awakening of the sixth century before Christ. And Chinese tradition preserves
the hazy record of the evolutionary past; the transition from mother- to
father-family, the establishment of agriculture, the development of
architecture, the initiation of industry--all these are successively narrated.
And this story presents, with greater accuracy than any other similar account,
the picture of the magnificent ascent of a superior people from the levels of
barbarism. During this time they passed from a primitive agricultural society
to a higher social organization embracing cities, manufacture, metalworking,
commercial exchange, government, writing, mathematics, art, science, and
printing.
And so the ancient civilization of the yellow race has persisted down through
the centuries. It is almost forty thousand years since the first important
advances were made in Chinese culture, and though there have been many
retrogressions, the civilization of the sons of Han comes the nearest of all to
presenting an unbroken picture of continual progression right on down to the
times of the twentieth century. The mechanical and religious developments of
the white races have been of a high order, but they have never excelled the
Chinese in family loyalty, group ethics, or personal morality.
This ancient culture has contributed much to human happiness; millions of human
beings have lived and died, blessed by its achievements. For centuries this
great civilization has rested upon the laurels of the past, but it is even now
reawakening to envision anew the transcendent goals of mortal existence, once
again to take up the unremitting struggle for never-ending progress.
[Presented by an Archangel of Nebadon.]
top of page - 889
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
The Adjuster And The Soul Personality Survival Seraphic Guardians Of Destiny
Seraphic Planetary Government The Supreme Being The Almighty Supreme God The
Supreme Supreme And Ultimate--time And Space The Bestowals Of Christ Michael
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