Paper 81 Overview: Development of Modern Civilization

This paper tells the story of how modern civilization came to be through the progress of human groups and societies. It describes how humans moved from hunting to farming and how they created tools, cities, and trade that helped society grow over many thousands of years.

The paper also explains how different factors like climate, natural resources, and human intelligence affect whether societies thrive or struggle. It highlights the importance of working together and having good leaders for society to keep moving forward and solving problems.

Even when plans for making the world better failed, like those of Caligastia and Adam, humans still kept evolving and moving forward. Evolution can be slowed down but it cannot be stopped completely.

The violet race, though smaller in numbers than planned, helped civilization progress more in the time since Adam than in the previous million years. Their influence was very important to human development.

For about thirty-five thousand years after Adam lived, the center of civilization was in southwestern Asia. This area stretched from the Nile valley eastward across northern Arabia through Mesopotamia and into Turkestan. The main factor that helped establish civilization in this area was the climate.

Big changes in climate and land in northern Africa and western Asia stopped the early Adamites from migrating. These changes blocked them from going to Europe and pushed them north and east into Turkestan. By about 15,000 B.C., civilization had reached a standstill except for the cultural growth among the Andites in Asia and those confined to the forests in Europe.

The growth of culture depends on the development of tools. Tools helped humans rise from savagery and were useful because they freed up people to do higher tasks.

The first four great advances in human civilization were the taming of fire, the domestication of animals, the enslavement of captives, and private property. Fire was the first great discovery, but primitive humans didn't understand natural causes for common events like fire.

The destruction of the grasslands in Turkestan around 12,000 B.C. forced people there to try new ways of making a living. Some turned to raising flocks, others became farmers, and the more intelligent Andites chose to become traders and manufacturers.

The increase in trade and manufacturing helped create peaceful communities that spread culture and civilization. About twelve thousand years ago, independent cities began to appear, surrounded by zones of farming and animal raising. Industry improved as living standards rose, but early urban life was not very clean, with cities rising up to two feet every twenty-five years from accumulated dirt and trash.

By the beginning of historic times, all of Eurasia, northern Africa, and the Pacific Islands were filled with mixed races of mankind. These races came from the mixing of the five basic human stocks of Urantia.

Each of the Urantia races had certain physical features that helped identify them. The Adamites and Nodites were long-headed, the Andonites were broad-headed, and the Sangik races were medium-headed, with the yellow and blue men tending to be more broad-headed.

Biological evolution and cultural civilization are not always connected. Evolution can advance even when culture is declining, but cultural civilization needs racial progress to support it. Adam and Eve didn't bring foreign arts to human society, but their Adamic blood did improve the races' brain power and speed up economic and industrial development.

Through agriculture, animal domestication, and improved building methods, mankind began to escape the constant struggle to survive. People started looking for ways to make life more pleasant, which was the beginning of the pursuit for higher standards of comfort. Through manufacturing and industry, humans gradually increased the enjoyable aspects of mortal life.

While biological evolution has continued to move upward, cultural evolution spread from the Euphrates valley in waves. These waves grew weaker over time as the pure-line Adamic descendants went forth to add to the civilizations of Asia and Europe. The races did not fully blend, but their civilizations mixed considerably.

The civilization now developing on Urantia grew out of several important factors. These include natural circumstances (like available resources and climate), capital goods (wealth that allows leisure time), scientific knowledge, human resources (population numbers), effective use of resources, language development, mechanical devices, character of leaders, racial ideals, coordination of specialists, place-finding devices, willingness to cooperate, effective leadership, social changes, and prevention of breakdown during transition periods.