Paper 64 Overview: The Evolutionary Races of Color

This paper presents the evolutionary history of humanity on Urantia, beginning with Andon and Fonta nearly one million years ago, and continuing through the era of the Planetary Prince and the emergence of the six colored races. It details the migration patterns, cultural developments, and genetic diversification that characterized early human populations across the globe. The first half of human history corresponds to the pre-Planetary Prince era, while the latter half roughly corresponds to what is commonly known as the Old Stone Age.

The emergence and dispersion of the six colored races—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo—represents a pivotal chapter in human development. Unlike most evolutionary worlds where races appear sequentially, Urantia experienced the unique circumstance of all six races emerging simultaneously from a single family. This paper traces how these races spread across continents, developed distinct cultural traits, experienced spiritual awakenings through great teachers, and eventually formed the foundation for modern human populations through complex patterns of mixture and migration.

This paper details the story of Urantia's evolutionary races from the time of Andon and Fonta, almost one million years ago, through the days of the Planetary Prince and concluding at the end of the ice age. It provides a comprehensive account of humanity's biological and cultural development during this extensive period.

Human history is divided into two major periods: the first half corresponds to the pre-Planetary Prince days, while the second half begins with the Planetary Prince's arrival and the appearance of the six colored races. This latter period approximately aligns with what is commonly referred to as the Old Stone Age, marking critical developments in human civilization and biological diversity.

Primitive man made his evolutionary appearance on earth slightly less than one million years ago, embarking on a challenging journey of survival and adaptation. These early humans faced geographical limitations in their migrations, with the arid Tibetan highlands blocking eastward movement, the expanded Mediterranean Sea preventing southward and westward travel, and advancing ice restricting northern progression. Despite these barriers, the more intelligent groups refused to return to the south where their inferior tree-dwelling relatives lived, choosing instead to face the challenges of the northern territories.

The Andonites deliberately avoided forests, in contrast to their nonhuman relatives who thrived in the southern tropical woodlands. This distinction proved significant, as human evolution progressed primarily in open landscapes and higher latitudes where cold and hunger stimulated action, invention, and resourcefulness. While the Andonic tribes were developing the foundations of the present human race amidst the hardships of northern climates, their less advanced cousins enjoyed a more comfortable but less progressive existence in the southern forests, establishing a pattern where environmental challenges fostered greater human advancement.

By 900,000 years ago, the arts established by Andon and Fonta and the cultural achievements of Onagar were vanishing from earth, with culture, religion, and even flintworking at their lowest point. This period saw large numbers of inferior mongrel groups arriving in England from southern France, tribes that were barely human with no religious beliefs and only crude flintworking abilities. They were followed by a somewhat superior group that spread throughout Europe, known as the Heidelberg race.

During this cultural decline, the Foxhall peoples of England and the Badonan tribes of northwest India managed to preserve some of the Andonic traditions and remnants of Onagar's cultural influence. The Foxhall peoples were the westernmost group that retained significant Andonic culture and maintained knowledge of flintworking, which they later transmitted to their descendants, who would eventually become ancestors of the Eskimos. Though their remains were the last to be discovered in England, these Andonites were actually the first humans to inhabit those regions, with many of their early settlements now submerged beneath the English Channel and North Sea.

Besides the Foxhall peoples in the west, another center of struggling culture persisted in the east among the tribes of Badonan in the northwestern Indian highlands. These people held the distinction of being the only descendants of Andon who never practiced human sacrifice, maintaining a more pure expression of early human spiritual development. They occupied an extensive plateau surrounded by forests, with streams and abundant game, living in crude stone huts, hillside caves, and semi-underground passages.

The northern tribes grew increasingly fearful of ice, while those living closer to their ancestral homeland developed a strong fear of water after observing the gradual sinking of the Mesopotamian peninsula. Around 850,000 years ago, the superior Badonan tribes initiated a warfare of extermination against their inferior and more animalistic neighbors. In less than a thousand years, they had either destroyed or driven back most of the borderland animal groups, slightly improving their own stock. The mixed descendants of this improved Badonite stock eventually appeared as a seemingly new people—the Neanderthal race.

The Neanderthalers were formidable fighters who traveled extensively, gradually spreading from their highland centers in northwest India to France in the west, China in the east, and even down into northern Africa. They dominated the world for almost half a million years until the migration period of the evolutionary colored races. During their height around 800,000 years ago, game was plentiful across Europe, and these people became skilled hunters, with French tribes being the first to adopt the practice of giving successful hunters first choice of women for wives.

Despite their physical prowess and hunting abilities, there was little spiritual or cultural advancement during the long reign of the Neanderthal races. For nearly a quarter million years, these primitive peoples drifted along, showing sporadic improvements in certain directions but generally regressing compared to their superior Andonic ancestors. Their primitive religion evolved from animal worship to a superstitious fear of natural forces, particularly clouds, mists, and fogs. This fear eventually led to human sacrifice in attempts to appease invisible forces, with the practice reaching its height during periods of lunar darkness when they would sacrifice their best tribe members in an effort to make the moon shine again.

Around 500,000 years ago, the Badonan tribes in the northwestern highlands of India became embroiled in another fierce racial struggle that lasted over one hundred years. When this relentless warfare finally ended, only about one hundred families remained, but these survivors represented the most intelligent and desirable of all the then-living descendants of Andon and Fonta. This dramatic population bottleneck set the stage for a remarkable evolutionary development that would reshape human history.

Among these highland Badonites, a strange and unprecedented occurrence took place when a man and woman living in the northeastern region began producing a family of unusually intelligent children. What made these children truly extraordinary was that their skin manifested unique tendencies to turn various colors when exposed to sunlight. This was the Sangik family, whose nineteen children—five red, two orange, four yellow, two green, four blue, and two indigo—became the progenitors of all six colored races of Urantia. As these children matured and mated with their fellow tribesmen, all their offspring tended toward the skin color of their Sangik parent, establishing distinct racial lineages.

On an average evolutionary planet, the six races of color appear sequentially, with the red man evolving first and roaming the world before subsequent races develop. Urantia presented a striking deviation from this pattern with the simultaneous emergence of all six races from a single family, an occurrence that was highly unusual in the local system. Similarly remarkable was the appearance of the earlier Andonites ahead of the evolutionary colored races, a sequence not found on other worlds in the system.

Each of the six races displayed distinctive characteristics and followed unique historical trajectories: The red race developed advanced tribal civilization and government but struggled with internal conflict. The orange race showed remarkable building instincts but was eventually wiped out in conflicts with the green race. The yellow race abandoned hunting early to establish agricultural communities and demonstrated superior collective organization. The green race split into three divisions and was eventually absorbed by other races. The blue race invented the spear and many rudiments of modern civilization, later becoming greatly enhanced by admixture with the Adamic stock. The indigo race, the last to migrate from their highland homes, settled in Africa and made limited advancement until experiencing a spiritual awakening under the leadership of Orvonon.

As the colored descendants of the Sangik family multiplied and sought territorial expansion, they encountered significant challenges from the fifth glacier advancing over Europe and Asia. For nearly one hundred thousand years, these peoples spread around the foothills and mingled together to varying degrees, despite natural antipathies between the different races. During this time, India became home to the most cosmopolitan population ever found on earth, though this mixing unfortunately contained substantial proportions of the secondary Sangik peoples—the green, orange, and indigo races.

The primary Sangik peoples—the superior races—avoided tropical regions, with the red man moving northeast into Asia (later migrating to North America), closely followed by the yellow man, while the blue race moved northwest into Europe. The yellow race continued to occupy central Asia and survived in greater numbers than other colored races, engaging in fewer destructive wars. The blue race migrated westward into Europe, encountering and absorbing the Neanderthal descendants of their early common ancestor, Andon. This infusion of Sangik blood, especially that of the blue man, produced marked improvement in the Neanderthal peoples. As migrations concluded, the racial distribution showed the red man in North America, the yellow man in eastern Asia, the blue man in Europe, and the indigo race in Africa.