Page:The Urantia Book, 1st Edition.djvu/967

 Rh directly from hunters to successful farmers. But this phenomenon of passing immediately from hunting to agriculture only occurred in those regions where there was a high degree of race mixture with the violet stock.

The evolutionary peoples (notably the Chinese) early learned to plant seeds and to cultivate crops through observation of the sprouting of seeds accidentally moistened or which had been put in graves as food for the departed. But throughout southwest Asia, along the fertile river bottoms and adjacent plains, the Andites were carrying out the improved agricultural techniques inherited from their ancestors, who had made farming and gardening the chief pursuits within the boundaries of the second garden.

For thousands of years the descendants of Adam had grown wheat and barley, as improved in the Garden, throughout the highlands of the upper border of Mesopotamia. The descendants of Adam and Adamson here met, traded, and socially mingled.

It was these enforced changes in living conditions which caused such a large proportion of the human race to become omnivorous in dietetic practice. And the combination of the wheat, rice, and vegetable diet with the flesh of the herds marked a great forward step in the health and vigor of these ancient peoples.

The growth of culture is predicated upon the development of the tools of civilization. And the tools which man utilized in his ascent from savagery were effective just to the extent that they released man power for the accomplishment of higher tasks.

You who now live amid latter-day scenes of budding culture and beginning progress in social affairs, who actually have some little spare time in which to think about society and civilization, must not overlook the fact that your early ancestors had little or no leisure which could be devoted to thoughtful reflection and social thinking.

The first four great advances in human civilization were:

1. The taming of fire.

2. The domestication of animals.

3. The enslavement of captives.

4. Private property.

While fire, the first great discovery, eventually unlocked the doors of the scientific world, it was of little value in this regard to primitive man. He refused to recognize natural causes as explanations for commonplace phenomena.

When asked where fire came from, the simple story of Andon and the flint was soon replaced by the legend of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The ancients sought a supernatural explanation for all natural phenomena not within the range of their personal comprehension; and many moderns continue to do this. The depersonalization of so-called natural phenomena has required ages, and it is not yet completed. But the frank, honest, and fearless search for true causes gave birth to modern science: It turned astrology into astronomy, alchemy into chemistry, and magic into medicine.

In the premachine age the only way in which man could accomplish work without doing it himself was to use an animal. Domestication of animals placed