Planetary Mortal Epochs

52:1.1From the time of man’s emer­gence from the an­i­mal level—when he can choose to wor­ship the Cre­ator—to the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince, mor­tal will crea­tures are called prim­i­tive men. There are six ba­sic types or races of prim­i­tive men, and these early peo­ples suc­ces­sively ap­pear in the or­der of the spec­trum col­ors, be­gin­ning with the red. The length of time con­sumed in this early life evo­lu­tion varies greatly on the dif­fer­ent worlds, rang­ing from one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years to over one mil­lion years of Uran­tia time.

52:1.2The evo­lu­tion­ary races of color—red, or­ange, yel­low, green, blue, and in­digo—be­gin to ap­pear about the time that prim­i­tive man is de­vel­op­ing a sim­ple lan­guage and is be­gin­ning to ex­er­cise the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion. By this time man is well ac­cus­tomed to stand­ing erect.

52:1.3Prim­i­tive men are mighty hunters and fierce fight­ers. The law of this age is the phys­i­cal sur­vival of the fittest; the gov­ern­ment of these times is wholly tribal. Dur­ing the early racial strug­gles on many worlds some of the evo­lu­tion­ary races are oblit­er­ated, as oc­curred on Uran­tia. Those who sur­vive are usu­ally sub­se­quently blended with the later im­ported vi­o­let race, the Adamic peo­ples.

52:1.4In the light of sub­se­quent civ­i­liza­tion, this era of prim­i­tive man is a long, dark, and bloody chap­ter. The ethics of the jun­gle and the morals of the primeval forests are not in keep­ing with the stan­dards of later dis­pen­sa­tions of re­vealed re­li­gion and higher spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. On nor­mal and non­ex­per­i­men­tal worlds this epoch is very dif­fer­ent from the pro­longed and ex­traor­di­nar­ily bru­tal strug­gles which char­ac­ter­ized this age on Uran­tia. When you have emerged from your first world ex­pe­ri­ence, you will be­gin to see why this long and painful strug­gle on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds oc­curs, and as you go for­ward in the Par­a­dise path, you will in­creas­ingly un­der­stand the wis­dom of these ap­par­ently strange do­ings. But not­with­stand­ing all the vi­cis­si­tudes of the early ages of hu­man emer­gence, the per­for­mances of prim­i­tive man rep­re­sent a splen­did, even a heroic, chap­ter in the an­nals of an evo­lu­tion­ary world of time and space.

52:1.5Early evo­lu­tion­ary man is not a col­or­ful crea­ture. In gen­eral, these prim­i­tive mor­tals are cave dwellers or cliff res­i­dents. They also build crude huts in the large trees. Be­fore they ac­quire a high or­der of in­tel­li­gence, the plan­ets are some­times over­run with the larger types of an­i­mals. But early in this era mor­tals learn to kin­dle and main­tain fire, and with the in­crease of in­ven­tive imag­i­na­tion and the im­prove­ment in tools, evolv­ing man soon van­quishes the larger and more un­wieldy an­i­mals. The early races also make ex­ten­sive use of the larger fly­ing an­i­mals. These enor­mous birds are able to carry one or two av­er­age-sized men for a non­stop flight of over five hun­dred miles. On some plan­ets these birds are of great ser­vice since they pos­sess a high or­der of in­tel­li­gence, of­ten be­ing able to speak many words of the lan­guages of the realm. These birds are most in­tel­li­gent, very obe­di­ent, and un­be­liev­ably af­fec­tion­ate. Such pas­sen­ger birds have been long ex­tinct on Uran­tia, but your early an­ces­tors en­joyed their ser­vices.

52:1.6Man’s ac­quire­ment of eth­i­cal judg­ment, moral will, is usu­ally co­in­ci­dent with the ap­pear­ance of early lan­guage. Upon at­tain­ing the hu­man level, af­ter this emer­gence of mor­tal will, these be­ings be­come re­cep­tive to the tem­po­rary in­dwelling of the di­vine Ad­justers, and upon death many are duly elected as sur­vivors and sealed by the arch­an­gels for sub­se­quent res­ur­rec­tion and Spirit fu­sion. The arch­an­gels al­ways ac­com­pany the Plan­e­tary Princes, and a dis­pen­sa­tional ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the realm is si­mul­ta­ne­ous with the prince’s ar­rival.

52:1.7All mor­tals who are in­dwelt by Thought Ad­justers are po­ten­tial wor­shipers; they have been “lighted by the true light,” and they pos­sess ca­pac­ity for seek­ing re­cip­ro­cal con­tact with di­vin­ity. Nev­er­the­less, the early or bi­o­logic re­li­gion of prim­i­tive man is largely a per­sis­tence of an­i­mal fear cou­pled with ig­no­rant awe and tribal su­per­sti­tion. The sur­vival of su­per­sti­tion in the Uran­tia races is hardly com­pli­men­tary to your evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment nor com­pat­i­ble with your oth­er­wise splen­did achieve­ments in ma­te­rial prog­ress. But this early fear re­li­gion serves a very valu­able pur­pose in sub­du­ing the fiery tem­pers of these prim­i­tive crea­tures. It is the fore­run­ner of civ­i­liza­tion and the soil for the sub­se­quent plant­ing of the seeds of re­vealed re­li­gion by the Plan­e­tary Prince and his min­is­ters.

52:1.8Within one hun­dred thou­sand years from the time man ac­quires erect pos­ture, the Plan­e­tary Prince usu­ally ar­rives, hav­ing been dis­patched by the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign upon the re­port of the Life Car­ri­ers that will is func­tion­ing, even though com­par­a­tively few in­di­vid­u­als have thus de­vel­oped. Prim­i­tive mor­tals usu­ally wel­come the Plan­e­tary Prince and his vis­i­ble staff; in fact, they of­ten look upon them with awe and rev­er­ence, al­most with wor­ship­ful­ness, if they are not re­strained.