The Origin of Urantia

57:8.11,000,000,000 years ago is the date of the ac­tual be­gin­ning of Uran­tia his­tory. The planet had at­tained ap­prox­i­mately its pres­ent size. And about this time it was placed upon the phys­i­cal reg­istries of Neb­a­don and given its name, Uran­tia.

57:8.2The at­mo­sphere, to­gether with in­ces­sant mois­ture pre­cip­i­ta­tion, fa­cil­i­tated the cool­ing of the earth’s crust. Vol­canic ac­tion early equal­ized in­ter­nal-heat pres­sure and crustal con­trac­tion; and as vol­ca­noes rapidly de­creased, earth­quakes made their ap­pear­ance as this epoch of crustal cool­ing and ad­just­ment pro­gressed.

57:8.3The real ge­o­logic his­tory of Uran­tia be­gins with the cool­ing of the earth’s crust suf­fi­ciently to cause the for­ma­tion of the first ocean. Wa­ter-va­por con­den­sa­tion on the cool­ing sur­face of the earth, once be­gun, con­tin­ued un­til it was vir­tu­ally com­plete. By the end of this pe­riod the ocean was world-wide, cov­er­ing the en­tire planet to an av­er­age depth of over one mile. The tides were then in play much as they are now ob­served, but this prim­i­tive ocean was not salty; it was prac­ti­cally a fresh-wa­ter cov­er­ing for the world. In those days, most of the chlo­rine was com­bined with var­i­ous met­als, but there was enough, in union with hy­dro­gen, to ren­der this wa­ter faintly acid.

57:8.4At the open­ing of this far­away era, Uran­tia should be en­vis­aged as a wa­ter-bound planet. Later on, deeper and hence denser lava flows came out upon the bot­tom of the pres­ent Pa­cific Ocean, and this part of the wa­ter-cov­ered sur­face be­came con­sid­er­ably de­pressed. The first con­ti­nen­tal land mass emerged from the world ocean in com­pen­satory ad­just­ment of the equi­lib­rium of the grad­u­ally thick­en­ing earth’s crust.

57:8.5950,000,000 years ago Uran­tia pre­sents the pic­ture of one great con­ti­nent of land and one large body of wa­ter, the Pa­cific Ocean. Vol­ca­noes are still wide­spread and earth­quakes are both fre­quent and se­vere. Me­te­ors con­tinue to bom­bard the earth, but they are di­min­ish­ing in both fre­quency and size. The at­mo­sphere is clear­ing up, but the amount of car­bon diox­ide con­tin­ues large. The earth’s crust is grad­u­ally sta­bi­liz­ing.

57:8.6It was at about this time that Uran­tia was as­signed to the sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia for plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion and was placed on the life reg­istry of Nor­la­ti­adek. Then be­gan the ad­min­is­tra­tive rec­og­ni­tion of the small and in­signif­i­cant sphere which was des­tined to be the planet whereon Mi­chael would sub­se­quently en­gage in the stu­pen­dous un­der­tak­ing of mor­tal be­stowal, would par­tic­i­pate in those ex­pe­ri­ences which have since caused Uran­tia to be­come lo­cally known as the “world of the cross.”

57:8.7900,000,000 years ago wit­nessed the ar­rival on Uran­tia of the first Sa­ta­nia scout­ing party sent out from Je­ru­sem to ex­am­ine the planet and make a re­port on its adap­ta­tion for a life-ex­per­i­ment sta­tion. This com­mis­sion con­sisted of twenty-four mem­bers, em­brac­ing Life Car­ri­ers, La­non­an­dek Sons, Mel­chiz­e­deks, ser­a­phim, and other or­ders of ce­les­tial life hav­ing to do with the early days of plan­e­tary or­ga­ni­za­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion.

57:8.8Af­ter mak­ing a painstak­ing sur­vey of the planet, this com­mis­sion re­turned to Je­ru­sem and re­ported fa­vor­ably to the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign, rec­om­mend­ing that Uran­tia be placed on the life-ex­per­i­ment reg­istry. Your world was ac­cord­ingly reg­is­tered on Je­ru­sem as a dec­i­mal planet, and the Life Car­ri­ers were no­ti­fied that they would be granted per­mis­sion to in­sti­tute new pat­terns of me­chan­i­cal, chem­i­cal, and elec­tri­cal mo­bi­liza­tion at the time of their sub­se­quent ar­rival with life trans­plan­ta­tion and im­plan­ta­tion man­dates.

57:8.9In due course ar­range­ments for the plan­e­tary oc­cu­pa­tion were com­pleted by the mixed com­mis­sion of twelve on Je­ru­sem and ap­proved by the plan­e­tary com­mis­sion of sev­enty on Eden­tia. These plans, pro­posed by the ad­vi­sory coun­selors of the Life Car­ri­ers, were fi­nally ac­cepted on Sal­ving­ton. Soon there­after the Neb­a­don broad­casts car­ried the an­nounce­ment that Uran­tia would be­come the stage whereon the Life Car­ri­ers would ex­e­cute their six­ti­eth Sa­ta­nia ex­per­i­ment de­signed to am­plify and im­prove the Sa­ta­nia type of the Neb­a­don life pat­terns.

57:8.10Shortly af­ter Uran­tia was first rec­og­nized on the uni­verse broad­casts to all Neb­a­don, it was ac­corded full uni­verse sta­tus. Soon there­after it was reg­is­tered in the rec­ords of the mi­nor and the ma­jor sec­tor head­quar­ters plan­ets of the super­uni­verse; and be­fore this age was over, Uran­tia had found en­try on the plan­e­tary-life reg­istry of Uversa.

57:8.11This en­tire age was char­ac­ter­ized by fre­quent and vi­o­lent storms. The early crust of the earth was in a state of con­tin­ual flux. Sur­face cool­ing al­ter­nated with im­mense lava flows. Nowhere can there be found on the sur­face of the world any­thing of this orig­i­nal plan­e­tary crust. It has all been mixed up too many times with ex­trud­ing lavas of deep ori­gins and ad­mixed with sub­se­quent de­posits of the early world-wide ocean.

57:8.12Nowhere on the sur­face of the world will there be found more of the mod­i­fied rem­nants of these an­cient pre­o­cean rocks than in north­east­ern Canada around Hud­son Bay. This ex­ten­sive gran­ite el­e­va­tion is com­posed of stone be­long­ing to the pre­o­ceanic ages. These rock lay­ers have been heated, bent, twisted, up­crum­pled, and again and again have they passed through these dis­tort­ing meta­mor­phic ex­pe­ri­ences.

57:8.13Through­out the oceanic ages, enor­mous lay­ers of fos­sil-free strat­i­fied stone were de­posited on this an­cient ocean bot­tom. (Lime­stone can form as a re­sult of chem­i­cal pre­cip­i­ta­tion; not all of the older lime­stone was pro­duced by ma­rine-life de­po­si­tion.) In none of these an­cient rock for­ma­tions will there be found ev­i­dences of life; they con­tain no fos­sils un­less, by some chance, later de­posits of the wa­ter ages have be­come mixed with these older pre­life lay­ers.

57:8.14The earth’s early crust was highly un­sta­ble, but moun­tains were not in pro­cess of for­ma­tion. The planet con­tracted un­der grav­ity pres­sure as it formed. Moun­tains are not the re­sult of the col­lapse of the cool­ing crust of a con­tract­ing sphere; they ap­pear later on as a re­sult of the ac­tion of rain, grav­ity, and ero­sion.

57:8.15The con­ti­nen­tal land mass of this era in­creased un­til it cov­ered al­most ten per cent of the earth’s sur­face. Se­vere earth­quakes did not be­gin un­til the con­ti­nen­tal mass of land emerged well above the wa­ter. When they once be­gan, they in­creased in fre­quency and sever­ity for ages. For mil­lions upon mil­lions of years earth­quakes have di­min­ished, but Uran­tia still has an av­er­age of fif­teen daily.

57:8.16850,000,000 years ago the first real epoch of the sta­bi­liza­tion of the earth’s crust be­gan. Most of the heav­ier met­als had set­tled down to­ward the cen­ter of the globe; the cool­ing crust had ceased to cave in on such an ex­ten­sive scale as in for­mer ages. There was es­tab­lished a bet­ter bal­ance be­tween the land ex­tru­sion and the heav­ier ocean bed. The flow of the sub­crustal lava bed be­came well-nigh world-wide, and this com­pen­sated and sta­bi­lized the fluc­tu­a­tions due to cool­ing, con­tract­ing, and su­per­fi­cial shift­ing.

57:8.17Vol­canic erup­tions and earth­quakes con­tin­ued to di­min­ish in fre­quency and sever­ity. The at­mo­sphere was clear­ing of vol­canic gases and wa­ter va­por, but the per­cent­age of car­bon diox­ide was still high.

57:8.18Elec­tric dis­tur­bances in the air and in the earth were also de­creas­ing. The lava flows had brought to the sur­face a mix­ture of el­e­ments which di­ver­si­fied the crust and bet­ter in­su­lated the planet from cer­tain space-en­er­gies. And all of this did much to fa­cil­i­tate the con­trol of ter­res­trial en­ergy and to reg­u­late its flow, as is dis­closed by the func­tion­ing of the mag­netic poles.

57:8.19800,000,000 years ago wit­nessed the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the first great land epoch, the age of in­creased con­ti­nen­tal emer­gence.

57:8.20Since the con­den­sa­tion of the earth’s hy­dro­sphere, first into the world ocean and sub­se­quently into the Pa­cific Ocean, this lat­ter body of wa­ter should be vi­su­al­ized as then cov­er­ing nine tenths of the earth’s sur­face. Me­te­ors falling into the sea ac­cu­mu­lated on the ocean bot­tom, and me­te­ors are, gen­er­ally speak­ing, com­posed of heavy ma­te­ri­als. Those falling on the land were largely ox­i­dized, sub­se­quently worn down by ero­sion, and washed into the ocean basins. Thus the ocean bot­tom grew in­creas­ingly heavy, and added to this was the weight of a body of wa­ter at some places ten miles deep.

57:8.21The in­creas­ing down­thrust of the Pa­cific Ocean op­er­ated fur­ther to up­thrust the con­ti­nen­tal land mass. Eu­rope and Africa be­gan to rise out of the Pa­cific depths along with those masses now called Aus­tralia, North and South Amer­ica, and the con­ti­nent of Antarc­tica, while the bed of the Pa­cific Ocean en­gaged in a fur­ther com­pen­satory sink­ing ad­just­ment. By the end of this pe­riod al­most one third of the earth’s sur­face con­sisted of land, all in one con­ti­nen­tal body.

57:8.22With this in­crease in land el­e­va­tion the first cli­matic dif­fer­ences of the planet ap­peared. Land el­e­va­tion, cos­mic clouds, and oceanic in­flu­ences are the chief fac­tors in cli­matic fluc­tu­a­tion. The back­bone of the Asi­atic land mass reached a height of al­most nine miles at the time of the max­i­mum land emer­gence. Had there been much mois­ture in the air hov­er­ing over these highly el­e­vated re­gions, enor­mous ice blan­kets would have formed; the ice age would have ar­rived long be­fore it did. It was sev­eral hun­dred mil­lions of years be­fore so much land again ap­peared above wa­ter.

57:8.23750,000,000 years ago the first breaks in the con­ti­nen­tal land mass be­gan as the great north-and-south crack­ing, which later ad­mit­ted the ocean wa­ters and pre­pared the way for the west­ward drift of the con­ti­nents of North and South Amer­ica, in­clud­ing Green­land. The long east-and-west cleav­age sep­a­rated Africa from Eu­rope and sev­ered the land masses of Aus­tralia, the Pa­cific Is­lands, and Antarc­tica from the Asi­atic con­ti­nent.

57:8.24700,000,000 years ago Uran­tia was ap­proach­ing the ripen­ing of con­di­tions suit­able for the sup­port of life. The con­ti­nen­tal land drift con­tin­ued; in­creas­ingly the ocean pen­e­trated the land as long fin­ger­like seas pro­vid­ing those shal­low wa­ters and shel­tered bays which are so suit­able as a habi­tat for ma­rine life.

57:8.25650,000,000 years ago wit­nessed the fur­ther sep­a­ra­tion of the land masses and, in con­se­quence, a fur­ther ex­ten­sion of the con­ti­nen­tal seas. And these wa­ters were rapidly at­tain­ing that de­gree of salti­ness which was es­sen­tial to Uran­tia life.

57:8.26It was these seas and their suc­ces­sors that laid down the life rec­ords of Uran­tia, as sub­se­quently dis­cov­ered in well-pre­served stone pages, vol­ume upon vol­ume, as era suc­ceeded era and age grew upon age. These in­land seas of olden times were truly the cra­dle of evo­lu­tion.

57:8.27[Pre­sented by a Life Car­rier, a mem­ber of the orig­i­nal Uran­tia Corps and now a res­i­dent ob­server.]