The First Human Family

63:3.1It was al­most two years from the night of the twins’ de­par­ture from home be­fore their first child was born. They named him Son­tad; and Son­tad was the first crea­ture to be born on Uran­tia who was wrapped in pro­tec­tive cov­er­ings at the time of birth. The hu­man race had be­gun, and with this new evo­lu­tion there ap­peared the in­stinct prop­erly to care for the in­creas­ingly en­fee­bled in­fants which would char­ac­ter­ize the pro­gres­sive de­vel­op­ment of mind of the in­tel­lec­tual or­der as con­trasted with the more purely an­i­mal type.

63:3.2An­don and Fonta had nine­teen chil­dren in all, and they lived to en­joy the as­so­ci­a­tion of al­most half a hun­dred grand­chil­dren and half a dozen great-grand­chil­dren. The fam­ily was domi­ciled in four ad­join­ing rock shel­ters, or sem­i­caves, three of which were in­ter­con­nected by hall­ways which had been ex­ca­vated in the soft lime­stone with flint tools de­vised by An­don’s chil­dren.

63:3.3These early An­don­ites evinced a very marked clan­nish spirit; they hunted in groups and never strayed very far from the home­site. They seemed to re­al­ize that they were an iso­lated and unique group of liv­ing be­ings and should there­fore avoid be­com­ing sep­a­rated. This feel­ing of in­ti­mate kin­ship was un­doubt­edly due to the en­hanced mind min­istry of the ad­ju­tant spir­its.

63:3.4An­don and Fonta la­bored in­ces­santly for the nur­ture and up­lift of the clan. They lived to the age of forty-two, when both were killed at the time of an earth­quake by the falling of an over­hang­ing rock. Five of their chil­dren and eleven grand­chil­dren per­ished with them, and al­most a score of their de­scen­dants suf­fered se­ri­ous in­juries.

63:3.5Upon the death of his par­ents, Son­tad, de­spite a se­ri­ously in­jured foot, im­me­di­ately as­sumed the lead­er­ship of the clan and was ably as­sisted by his wife, his el­dest sis­ter. Their first task was to roll up stones to ef­fec­tively en­tomb their dead par­ents, broth­ers, sis­ters, and chil­dren. Un­due sig­nif­i­cance should not at­tach to this act of burial. Their ideas of sur­vival af­ter death were very vague and in­def­i­nite, be­ing largely de­rived from their fan­tas­tic and var­ie­gated dream life.

63:3.6This fam­ily of An­don and Fonta held to­gether un­til the twen­ti­eth gen­er­a­tion, when com­bined food com­pe­ti­tion and so­cial fric­tion brought about the be­gin­ning of dis­per­sion.