The First Human Family

63:6.1As the An­donic dis­per­sion ex­tended, the cul­tural and spir­i­tual sta­tus of the clans ret­ro­gressed for nearly ten thou­sand years un­til the days of On­a­gar, who as­sumed the lead­er­ship of these tribes, brought peace among them, and for the first time, led all of them in the wor­ship of the “Breath Giver to men and an­i­mals.”

63:6.2An­don’s phi­los­o­phy had been most con­fused; he had barely es­caped be­com­ing a fire wor­shiper be­cause of the great com­fort de­rived from his ac­ci­den­tal dis­cov­ery of fire. Rea­son, how­ever, di­rected him from his own dis­cov­ery to the sun as a su­pe­rior and more awe-in­spir­ing source of heat and light, but it was too re­mote, and so he failed to be­come a sun wor­shiper.

63:6.3The An­don­ites early de­vel­oped a fear of the el­e­ments—thun­der, light­ning, rain, snow, hail, and ice. But hunger was the con­stantly re­cur­ring urge of these early days, and since they largely sub­sisted on an­i­mals, they even­tu­ally evolved a form of an­i­mal wor­ship. To An­don, the larger food an­i­mals were sym­bols of cre­ative might and sus­tain­ing power. From time to time it be­came the cus­tom to des­ig­nate var­i­ous of these larger an­i­mals as ob­jects of wor­ship. Dur­ing the vogue of a par­tic­u­lar an­i­mal, crude out­lines of it would be drawn on the walls of the caves, and later on, as con­tin­ued prog­ress was made in the arts, such an an­i­mal god was en­graved on var­i­ous or­na­ments.

63:6.4Very early the An­donic peo­ples formed the habit of re­frain­ing from eat­ing the flesh of the an­i­mal of tribal ven­er­a­tion. Pres­ently, in or­der more suit­ably to im­press the minds of their youths, they evolved a cer­e­mony of rev­er­ence which was car­ried out about the body of one of these ven­er­ated an­i­mals; and still later on, this prim­i­tive per­for­mance de­vel­oped into the more elab­o­rate sac­ri­fi­cial cer­e­monies of their de­scen­dants. And this is the ori­gin of sac­ri­fices as a part of wor­ship. This idea was elab­o­rated by Moses in the He­brew rit­ual and was pre­served, in prin­ci­ple, by the Apos­tle Paul as the doc­trine of atone­ment for sin by “the shed­ding of blood.”

63:6.5That food was the all-im­por­tant thing in the lives of these prim­i­tive hu­man be­ings is shown by the prayer taught these sim­ple folks by On­a­gar, their great teacher. And this prayer was:

63:6.6“O Breath of Life, give us this day our daily food, de­liver us from the curse of the ice, save us from our for­est en­e­mies, and with mercy re­ceive us into the Great Be­yond.”

63:6.7On­a­gar main­tained head­quar­ters on the north­ern shores of the an­cient Med­i­ter­ra­nean in the re­gion of the pres­ent Caspian Sea at a set­tle­ment called Oban, the tar­ry­ing place on the west­ward turn­ing of the travel trail lead­ing up north­ward from the Mes­o­po­ta­mian south­land. From Oban he sent out teach­ers to the re­mote set­tle­ments to spread his new doc­trines of one De­ity and his con­cept of the here­after, which he called the Great Be­yond. These emis­saries of On­a­gar were the world’s first mis­sion­ar­ies; they were also the first hu­man be­ings to cook meat, the first reg­u­larly to use fire in the prepa­ra­tion of food. They cooked flesh on the ends of sticks and also on hot stones; later on they roasted large pieces in the fire, but their de­scen­dants al­most en­tirely re­verted to the use of raw flesh.

63:6.8On­a­gar was born 983,323 years ago (from A.D. 1934), and he lived to be sixty-nine years of age. The rec­ord of the achieve­ments of this mas­ter mind and spir­i­tual leader of the pre-Plan­e­tary Prince days is a thrilling recital of the or­ga­ni­za­tion of these prim­i­tive peo­ples into a real so­ci­ety. He in­sti­tuted an ef­fi­cient tribal gov­ern­ment, the like of which was not at­tained by suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions in many mil­len­ni­ums. Never again, un­til the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince, was there such a high spir­i­tual civ­i­liza­tion on earth. These sim­ple peo­ple had a real though prim­i­tive re­li­gion, but it was sub­se­quently lost to their de­te­ri­o­rat­ing de­scen­dants.

63:6.9Al­though both An­don and Fonta had re­ceived Thought Ad­justers, as had many of their de­scen­dants, it was not un­til the days of On­a­gar that the Ad­justers and guard­ian ser­a­phim came in great num­bers to Uran­tia. This was, in­deed, the golden age of prim­i­tive man.