The Evolutionary Races of Color

64:4.1The Ne­an­derthalers were ex­cel­lent fight­ers, and they trav­eled ex­ten­sively. They grad­u­ally spread from the high­land cen­ters in north­west In­dia to France on the west, China on the east, and even down into north­ern Africa. They dom­i­nated the world for al­most half a mil­lion years un­til the times of the mi­gra­tion of the evo­lu­tion­ary races of color.

64:4.2800,000 years ago game was abun­dant; many species of deer, as well as ele­phants and hip­popota­muses, roamed over Eu­rope. Cat­tle were plen­ti­ful; horses and wolves were ev­ery­where. The Ne­an­derthalers were great hunters, and the tribes in France were the first to adopt the prac­tice of giv­ing the most suc­cess­ful hunters the choice of women for wives.

64:4.3The rein­deer was highly use­ful to these Ne­an­derthal peo­ples, serv­ing as food, cloth­ing, and for tools, since they made var­i­ous uses of the horns and bones. They had lit­tle cul­ture, but they greatly im­proved the work in flint un­til it al­most reached the lev­els of the days of An­don. Large flints at­tached to wooden han­dles came back into use and served as axes and picks.

64:4.4750,000 years ago the fourth ice sheet was well on its way south. With their im­proved im­ple­ments the Ne­an­derthalers made holes in the ice cov­er­ing the north­ern rivers and thus were able to spear the fish which came up to these vents. Ever these tribes re­treated be­fore the ad­vanc­ing ice, which at this time made its most ex­ten­sive in­va­sion of Eu­rope.

64:4.5In these times the Siberian glacier was mak­ing its south­ern­most march, com­pelling early man to move south­ward, back to­ward the lands of his ori­gin. But the hu­man species had so dif­fer­en­ti­ated that the dan­ger of fur­ther min­gling with its non­pro­gres­sive simian rel­a­tives was greatly less­ened.

64:4.6700,000 years ago the fourth glacier, the great­est of all in Eu­rope, was in re­ces­sion; men and an­i­mals were re­turn­ing north. The cli­mate was cool and moist, and prim­i­tive man again thrived in Eu­rope and west­ern Asia. Grad­u­ally the forests spread north over land which had been so re­cently cov­ered by the glacier.

64:4.7Mam­malian life had been lit­tle changed by the great glacier. These an­i­mals per­sisted in that nar­row belt of land ly­ing be­tween the ice and the Alps and, upon the re­treat of the glacier, again rapidly spread out over all Eu­rope. There ar­rived from Africa, over the Si­cil­ian land bridge, straight-tusked ele­phants, broad-nosed rhinoceroses, hye­nas, and African li­ons, and these new an­i­mals vir­tu­ally ex­ter­mi­nated the saber-toothed tigers and the hip­popota­muses.

64:4.8650,000 years ago wit­nessed the con­tin­u­a­tion of the mild cli­mate. By the mid­dle of the in­ter­glacial pe­riod it had be­come so warm that the Alps were al­most de­nuded of ice and snow.

64:4.9600,000 years ago the ice had reached its then north­ern­most point of re­treat and, af­ter a pause of a few thou­sand years, started south again on its fifth ex­cur­sion. But there was lit­tle mod­i­fi­ca­tion of cli­mate for fifty thou­sand years. Man and the an­i­mals of Eu­rope were lit­tle changed. The slight arid­ity of the for­mer pe­riod less­ened, and the alpine glaciers de­scended far down the river val­leys.

64:4.10550,000 years ago the ad­vanc­ing glacier again pushed man and the an­i­mals south. But this time man had plenty of room in the wide belt of land stretch­ing north­east into Asia and ly­ing be­tween the ice sheet and the then greatly ex­panded Black Sea ex­ten­sion of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

64:4.11These times of the fourth and fifth glaciers wit­nessed the fur­ther spread of the crude cul­ture of the Ne­an­derthal races. But there was so lit­tle prog­ress that it truly ap­peared as though the at­tempt to pro­duce a new and mod­i­fied type of in­tel­li­gent life on Uran­tia was about to fail. For al­most a quar­ter of a mil­lion years these prim­i­tive peo­ples drifted on, hunt­ing and fight­ing, by spells im­prov­ing in cer­tain di­rec­tions, but, on the whole, steadily ret­ro­gress­ing as com­pared with their su­pe­rior An­donic an­ces­tors.

64:4.12Dur­ing these spir­i­tu­ally dark ages the cul­ture of su­per­sti­tious man­kind reached its low­est lev­els. The Ne­an­derthalers re­ally had no re­li­gion be­yond a shame­ful su­per­sti­tion. They were deathly afraid of clouds, more es­pe­cially of mists and fogs. A prim­i­tive re­li­gion of the fear of nat­u­ral forces grad­u­ally de­vel­oped, while an­i­mal wor­ship de­clined as im­prove­ment in tools, with abun­dance of game, en­abled these peo­ple to live with less­ened anx­i­ety about food; the sex re­wards of the chase tended greatly to im­prove hunt­ing skill. This new re­li­gion of fear led to at­tempts to pla­cate the in­vis­i­ble forces be­hind these nat­u­ral el­e­ments and cul­mi­nated, later on, in the sac­ri­fic­ing of hu­mans to ap­pease these in­vis­i­ble and un­known phys­i­cal forces. And this ter­ri­ble prac­tice of hu­man sac­ri­fice has been per­pet­u­ated by the more back­ward peo­ples of Uran­tia right on down to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

64:4.13These early Ne­an­derthalers could hardly be called sun wor­shipers. They rather lived in fear of the dark; they had a mor­tal dread of night­fall. As long as the moon shone a lit­tle, they man­aged to get along, but in the dark of the moon they grew pan­icky and be­gan the sac­ri­fice of their best spec­i­mens of man­hood and wom­an­hood in an ef­fort to in­duce the moon again to shine. The sun, they early learned, would reg­u­larly re­turn, but the moon they con­jec­tured only re­turned be­cause they sac­ri­ficed their fel­low tribes­men. As the race ad­vanced, the ob­ject and pur­pose of sac­ri­fice pro­gres­sively changed, but the of­fer­ing of hu­man sac­ri­fice as a part of re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial long per­sisted.