The Planetary Prince of Urantia

66:5.1The one hun­dred were or­ga­nized for ser­vice in ten au­ton­o­mous coun­cils of ten mem­bers each. When two or more of these ten coun­cils met in joint ses­sion, such li­ai­son gath­er­ings were pre­sided over by Dali­gas­tia. These ten groups were con­sti­tuted as fol­lows:

66:5.21. The coun­cil on food and ma­te­rial wel­fare. This group was pre­sided over by Ang. Food, wa­ter, clothes, and the ma­te­rial ad­vance­ment of the hu­man species were fos­tered by this able corps. They taught well dig­ging, spring con­trol, and ir­ri­ga­tion. They taught those from the higher al­ti­tudes and from the north im­proved meth­ods of treat­ing skins for use as cloth­ing, and weav­ing was later in­tro­duced by the teach­ers of art and sci­ence.

66:5.3Great ad­vances were made in meth­ods of food stor­age. Food was pre­served by cook­ing, dry­ing, and smok­ing; it thus be­came the ear­li­est prop­erty. Man was taught to pro­vide for the haz­ards of famine, which pe­ri­od­i­cally dec­i­mated the world.

66:5.42. The board of an­i­mal do­mes­ti­ca­tion and uti­liza­tion. This coun­cil was ded­i­cated to the task of se­lect­ing and breed­ing those an­i­mals best adapted to help hu­man be­ings in bear­ing bur­dens and trans­port­ing them­selves, to sup­ply food, and later on to be of ser­vice in the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil. This able corps was di­rected by Bon.

66:5.5Sev­eral types of use­ful an­i­mals, now ex­tinct, were tamed, to­gether with some that have con­tin­ued as do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals to the pres­ent day. Man had long lived with the dog, and the blue man had al­ready been suc­cess­ful in tam­ing the ele­phant. The cow was so im­proved by care­ful breed­ing as to be­come a valu­able source of food; but­ter and cheese be­came com­mon ar­ti­cles of hu­man diet. Men were taught to use oxen for bur­den bear­ing, but the horse was not do­mes­ti­cated un­til a later date. The mem­bers of this corps first taught men to use the wheel for the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of trac­tion.

66:5.6It was in these days that car­rier pi­geons were first used, be­ing taken on long jour­neys for the pur­pose of send­ing mes­sages or calls for help. Bon’s group were suc­cess­ful in train­ing the great fan­dors as pas­sen­ger birds, but they be­came ex­tinct more than thirty thou­sand years ago.

66:5.73. The ad­vis­ers re­gard­ing the con­quest of preda­tory an­i­mals. It was not enough that early man should try to do­mes­ti­cate cer­tain an­i­mals, but he must also learn how to pro­tect him­self from de­struc­tion by the re­main­der of the hos­tile an­i­mal world. This group was cap­tained by Dan.

66:5.8The pur­pose of an an­cient city wall was to pro­tect against fe­ro­cious beasts as well as to pre­vent sur­prise at­tacks by hos­tile hu­mans. Those liv­ing with­out the walls and in the for­est were de­pen­dent on tree dwellings, stone huts, and the main­te­nance of night fires. It was there­fore very nat­u­ral that these teach­ers should de­vote much time to in­struct­ing their pupils in the im­prove­ment of hu­man dwellings. By em­ploy­ing im­proved tech­niques and by the use of traps, great prog­ress was made in an­i­mal sub­ju­ga­tion.

66:5.94. The fac­ulty on dis­sem­i­na­tion and con­ser­va­tion of knowl­edge. This group or­ga­nized and di­rected the purely ed­u­ca­tional en­deav­ors of those early ages. It was pre­sided over by Fad. The ed­u­ca­tional meth­ods of Fad con­sisted in super­vi­sion of em­ploy­ment ac­com­pa­nied by in­struc­tion in im­proved meth­ods of la­bor. Fad for­mu­lated the first al­pha­bet and in­tro­duced a writ­ing sys­tem. This al­pha­bet con­tained twenty-five char­ac­ters. For writ­ing ma­te­rial these early peo­ples uti­lized tree barks, clay tablets, stone slabs, a form of parch­ment made of ham­mered hides, and a crude form of pa­per­like ma­te­rial made from wasps’ nests. The Dala­ma­tia li­brary, de­stroyed soon af­ter the Cali­gas­tia dis­af­fec­tion, com­prised more than two mil­lion sep­a­rate rec­ords and was known as the “house of Fad.”

66:5.10The blue man was par­tial to al­pha­bet writ­ing and made the great­est prog­ress along such lines. The red man pre­ferred pic­to­rial writ­ing, while the yel­low races drifted into the use of sym­bols for words and ideas, much like those they now em­ploy. But the al­pha­bet and much more was sub­se­quently lost to the world dur­ing the con­fu­sion at­ten­dant upon re­bel­lion. The Cali­gas­tia de­fec­tion de­stroyed the hope of the world for a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, at least for un­told ages.

66:5.115. The com­mis­sion on in­dus­try and trade. This coun­cil was em­ployed in fos­ter­ing in­dus­try within the tribes and in pro­mot­ing trade be­tween the var­i­ous peace groups. Its leader was Nod. Ev­ery form of prim­i­tive man­u­fac­ture was en­cour­aged by this corps. They con­tributed di­rectly to the el­e­va­tion of stan­dards of liv­ing by pro­vid­ing many new com­modi­ties to at­tract the fancy of prim­i­tive men. They greatly ex­panded the trade in the im­proved salt pro­duced by the coun­cil on sci­ence and art.

66:5.12It was among these en­light­ened groups ed­u­cated in the Dala­ma­tia schools that the first com­mer­cial credit was prac­ticed. From a cen­tral ex­change of cred­its they se­cured to­kens which were ac­cepted in lieu of the ac­tual ob­jects of barter. The world did not im­prove upon these busi­ness meth­ods for hun­dreds of thou­sands of years.

66:5.136. The col­lege of re­vealed re­li­gion. This body was slow in func­tion­ing. Uran­tia civ­i­liza­tion was lit­er­ally forged out be­tween the anvil of ne­ces­sity and the ham­mers of fear. But this group had made con­sid­er­able prog­ress in their at­tempt to sub­sti­tute Cre­ator fear for crea­ture fear (ghost wor­ship) be­fore their labors were in­ter­rupted by the later con­fu­sion at­ten­dant upon the se­ces­sion up­heaval. The head of this coun­cil was Hap.

66:5.14None of the Prince’s staff would pre­sent rev­e­la­tion to com­pli­cate evo­lu­tion; they pre­sented rev­e­la­tion only as the cli­max of their ex­haus­tion of the forces of evo­lu­tion. But Hap did yield to the de­sire of the in­hab­i­tants of the city for the es­tab­lish­ment of a form of re­li­gious ser­vice. His group pro­vided the Dala­ma­tians with the seven chants of wor­ship and also gave them the daily praise-phrase and even­tu­ally taught them “the Fa­ther’s prayer,” which was:

66:5.15“Fa­ther of all, whose Son we honor, look down upon us with fa­vor. De­liver us from the fear of all save you. Make us a plea­sure to our di­vine teach­ers and for­ever put truth on our lips. De­liver us from vi­o­lence and anger; give us re­spect for our el­ders and that which be­longs to our neigh­bors. Give us this sea­son green pas­tures and fruit­ful flocks to glad­den our hearts. We pray for the has­ten­ing of the com­ing of the prom­ised up­lifter, and we would do your will on this world as oth­ers do on worlds be­yond.”

66:5.16Al­though the Prince’s staff were lim­ited to nat­u­ral means and or­di­nary meth­ods of race im­prove­ment, they held out the prom­ise of the Adamic gift of a new race as the goal of sub­se­quent evo­lu­tion­ary growth upon the at­tain­ment of the height of bi­o­logic de­vel­op­ment.

66:5.177. The guard­i­ans of health and life. This coun­cil was con­cerned with the in­tro­duc­tion of san­i­ta­tion and the pro­mo­tion of prim­i­tive hy­giene and was led by Lut.

66:5.18Its mem­bers taught much that was lost dur­ing the con­fu­sion of sub­se­quent ages, never to be re­dis­cov­ered un­til the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. They taught man­kind that cook­ing, boil­ing and roast­ing, was a means of avoid­ing sick­ness; also that such cook­ing greatly re­duced in­fant mor­tal­ity and fa­cil­i­tated early wean­ing.

66:5.19Many of the early teach­ings of Lut’s guard­i­ans of health per­sisted among the tribes of earth on down to the days of Moses, even though they be­came much gar­bled and were greatly changed.

66:5.20The great ob­sta­cle in the way of pro­mot­ing hy­giene among these ig­no­rant peo­ples con­sisted in the fact that the real causes of many dis­eases were too small to be seen by the naked eye, and also be­cause they all held fire in su­per­sti­tious re­gard. It re­quired thou­sands of years to per­suade them to burn refuse. In the mean­time they were urged to bury their de­cay­ing rub­bish. The great san­i­tary ad­vance of this epoch came from the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge re­gard­ing the health-giv­ing and dis­ease-de­stroy­ing prop­er­ties of sun­light.

66:5.21Be­fore the Prince’s ar­rival, bathing had been an ex­clu­sively re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial. It was in­deed dif­fi­cult to per­suade prim­i­tive men to wash their bod­ies as a health prac­tice. Lut fi­nally in­duced the re­li­gious teach­ers to in­clude cleans­ing with wa­ter as a part of the pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies to be prac­ticed in con­nec­tion with the noon­time de­vo­tions, once a week, in the wor­ship of the Fa­ther of all.

66:5.22These guard­i­ans of health also sought to in­tro­duce hand­shak­ing in sub­sti­tu­tion for saliva ex­change or blood drink­ing as a seal of per­sonal friend­ship and as a to­ken of group loy­alty. But when out from un­der the com­pelling pres­sure of the teach­ings of their su­pe­rior lead­ers, these prim­i­tive peo­ples were not slow in re­vert­ing to their for­mer health-de­stroy­ing and dis­ease-breed­ing prac­tices of ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion.

66:5.238. The plan­e­tary coun­cil on art and sci­ence. This corps did much to im­prove the in­dus­trial tech­nique of early man and to el­e­vate his con­cepts of beauty. Their leader was Mek.

66:5.24Art and sci­ence were at a low ebb through­out the world, but the rudi­ments of physics and chem­istry were taught the Dala­ma­tians. Pot­tery was ad­vanced, dec­o­ra­tive arts were all im­proved, and the ide­als of hu­man beauty were greatly en­hanced. But mu­sic made lit­tle prog­ress un­til af­ter the ar­rival of the vi­o­let race.

66:5.25These prim­i­tive men would not con­sent to ex­per­i­ment with steam power, not­with­stand­ing the re­peated urg­ings of their teach­ers; never could they over­come their great fear of the ex­plo­sive power of con­fined steam. They were, how­ever, fi­nally per­suaded to work with met­als and fire, al­though a piece of red-hot metal was a ter­ror­iz­ing ob­ject to early man.

66:5.26Mek did a great deal to ad­vance the cul­ture of the An­don­ites and to im­prove the art of the blue man. A blend of the blue man with the An­don stock pro­duced an ar­tis­ti­cally gifted type, and many of them be­came mas­ter sculp­tors. They did not work in stone or mar­ble, but their works of clay, hard­ened by bak­ing, adorned the gar­dens of Dala­ma­tia.

66:5.27Great prog­ress was made in the home arts, most of which were lost in the long and dark ages of re­bel­lion, never to be re­dis­cov­ered un­til mod­ern times.

66:5.289. The gov­er­nors of ad­vanced tribal re­la­tions. This was the group in­trusted with the work of bring­ing hu­man so­ci­ety up to the level of state­hood. Their chief was Tut.

66:5.29These lead­ers con­tributed much to bring­ing about in­ter­tribal mar­riages. They fos­tered court­ship and mar­riage af­ter due de­lib­er­a­tion and full op­por­tu­nity to be­come ac­quainted. The purely mil­i­tary war dances were re­fined and made to serve valu­able so­cial ends. Many com­pet­i­tive games were in­tro­duced, but these an­cient folk were a se­ri­ous peo­ple; lit­tle hu­mor graced these early tribes. Few of these prac­tices sur­vived the sub­se­quent dis­in­te­gra­tion of plan­e­tary in­sur­rec­tion.

66:5.30Tut and his as­so­ciates la­bored to pro­mote group as­so­ci­a­tions of a peace­ful na­ture, to reg­u­late and hu­man­ize war­fare, to co-or­di­nate in­ter­tribal re­la­tions, and to im­prove tribal gov­ern­ments. In the vicin­ity of Dala­ma­tia there de­vel­oped a more ad­vanced cul­ture, and these im­proved so­cial re­la­tions were very help­ful in in­flu­enc­ing more re­mote tribes. But the pat­tern of civ­i­liza­tion pre­vail­ing at the Prince’s head­quar­ters was quite dif­fer­ent from the bar­baric so­ci­ety evolv­ing else­where, just as the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury so­ci­ety of Capetown, South Africa, is to­tally un­like the crude cul­ture of the diminu­tive Bush­men to the north.

66:5.3110. The su­preme court of tribal co-or­di­na­tion and racial co-op­er­a­tion. This su­preme coun­cil was di­rected by Van and was the court of ap­peals for all of the other nine spe­cial com­mis­sions charged with the super­vi­sion of hu­man af­fairs. This coun­cil was one of wide func­tion, be­ing in­trusted with all mat­ters of earthly con­cern which were not specif­i­cally as­signed to the other groups. This se­lected corps had been ap­proved by the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers of Eden­tia be­fore they were au­tho­rized to as­sume the func­tions of the su­preme court of Uran­tia.