The Dawn of Civilization

68:6.1Man is a crea­ture of the soil, a child of na­ture; no mat­ter how earnestly he may try to es­cape from the land, in the last reck­on­ing he is cer­tain to fail. “Dust you are and to dust shall you re­turn” is lit­er­ally true of all man­kind. The ba­sic strug­gle of man was, and is, and ever shall be, for land. The first so­cial as­so­ci­a­tions of prim­i­tive hu­man be­ings were for the pur­pose of win­ning these land strug­gles. The land-man ra­tio un­der­lies all so­cial civ­i­liza­tion.

68:6.2Man’s in­tel­li­gence, by means of the arts and sci­ences, in­creased the land yield; at the same time the nat­u­ral in­crease in off­spring was some­what brought un­der con­trol, and thus was pro­vided the sus­te­nance and leisure to build a cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion.

68:6.3Hu­man so­ci­ety is con­trolled by a law which de­crees that the pop­u­la­tion must vary di­rectly in ac­cor­dance with the land arts and in­versely with a given stan­dard of liv­ing. Through­out these early ages, even more than at pres­ent, the law of sup­ply and de­mand as con­cerned men and land de­ter­mined the es­ti­mated value of both. Dur­ing the times of plen­ti­ful land—un­oc­cu­pied ter­ri­tory—the need for men was great, and there­fore the value of hu­man life was much en­hanced; hence the loss of life was more hor­ri­fy­ing. Dur­ing pe­ri­ods of land scarcity and as­so­ci­ated over­pop­u­la­tion, hu­man life be­came com­par­a­tively cheap­ened so that war, famine, and pesti­lence were re­garded with less con­cern.

68:6.4When the land yield is re­duced or the pop­u­la­tion is in­creased, the in­ev­i­ta­ble strug­gle is re­newed; the very worst traits of hu­man na­ture are brought to the sur­face. The im­prove­ment of the land yield, the ex­ten­sion of the me­chan­i­cal arts, and the re­duc­tion of pop­u­la­tion all tend to fos­ter the de­vel­op­ment of the bet­ter side of hu­man na­ture.

68:6.5Fron­tier so­ci­ety de­vel­ops the un­skilled side of hu­man­ity; the fine arts and true sci­en­tific prog­ress, to­gether with spir­i­tual cul­ture, have all thrived best in the larger cen­ters of life when sup­ported by an ag­ri­cul­tural and in­dus­trial pop­u­la­tion slightly un­der the land-man ra­tio. Cities al­ways mul­ti­ply the power of their in­hab­i­tants for ei­ther good or evil.

68:6.6The size of the fam­ily has al­ways been in­flu­enced by the stan­dards of liv­ing. The higher the stan­dard the smaller the fam­ily, up to the point of es­tab­lished sta­tus or grad­ual ex­tinc­tion.

68:6.7All down through the ages the stan­dards of liv­ing have de­ter­mined the qual­ity of a sur­viv­ing pop­u­la­tion in con­trast with mere quan­tity. Lo­cal class stan­dards of liv­ing give ori­gin to new so­cial castes, new mores. When stan­dards of liv­ing be­come too com­pli­cated or too highly lux­u­ri­ous, they speed­ily be­come sui­ci­dal. Caste is the di­rect re­sult of the high so­cial pres­sure of keen com­pe­ti­tion pro­duced by dense pop­u­la­tions.

68:6.8The early races of­ten re­sorted to prac­tices de­signed to re­strict pop­u­la­tion; all prim­i­tive tribes killed de­formed and sickly chil­dren. Girl ba­bies were fre­quently killed be­fore the times of wife pur­chase. Chil­dren were some­times stran­gled at birth, but the fa­vorite method was ex­po­sure. The fa­ther of twins usu­ally in­sisted that one be killed since mul­ti­ple births were be­lieved to be caused ei­ther by magic or by in­fi­delity. As a rule, how­ever, twins of the same sex were spared. While these taboos on twins were once well-nigh uni­ver­sal, they were never a part of the An­don­ite mores; these peo­ples al­ways re­garded twins as omens of good luck.

68:6.9Many races learned the tech­nique of abor­tion, and this prac­tice be­came very com­mon af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of the taboo on child­birth among the un­mar­ried. It was long the cus­tom for a maiden to kill her off­spring, but among more civ­i­lized groups these il­le­git­i­mate chil­dren be­came the wards of the girl’s mother. Many prim­i­tive clans were vir­tu­ally ex­ter­mi­nated by the prac­tice of both abor­tion and in­fan­ti­cide. But re­gard­less of the dic­tates of the mores, very few chil­dren were ever de­stroyed af­ter hav­ing once been suck­led—ma­ter­nal af­fec­tion is too strong.

68:6.10Even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury there per­sist rem­nants of these prim­i­tive pop­u­la­tion con­trols. There is a tribe in Aus­tralia whose moth­ers refuse to rear more than two or three chil­dren. Not long since, one can­ni­bal­is­tic tribe ate ev­ery fifth child born. In Mada­gas­car some tribes still de­stroy all chil­dren born on cer­tain un­lucky days, re­sult­ing in the death of about twenty-five per cent of all ba­bies.

68:6.11From a world stand­point, over­pop­u­la­tion has never been a se­ri­ous prob­lem in the past, but if war is less­ened and sci­ence in­creas­ingly con­trols hu­man dis­eases, it may be­come a se­ri­ous prob­lem in the near fu­ture. At such a time the great test of the wis­dom of world lead­er­ship will pre­sent it­self. Will Uran­tia rulers have the in­sight and cour­age to fos­ter the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of the av­er­age or sta­bi­lized hu­man be­ing in­stead of the ex­tremes of the super­nor­mal and the enor­mously in­creas­ing groups of the sub­nor­mal? The nor­mal man should be fos­tered; he is the back­bone of civ­i­liza­tion and the source of the mu­tant ge­niuses of the race. The sub­nor­mal man should be kept un­der so­ci­ety’s con­trol; no more should be pro­duced than are re­quired to ad­min­is­ter the lower lev­els of in­dus­try, those tasks re­quir­ing in­tel­li­gence above the an­i­mal level but mak­ing such low-grade de­mands as to prove ver­i­ta­ble slav­ery and bond­age for the higher types of man­kind.

68:6.12[Pre­sented by a Mel­chiz­e­dek some­time sta­tioned on Uran­tia.]