Andon and Fonta

• actual parents of all mankind

61:6.21,000,000 years ago Uran­tia was reg­is­tered as an in­hab­ited world. A mu­ta­tion within the stock of the pro­gress­ing Pri­mates sud­denly pro­duced two prim­i­tive hu­man be­ings, the ac­tual an­ces­tors of man­kind.

• Eskimos are sole unmixed survivors of
• lived at beginning of 3rd ice age, a difficult, invigorating environment

61:6.3This event oc­curred at about the time of the be­gin­ning of the third glacial ad­vance; thus it may be seen that your early an­ces­tors were born and bred in a stim­u­lat­ing, in­vig­o­rat­ing, and dif­fi­cult en­vi­ron­ment. And the sole sur­vivors of these Uran­tia abo­rig­ines, the Es­ki­mos, even now pre­fer to dwell in frigid north­ern climes.

62:5.1From the year A.D. 1934 back to the birth of the first two hu­man be­ings is just 993,419 years.

62:5.2These two re­mark­able crea­tures were true hu­man be­ings. They pos­sessed per­fect hu­man thumbs, as had many of their an­ces­tors, while they had just as per­fect feet as the pres­ent-day hu­man races. They were walk­ers and run­ners, not climbers; the grasp­ing func­tion of the big toe was ab­sent, com­pletely ab­sent. When dan­ger drove them to the tree­tops, they climbed just like the hu­mans of to­day would. They would climb up the trunk of a tree like a bear and not as would a chim­panzee or a go­rilla, swing­ing up by the branches.

62:5.3These first hu­man be­ings (and their de­scen­dants) reached full ma­tu­rity at twelve years of age and pos­sessed a po­ten­tial life span of about sev­enty-five years.

62:5.4Many new emo­tions early ap­peared in these hu­man twins. They ex­pe­ri­enced ad­mi­ra­tion for both ob­jects and other be­ings and ex­hib­ited con­sid­er­able van­ity. But the most re­mark­able ad­vance in emo­tional de­vel­op­ment was the sud­den ap­pear­ance of a new group of re­ally hu­man feel­ings, the wor­ship­ful group, em­brac­ing awe, rev­er­ence, hu­mil­ity, and even a prim­i­tive form of grat­i­tude. Fear, joined with ig­no­rance of nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena, is about to give birth to prim­i­tive re­li­gion.

62:5.5Not only were such hu­man feel­ings man­i­fested in these prim­i­tive hu­mans, but many more highly evolved sen­ti­ments were also pres­ent in rudi­men­tary form. They were mildly cog­nizant of pity, shame, and re­proach and were acutely con­scious of love, hate, and re­venge, be­ing also sus­cep­ti­ble to marked feel­ings of jeal­ousy.

• family into which born › great trial to Primates parents
• nearly lost lives on numerous occasions

62:5.6These first two hu­mans—the twins—were a great trial to their Pri­mates par­ents. They were so cu­ri­ous and ad­ven­tur­ous that they nearly lost their lives on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions be­fore they were eight years old. As it was, they were rather well scarred up by the time they were twelve.

• worked out improved sign and word language

62:5.7Very early they learned to en­gage in ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion; by the age of ten they had worked out an im­proved sign and word lan­guage of al­most half a hun­dred ideas and had greatly im­proved and ex­panded the crude com­mu­nica­tive tech­nique of their an­ces­tors. But try as hard as they might, they were able to teach only a few of their new signs and sym­bols to their par­ents.

• noontide tryst, decision to flee

62:5.8When about nine years of age, they jour­neyed off down the river one bright day and held a mo­men­tous con­fer­ence. Ev­ery ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gence sta­tioned on Uran­tia, in­clud­ing my­self, was pres­ent as an ob­server of the trans­ac­tions of this noon­tide tryst. On this event­ful day they ar­rived at an un­der­stand­ing to live with and for each other, and this was the first of a se­ries of such agree­ments which fi­nally cul­mi­nated in the de­ci­sion to flee from their in­fe­rior an­i­mal as­so­ciates and to jour­ney north­ward, lit­tle know­ing that they were thus to found the hu­man race.

62:5.9While we were all greatly con­cerned with what these two lit­tle sav­ages were plan­ning, we were pow­er­less to con­trol the work­ing of their minds; we did not—could not—ar­bi­trar­ily in­flu­ence their de­ci­sions. But within the per­mis­si­ble lim­its of plan­e­tary func­tion, we, the Life Car­ri­ers, to­gether with our as­so­ciates, all con­spired to lead the hu­man twins north­ward and far from their hairy and par­tially tree-dwell­ing peo­ple. And so, by rea­son of their own in­tel­li­gent choice, the twins did mi­grate, and be­cause of our super­vi­sion they mi­grated north­ward to a se­cluded re­gion where they es­caped the pos­si­bil­ity of bi­o­logic degra­da­tion through ad­mix­ture with their in­fe­rior rel­a­tives of the Pri­mates tribes.

62:5.10Shortly be­fore their de­par­ture from the home forests they lost their mother in a gib­bon raid. While she did not pos­sess their in­tel­li­gence, she did have a wor­thy mam­malian af­fec­tion of a high or­der for her off­spring, and she fear­lessly gave her life in the at­tempt to save the won­der­ful pair. Nor was her sac­ri­fice in vain, for she held off the en­emy un­til the fa­ther ar­rived with re­in­force­ments and put the in­vaders to rout.

• family into which born › father killed by hostile gibbons

62:5.11Soon af­ter this young cou­ple for­sook their as­so­ciates to found the hu­man race, their Pri­mates fa­ther be­came dis­con­so­late—he was heart­bro­ken. He re­fused to eat, even when food was brought to him by his other chil­dren. His bril­liant off­spring hav­ing been lost, life did not seem worth liv­ing among his or­di­nary fel­lows; so he wan­dered off into the for­est, was set upon by hos­tile gib­bons and beaten to death.

• noontide tryst, decision to flee

62:6.5Imag­ine our joy one day—the twins were about ten years old—when the spirit of wor­ship made its first con­tact with the mind of the fe­male twin and shortly there­after with the male. We knew that some­thing closely akin to hu­man mind was ap­proach­ing cul­mi­na­tion; and when, about a year later, they fi­nally re­solved, as a re­sult of med­i­ta­tive thought and pur­pose­ful de­ci­sion, to flee from home and jour­ney north, then did the spirit of wis­dom be­gin to func­tion on Uran­tia and in these two now rec­og­nized hu­man minds.

• noontide tryst, decision to flee

62:7.3“To the Life Car­ri­ers on Uran­tia—Greet­ings! We trans­mit as­sur­ance of great plea­sure on Sal­ving­ton, Eden­tia, and Je­ru­sem in honor of the reg­is­tra­tion on the head­quar­ters of Neb­a­don of the sig­nal of the ex­is­tence on Uran­tia of mind of will dig­nity. The pur­pose­ful de­ci­sion of the twins to flee north­ward and seg­re­gate their off­spring from their in­fe­rior an­ces­tors has been noted. This is the first de­ci­sion of mind—the hu­man type of mind—on Uran­tia and au­to­mat­i­cally es­tab­lishes the cir­cuit of com­mu­ni­ca­tion over which this ini­tial mes­sage of ac­knowl­edg­ment is trans­mit­ting.”

63:0.1Uran­tia was reg­is­tered as an in­hab­ited world when the first two hu­man be­ings—the twins—were eleven years old, and be­fore they had be­come the par­ents of the first-born of the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of ac­tual hu­man be­ings. And the arch­an­gel mes­sage from Sal­ving­ton, on this oc­ca­sion of for­mal plan­e­tary rec­og­ni­tion, closed with these words:

63:0.2“Man-mind has ap­peared on 606 of Sa­ta­nia, and these par­ents of the new race shall be called An­don and Fonta. And all arch­an­gels pray that these crea­tures may speed­ily be en­dowed with the per­sonal in­dwelling of the gift of the spirit of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.”

• fused with Adjusters on Jerusem
• named each other Sonta-an and Sonta-en

63:0.3An­don is the Neb­a­don name which sig­ni­fies “the first Fa­ther­like crea­ture to ex­hibit hu­man per­fec­tion hunger.” Fonta sig­ni­fies “the first Son­like crea­ture to ex­hibit hu­man per­fec­tion hunger.” An­don and Fonta never knew these names un­til they were be­stowed upon them at the time of fu­sion with their Thought Ad­justers. Through­out their mor­tal so­journ on Uran­tia they called each other Sonta-an and Sonta-en, Sonta-an mean­ing “loved by mother,” Sonta-en sig­ni­fy­ing “loved by fa­ther.” They gave them­selves these names, and the mean­ings are sig­nif­i­cant of their mu­tual re­gard and af­fec­tion.

• actual parents of all mankind

63:1.1In many re­spects, An­don and Fonta were the most re­mark­able pair of hu­man be­ings that have ever lived on the face of the earth. This won­der­ful pair, the ac­tual par­ents of all man­kind, were in ev­ery way su­pe­rior to many of their im­me­di­ate de­scen­dants, and they were rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent from all of their an­ces­tors, both im­me­di­ate and re­mote.

• family into which born › parents learned to throw stones and use clubs

63:1.2The par­ents of this first hu­man cou­ple were ap­par­ently lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the av­er­age of their tribe, though they were among its more in­tel­li­gent mem­bers, that group which first learned to throw stones and to use clubs in fight­ing. They also made use of sharp spicules of stone, flint, and bone.

• indwelt by Adjusters
• noontide tryst, decision to flee
• possessed personality

63:1.4The de­ci­sion of An­don and Fonta to flee from the Pri­mates tribes im­plies a qual­ity of mind far above the baser in­tel­li­gence which char­ac­ter­ized so many of their later de­scen­dants who stooped to mate with their re­tarded cousins of the simian tribes. But their vague feel­ing of be­ing some­thing more than mere an­i­mals was due to the pos­ses­sion of per­son­al­ity and was aug­mented by the in­dwelling pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers.

• family into which born › never popular with Primates cousins

63:2.1Af­ter An­don and Fonta had de­cided to flee north­ward, they suc­cumbed to their fears for a time, es­pe­cially the fear of dis­pleas­ing their fa­ther and im­me­di­ate fam­ily. They en­vis­aged be­ing set upon by hos­tile rel­a­tives and thus rec­og­nized the pos­si­bil­ity of meet­ing death at the hands of their al­ready jeal­ous tribes­men. As young­sters, the twins had spent most of their time in each other’s com­pany and for this rea­son had never been overly pop­u­lar with their an­i­mal cousins of the Pri­mates tribe. Nor had they im­proved their stand­ing in the tribe by build­ing a sep­a­rate, and a very su­pe­rior, tree home.

63:2.2And it was in this new home among the tree­tops, one night af­ter they had been awak­ened by a vi­o­lent storm, and as they held each other in fear­ful and fond em­brace, that they fi­nally and fully made up their minds to flee from the tribal habi­tat and the home tree­tops.

63:2.3They had al­ready pre­pared a crude tree­top re­treat some half-day’s jour­ney to the north. This was their se­cret and safe hid­ing place for the first day away from the home forests. Not­with­stand­ing that the twins shared the Pri­mates’ deathly fear of be­ing on the ground at night­time, they sal­lied forth shortly be­fore night­fall on their north­ern trek. While it re­quired un­usual cour­age for them to un­der­take this night jour­ney, even with a full moon, they cor­rectly con­cluded that they were less likely to be missed and pur­sued by their tribes­men and rel­a­tives. And they safely made their pre­vi­ously pre­pared ren­dezvous shortly af­ter mid­night.

63:2.4On their north­ward jour­ney they dis­cov­ered an ex­posed flint de­posit and, find­ing many stones suit­ably shaped for var­i­ous uses, gath­ered up a sup­ply for the fu­ture. In at­tempt­ing to chip these flints so that they would be bet­ter adapted for cer­tain pur­poses, An­don dis­cov­ered their spark­ing qual­ity and con­ceived the idea of build­ing fire. But the no­tion did not take firm hold of him at the time as the cli­mate was still salu­bri­ous and there was lit­tle need of fire.

• Andon discovered fire

63:2.5But the au­tumn sun was get­ting lower in the sky, and as they jour­neyed north­ward, the nights grew cooler and cooler. Al­ready they had been forced to make use of an­i­mal skins for warmth. Be­fore they had been away from home one moon, An­don sig­ni­fied to his mate that he thought he could make fire with the flint. They tried for two months to uti­lize the flint spark for kin­dling a fire but only met with fail­ure. Each day this cou­ple would strike the flints and en­deavor to ig­nite the wood. Fi­nally, one evening about the time of the set­ting of the sun, the se­cret of the tech­nique was un­rav­eled when it oc­curred to Fonta to climb a near-by tree to se­cure an aban­doned bird’s nest. The nest was dry and highly in­flammable and con­se­quently flared right up into a full blaze the mo­ment the spark fell upon it. They were so sur­prised and star­tled at their suc­cess that they al­most lost the fire, but they saved it by the ad­di­tion of suit­able fuel, and then be­gan the first search for fire­wood by the par­ents of all man­kind.

63:2.6This was one of the most joy­ous mo­ments in their short but event­ful lives. All night long they sat up watch­ing their fire burn, vaguely re­al­iz­ing that they had made a dis­cov­ery which would make it pos­si­ble for them to defy cli­mate and thus for­ever to be in­de­pen­dent of their an­i­mal rel­a­tives of the south­ern lands. Af­ter three days’ rest and en­joy­ment of the fire, they jour­neyed on.

63:2.7The Pri­mates an­ces­tors of An­don had of­ten re­plen­ished fire which had been kin­dled by light­ning, but never be­fore had the crea­tures of earth pos­sessed a method of start­ing fire at will. But it was a long time be­fore the twins learned that dry moss and other ma­te­ri­als would kin­dle fire just as well as birds’ nests.

• 19 children

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.

• killed at age 42 by falling rock

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.

• Andon discovered fire
• confused philosophy; almost fire worshipers

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.

• indwelt by Adjusters

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.

• never returned to Urantia; sought to send greetings

63:7.1An­don and Fonta, the splen­did found­ers of the hu­man race, re­ceived rec­og­ni­tion at the time of the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of Uran­tia upon the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince, and in due time they emerged from the regime of the man­sion worlds with cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus on Je­ru­sem. Al­though they have never been per­mit­ted to re­turn to Uran­tia, they are cog­nizant of the his­tory of the race they founded. They grieved over the Cali­gas­tia be­trayal, sor­rowed be­cause of the Adamic fail­ure, but re­joiced ex­ceed­ingly when an­nounce­ment was re­ceived that Mi­chael had se­lected their world as the the­ater for his fi­nal be­stowal.

• fused with Adjusters on Jerusem

63:7.2On Je­ru­sem both An­don and Fonta were fused with their Thought Ad­justers, as also were sev­eral of their chil­dren, in­clud­ing Son­tad, but the ma­jor­ity of even their im­me­di­ate de­scen­dants only achieved Spirit fu­sion.

• welcome pilgrims on 1st mansion world

63:7.3An­don and Fonta, shortly af­ter their ar­rival on Je­ru­sem, re­ceived per­mis­sion from the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign to re­turn to the first man­sion world to serve with the mor­ontia per­son­al­i­ties who wel­come the pil­grims of time from Uran­tia to the heav­enly spheres. And they have been as­signed in­def­i­nitely to this ser­vice. They sought to send greet­ings to Uran­tia in con­nec­tion with these rev­e­la­tions, but this re­quest was wisely de­nied them.

63:7.4And this is the recital of the most heroic and fas­ci­nat­ing chap­ter in all the his­tory of Uran­tia, the story of the evo­lu­tion, life strug­gles, death, and eter­nal sur­vival of the unique par­ents of all man­kind.

63:7.5[Pre­sented by a Life Car­rier res­i­dent on Uran­tia.]

• loss would not have prevented human evolution

65:3.4Even the loss of An­don and Fonta be­fore they had off­spring, though de­lay­ing hu­man evo­lu­tion, would not have pre­vented it. Sub­se­quent to the ap­pear­ance of An­don and Fonta and be­fore the mu­tat­ing hu­man po­ten­tials of an­i­mal life were ex­hausted, there evolved no less than seven thou­sand fa­vor­able strains which could have achieved some sort of hu­man type of de­vel­op­ment. And many of these bet­ter stocks were sub­se­quently as­sim­i­lated by the var­i­ous branches of the ex­pand­ing hu­man species.

• indwelt by Adjusters

65:4.9On an or­di­nary in­hab­ited world a Plan­e­tary Prince would have been granted on the re­quest of the Life Car­ri­ers at, or some­time af­ter, the ap­pear­ance of An­don and Fonta. But Uran­tia hav­ing been des­ig­nated a life-mod­i­fi­ca­tion planet, it was by prea­gree­ment that the Mel­chiz­e­dek ob­servers, twelve in num­ber, were sent as ad­vis­ers to the Life Car­ri­ers and as over­seers of the planet un­til the sub­se­quent ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince. These Mel­chiz­e­deks came at the time An­don and Fonta made the de­ci­sions which en­abled Thought Ad­justers to in­dwell their mor­tal minds.

• Andon discovered fire

69:6.4Though An­don, the dis­cov­erer of fire, avoided treat­ing it as an ob­ject of wor­ship, many of his de­scen­dants re­garded the flame as a fe­tish or as a spirit. They failed to reap the san­i­tary ben­e­fits of fire be­cause they would not burn refuse. Prim­i­tive man feared fire and al­ways sought to keep it in good hu­mor, hence the sprin­kling of in­cense. Un­der no cir­cum­stances would the an­cients spit in a fire, nor would they ever pass be­tween any­one and a burn­ing fire. Even the iron pyrites and flints used in strik­ing fire were held sa­cred by early man­kind.

• Andon taught dispute settlement by beating tree

70:1.3An­don taught his chil­dren to set­tle dis­putes by each beat­ing a tree with a stick, mean­while curs­ing the tree; the one whose stick broke first was the vic­tor. The later An­don­ites used to set­tle dis­putes by hold­ing a pub­lic show at which the dis­putants made fun of and ridiculed each other, while the au­di­ence de­cided the win­ner by its ap­plause.

• born in India

79:0.1Asia is the home­land of the hu­man race. It was on a south­ern penin­sula of this con­ti­nent that An­don and Fonta were born; in the high­lands of what is now Afghanistan, their de­scen­dant Bado­nan founded a prim­i­tive cen­ter of cul­ture that per­sisted for over one-half mil­lion years. Here at this east­ern fo­cus of the hu­man race the San­gik peo­ples dif­fer­en­ti­ated from the An­donic stock, and Asia was their first home, their first hunt­ing ground, their first bat­tle­field. South­west­ern Asia wit­nessed the suc­ces­sive civ­i­liza­tions of Dala­ma­tians, Nod­ites, Adamites, and And­ites, and from these re­gions the po­ten­tials of mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion spread to the world.

• Andon discovered fire

81:2.9When asked where fire came from, the sim­ple story of An­don and the flint was soon re­placed by the leg­end of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The an­cients sought a super­nat­u­ral ex­pla­na­tion for all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena not within the range of their per­sonal com­pre­hen­sion; and many mod­erns con­tinue to do this. The de­per­son­al­iza­tion of so-called nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena has re­quired ages, and it is not yet com­pleted. But the frank, hon­est, and fear­less search for true causes gave birth to mod­ern sci­ence: It turned as­trol­ogy into as­tron­omy, alchemy into chem­istry, and magic into med­i­cine.

• Andon and Fonta

136:4.5The trans­ac­tions of this event­ful time were not the fan­tas­tic vi­sions of a starved and weak­ened mind, nei­ther were they the con­fused and puerile sym­bol­isms which af­ter­ward gained rec­ord as the “temp­ta­tions of Je­sus in the wilder­ness.” Rather was this a sea­son for think­ing over the whole event­ful and var­ied ca­reer of the Uran­tia be­stowal and for the care­ful lay­ing of those plans for fur­ther min­istry which would best serve this world while also con­tribut­ing some­thing to the bet­ter­ment of all other re­bel­lion-iso­lated spheres. Je­sus thought over the whole span of hu­man life on Uran­tia, from the days of An­don and Fonta, down through Adam’s de­fault, and on to the min­istry of the Mel­chiz­e­dek of Salem.