clouds

• cosmic c. affect climate

57:8.22With this in­crease in land el­e­va­tion the first cli­matic dif­fer­ences of the planet ap­peared. Land el­e­va­tion, cos­mic clouds, and oceanic in­flu­ences are the chief fac­tors in cli­matic fluc­tu­a­tion. The back­bone of the Asi­atic land mass reached a height of al­most nine miles at the time of the max­i­mum land emer­gence. Had there been much mois­ture in the air hov­er­ing over these highly el­e­vated re­gions, enor­mous ice blan­kets would have formed; the ice age would have ar­rived long be­fore it did. It was sev­eral hun­dred mil­lions of years be­fore so much land again ap­peared above wa­ter.

• Neanderthalers deathly afraid of

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.

• feared and worshiped by primitive tribes

85:4.3Clouds, rain, and hail have all been feared and wor­shiped by nu­mer­ous prim­i­tive tribes and by many of the early na­ture cults. Wind­storms with thun­der and light­ning over­awed early man. He was so im­pressed with these el­e­men­tal dis­tur­bances that thun­der was re­garded as the voice of an an­gry god. The wor­ship of fire and the fear of light­ning were linked to­gether and were wide­spread among many early groups.