hunters

68:5.5The blue men be­came ex­pert hunters and trap­pers; by fenc­ing the rivers they caught fish in great num­bers, dry­ing the sur­plus for win­ter use. Many forms of in­ge­nious snares and traps were em­ployed in catch­ing game, but the more prim­i­tive races did not hunt the larger an­i­mals.

79:1.4When cli­matic con­di­tions made hunt­ing un­prof­itable for the mi­grat­ing And­ites, they did not fol­low the evo­lu­tion­ary course of the older races by be­com­ing herders. Com­merce and ur­ban life made their ap­pear­ance. From Egypt through Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Tur­kes­tan to the rivers of China and In­dia, the more highly civ­i­lized tribes be­gan to as­sem­ble in cities de­voted to man­u­fac­ture and trade. Ado­nia be­came the cen­tral Asian com­mer­cial metropo­lis, be­ing lo­cated near the pres­ent city of Ashkhabad. Com­merce in stone, metal, wood, and pot­tery was ac­cel­er­ated on both land and wa­ter.

81:3.1The cli­matic de­struc­tion of the rich, open grass­land hunt­ing and graz­ing grounds of Tur­kes­tan, be­gin­ning about 12,000 B.C., com­pelled the men of those re­gions to re­sort to new forms of in­dus­try and crude man­u­fac­tur­ing. Some turned to the cul­ti­va­tion of do­mes­ti­cated flocks, oth­ers be­came agri­cul­tur­ists or col­lec­tors of wa­ter-borne food, but the higher type of And­ite in­tel­lects chose to en­gage in trade and man­u­fac­ture. It even be­came the cus­tom for en­tire tribes to ded­i­cate them­selves to the de­vel­op­ment of a sin­gle in­dus­try. From the val­ley of the Nile to the Hindu Kush and from the Ganges to the Yel­low River, the chief busi­ness of the su­pe­rior tribes be­came the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil, with com­merce as a side line.

69:8.4The hunter, like the Amer­i­can red man, did not en­slave. He ei­ther adopted or killed his cap­tives. Slav­ery was not preva­lent among the pas­toral peo­ples, for they needed few la­bor­ers. In war the herders made a prac­tice of killing all men cap­tives and tak­ing as slaves only the women and chil­dren. The Mo­saic code con­tained spe­cific di­rec­tions for mak­ing wives of these women cap­tives. If not sat­is­fac­tory, they could be sent away, but the He­brews were not al­lowed to sell such re­jected con­sorts as slaves—that was at least one ad­vance in civ­i­liza­tion. Though the so­cial stan­dards of the He­brews were crude, they were far above those of the sur­round­ing tribes.

81:1.5Man or­di­nar­ily evolved into a farmer from a hunter by tran­si­tion through the era of the herder, and this was also true among the And­ites, but more of­ten the evo­lu­tion­ary co­er­cion of cli­matic ne­ces­sity would cause whole tribes to pass di­rectly from hunters to suc­cess­ful farm­ers. But this phe­nom­e­non of pass­ing im­me­di­ately from hunt­ing to agri­cul­ture only oc­curred in those re­gions where there was a high de­gree of race mix­ture with the vi­o­let stock.

52:2.8Dur­ing this age agri­cul­ture makes its ap­pear­ance. The growth of the fam­ily idea is in­com­pat­i­ble with the rov­ing and un­set­tled life of the hunter. Grad­u­ally the prac­tices of set­tled habi­ta­tions and the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil be­come es­tab­lished. The do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals and the de­vel­op­ment of home arts pro­ceed apace. Upon reach­ing the apex of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion, a high level of civ­i­liza­tion has been at­tained, but there is lit­tle de­vel­op­ment of a me­chan­i­cal or­der; in­ven­tion is the char­ac­ter­is­tic of the suc­ceed­ing age.

68:5.11There has al­ways been fric­tion be­tween the herders and the tillers of the soil. The hunter and herder were mil­i­tant, war­like; the agri­cul­tur­ist is a more peace-lov­ing type. As­so­ci­a­tion with an­i­mals sug­gests strug­gle and force; as­so­ci­a­tion with plants in­stills pa­tience, quiet, and peace. Agri­cul­ture and in­dus­tri­al­ism are the ac­tiv­i­ties of peace. But the weak­ness of both, as world so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties, is that they lack ex­cite­ment and ad­ven­ture.

81:1.4Since slaves were so gen­er­ally em­ployed by the ear­lier agri­cul­tur­ists, the farmer was for­merly looked down on by both the hunter and the herder. For ages it was con­sid­ered me­nial to till the soil; where­fore the idea that soil toil is a curse, whereas it is the great­est of all bless­ings. Even in the days of Cain and Abel the sac­ri­fices of the pas­toral life were held in greater es­teem than the of­fer­ings of agri­cul­ture.

68:5.42. The hunt­ing stage. The in­ven­tion of weapon tools en­abled man to be­come a hunter and thus to gain con­sid­er­able free­dom from food slav­ery. A thought­ful An­don­ite who had severely bruised his fist in a se­ri­ous com­bat re­dis­cov­ered the idea of us­ing a long stick for his arm and a piece of hard flint, bound on the end with sinews, for his fist. Many tribes made in­de­pen­dent dis­cov­er­ies of this sort, and these var­i­ous forms of ham­mers rep­re­sented one of the great for­ward steps in hu­man civ­i­liza­tion. To­day some Aus­tralian na­tives have pro­gressed lit­tle be­yond this stage.

81:6.4At the open­ing of the And­ite era there were only two ex­ten­sive and fer­tile open hunt­ing ar­eas in all the world. One was in North Amer­ica and was over­spread by the Amerinds; the other was to the north of Tur­kes­tan and was partly oc­cu­pied by an An­donic-yel­low race. The de­ci­sive fac­tors in the evo­lu­tion of a su­pe­rior cul­ture in south­west­ern Asia were race and cli­mate. The And­ites were a great peo­ple, but the cru­cial fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing the course of their civ­i­liza­tion was the in­creas­ing arid­ity of Iran, Tur­kes­tan, and Sinkiang, which forced them to in­vent and adopt new and ad­vanced meth­ods of wrest­ing a liveli­hood from their de­creas­ingly fer­tile lands.

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.

64:4.12Dur­ing 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.