Read a pdf of the UBtheNEWS presentation of this report.
Early Occupation of Britain Summary
The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (“AHOB project”) was launched in 2001 to revitalize the study of ancient archaeological sites in Britain. By 2005 AHOB researchers were able to establish that primitive man occupied Britain 700,000 years ago. This discovery came as quite a surprise to the archaeological community. Prior to this recent development, the evidence for early human habitation only went back 500,000 years.
The Urantia Book, published in 1955, states that human habitation of Britain began approximately 900,000 years ago. Noting that there used to be a land bridge between Britain and France, it also remarks that, even though most of the evidence of human occupation is now submerged in the English Channel, there are still several sites near the coast bearing evidence of this early occupation. This is where recent discoveries have been made that push back the date of human habitation by 200,000 years. Additional work by the AHOB project is increasingly lending support to this aspect of The Urantia Book’s account of early human history. It is anticipated that this report will need to be updated numerous times in the next several years as the AHOB team continues to make new discoveries.
Early Migration to Britain Overview
The Urantia Book, published in 1955, makes several statements about the early occupation of Britain. Recently, the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (“AHOB project”) has made a number of surprising discoveries which support the statements made in The Urantia Book.
Most importantly, the AHOB project findings have pushed the earliest human occupation of Britain back considerably. Until this decade, scientific consensus dated human life in Britain to about 500,000 years ago. However, the AHOB project has discovered two different sites with human artifacts that date to 700,000 years ago. At the first site, off the Norfolk coast near Happisburgh, two hand axes have been found sticking out of the seabed in the remains of an ancient forest. Both hand axes, as well as the forest, were dated to between 500,000 and 700,000 years ago.
The second site, at Pakefield in East Anglia, yielded over thirty worked flint flakes and one flint core- suggesting frequent human visitors to the site. Since the flints were found in sediments that contained microscopic animal bones scientists were able to use a technique called the “vole clock” to date the flints to about 700,000 years ago. The findings from both sites were announced in 2005 in peer-reviewed articles in Nature. The article makes the importance of these discoveries clear: “Until now, the earliest uncontested artifacts from northern Europe were much younger, suggesting that humans were unable to colonize northern latitudes until about 500 kyr ago.”
However, these recent findings confirm statements made over fifty years earlier in The Urantia Book. The following passages are not sequential; see the full report or citations:
950,000 years ago the descendants of Andon and Fonta [the first two human beings] had migrated far to the east and to the west. To the west they passed over Europe to France and England. . .
During most of the ice age England was connected by land with France. . . At the time of the Andonic migrations there was a continuous land path from England in the west on through Europe . . .
900,000 years ago the arts of Andon and Fonta . . . were vanishing from the face of the earth; culture, religion, and even flintworking were at their lowest ebb.
These were the times when large numbers of inferior mongrel groups were arriving in England from southern France. These tribes were so largely mixed with the forest apelike creatures that they were scarcely human. They had no religion but were crude flintworkers and possessed sufficient intelligence to kindle fire.
They were followed in Europe by a somewhat superior and prolific people, whose descendants soon spread over the entire continent from the ice in the north to the Alps and Mediterranean in the south.
During this long period of cultural decadence the Foxhall peoples of England . . . continued to hold on to some of the traditions of Andon and certain remnants of the culture of Onagar.
The Foxhall peoples were farthest west and succeeded in retaining much of the Andonic culture; they also preserved their knowledge of flintworking, which they transmitted to their descendants, the ancient ancestors of the Eskimos.
Though the remains of the Foxhall peoples were the last to be discovered in England, these Andonites were really the first human beings to live in those regions. At that time the land bridge still connected France with England; and since most of the early settlements of the Andon descendants were located along the rivers and seashores of that early day, they are now under the waters of the English Channel and the North Sea, but some three or four are still above water on the English coast.
700,000 years ago the fourth glacier, the greatest of all in Europe, was in recession; men and animals were returning north. The climate was cool and moist, and primitive man again thrived in Europe and western Asia. Gradually the forests spread north over land which had been so recently covered by the glacier.
The Urantia Book states that the “Foxhall peoples” were the first human occupants of Britain. Interestingly, the name “Foxhall peoples” seems to have come from an obscure 1905 article by Nina Frances Layard detailing her excavation work at the Paleolithic site at Foxhall Road, Ipswich. Layard made a number of remarkable discoveries including early hand axes and remains of extinct mammals, but her work was not widely recognized until 2005, when two AHOB researchers published Miss Layard excavates: the Palaeolithic site at Foxhall Road, Ipswich, 1903-1905. The Urantia Booktherefore seems prescient in acknowledging this as an important piece of scholarly work.
The Urantia Book’s description of the “Foxhall peoples” is consistent with the findings of the AHOB project, stating that 1) the “Foxhall peoples” had knowledge of flint working, 2) their settlements were located near rivers and seashores on a land bridge connecting France to Britain, 3) only three or four settlements remain above water, and 4) they lived in this region as far back as 900,000 years ago.
In conclusion, the discoveries made by the AHOB project over the last ten years bring scientific consensus in line with statements made in The Urantia Book, which was published over fifty years ago. Scholars have now pushed back the date for the earliest human occupation of Britain to 700,000 years ago, which is consistent with The Urantia Book’s statements and bring them 200,000 years closer to its claim that humans were actually first there about 900,000 years ago.
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The UBtheNEWS pdf has the full report.
If you are unfamiliar with the history of humanity presented in The Urantia Book, you may want to start by reviewing Genetic Introductions, Mutations, and Evolution: a Urantia Book perspective.
The short version is that the human genetic mutation occurred 1,000,000 years ago, which is termed Andonite. The mutation did not produce sufficient intelligence for civilization to develop. Another mutation occurred 500,000 years ago near Afghanistan, giving rise to six colored races. To greater and lesser degrees, all of these races possessed sufficient intelligence for the development of civilization. Genetic develops occurred around 200,000 years ago and 37,000 years ago that do not summarize easily. But suffice it to say, these relate to the Nodites and Adamites, respectively. The mix of Nodite and Adamite is termed Andite. Nodites relates to our poorly preserved records of the Nephilim, who, during the times of Adam, had a cultural center known as the Land of Nod.