Introduction
From the Urantia Papers
Java Man
Peking Man
Yunian Man
Migration to Loas
Introduction
Professional and national pride tend to interfere with making anthropological and archaeological progress. Professionals want to make a living while alive and be remembered when dead. Nations prefer their discoveries, researchers, and narratives. Internationalism further complicates these underlying challenges.
Archaeological discoveries in China dating back to the early 1900’s are a good example of this problem. “Out of Africa” was a political response to “Out of Asia.” Wikipedia gets right to the point:
“The first fossil, a tooth, was discovered in 1921, and Zhoukoudian has since become the most productive H. erectus site in the world. Peking Man was instrumental in the foundation of Chinese anthropology, and fostered an important dialogue between Western and Eastern science. Peking Man became the centre of anthropological discussion, and was classified as a direct human ancestor, propping up the Out of Asia theory that humans evolved in Asia.”
Before World War II, in the wake of England’s historical relationship to China, scientists in the United States enjoyed a more favorable relationship with China, a much larger country than its adversary, Japan. After World War II, a defeated Japan became our friend and communist China became our enemy. Wikipedia’s efficient encapsulation of the related history provides important context for appreciating where the Urantia Paper’s account stood in relationship to historical developments. Even though not published until 1955, the contract for typesetting and printing The Urantia Book dates back to the early 1940’s.
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 (“Andonite”) occurred 1,000,000 years ago in Afghanistan. The mutation did not produce sufficient intelligence for civilization to develop. But on an individual level, the mutation provided what was individually necessary for the activation of true spiritual faithfulness. Around 850,000 years ago, the superior Badonite tribe took aggressive steps against inferior neighbors, giving rise to the Neanderthals. Another mutation occurred 500,000 years ago in the Afghanistan region, giving rise to six colored (Sangik) races. To greater and lesser degrees, all of these races possessed sufficient intelligence for the development of civilization. Genetic changes occurred around 200,000 years ago and 37,000 years ago that do not summarize easily. But suffice it to say, they relate to the Nodites and Adamites, respectively. The mix of Nodite and Adamite is termed Andite. Nodite 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.
See also the Creating Fire Report and the Early Migraton to Britain Report.
From the Urantia Papers
(79:0.1) ASIA 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.
Pre-Sangik races:
Physical characteristics and culture of the first human beings—Andon and Fonta:
(62:5.1) From the year A.D. 1934 back to the birth of the first two human beings is just 993,419 years.
(62:5.2) These 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.
(63:4.1) … They were the first creatures to use the skins of animals as a protection against cold; they had little more hair on their bodies than present-day humans.
(62:5.3) These 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.
(63:1.1) In 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.
(64:1.5) During most of the ice age England was connected by land with France, while later on Africa was joined to Europe by the Sicilian land bridge. At the time of the Andonic migrations there was a continuous land path from England in the west on through Europe and Asia to Java in the east; but Australia was again isolated, which further accentuated the development of its own peculiar fauna.
(64:1.6) 950,000 years ago the descendants of Andon and Fonta had migrated far to the east and to the west. To the west they passed over Europe to France and England. In later times they penetrated eastward as far as Java, where their bones were so recently found—the so-called Java man—and then journeyed on to Tasmania.
(63:1.2) The 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.
(63:1.3) While still living with his parents, Andon had fastened a sharp piece of flint on the end of a club, using animal tendons for this purpose, and on no less than a dozen occasions he made good use of such a weapon in saving both his own life and that of his equally adventurous and inquisitive sister, who unfailingly accompanied him on all of his tours of exploration.
(63:5.6) The Andonites were fearless and successful hunters and, with the exception of wild berries and certain fruits of the trees, lived exclusively on flesh. As Andon had invented the stone ax, so his descendants early discovered and made effective use of the throwing stick and the harpoon. At last a tool-creating mind was functioning in conjunction with an implement-using hand, and these early humans became highly skillful in the fashioning of flint tools. They traveled far and wide in search of flint, much as present-day humans journey to the ends of the earth in quest of gold, platinum, and diamonds.
(63:5.7) And in many other ways these Andon tribes manifested a degree of intelligence which their retrogressing descendants did not attain in half a million years, though they did again and again rediscover various methods of kindling fire.
(63:2.4) On 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.
(63:2.5) But 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.
(63:2.6) This 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.
(63:2.7) The 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.
(63:5.1) The early Andon races did not penetrate very far into Asia, and they did not at first enter Africa. The geography of those times pointed them north, and farther and farther north these people journeyed until they were hindered by the slowly advancing ice of the third glacier.
The Urantia Papers recount a particular episode that occurred after 150,000 years and associate this with the Neanderthal race. Note the geographic clue for finding the original expressions of this improvement.:
(64:3.4) To the east of the Badonan peoples, in the Siwalik Hills of northern India, may be found fossils that approach nearer to transition types between man and the various prehuman groups than any others on earth.
(64:3.5) 850,000 years ago the superior Badonan tribes began a warfare of extermination directed against their inferior and animalistic neighbors. In less than one thousand years most of the borderland animal groups of these regions had been either destroyed or driven back to the southern forests. This campaign for the extermination of inferiors brought about a slight improvement in the hill tribes of that age. And the mixed descendants of this improved Badonite stock appeared on the stage of action as an apparently new people — the Neanderthal race.
(64:4.1) The Neanderthalers were excellent fighters, and they traveled extensively. They gradually spread from the highland centers in northwest India to France on the west, China on the east, and even down into northern Africa. They dominated the world for almost half a million years until the times of the migration of the evolutionary races of color.
(64:4.2) 800,000 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 . . .
(64:4.3) The reindeer was highly useful to these Neanderthal peoples, serving as food, clothing, and for tools, since they made various uses of the horns and bones. They had little culture, but they greatly improved the work in flint until it almost reached the levels of the days of Andon [Andon and Fonta are the names of the first two human beings]. Large flints attached to wooden handles came back into use and served as axes and picks.
(64:4.4) 750,000 years ago the fourth ice sheet was well on its way south. With their improved implements the Neanderthalers made holes in the ice covering the northern rivers and thus were able to spear the fish which came up to these vents. Ever these tribes retreated before the advancing ice, which at this time made its most extensive invasion of Europe.
(64:4.5) In these times the Siberian glacier was making its southernmost march, compelling early man to move southward, back toward the lands of his origin. But the human species had so differentiated that the danger of further mingling with its nonprogressive simian relatives was greatly lessened.
(64:4.6) 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.
Sangik races
(64:7.1) When the colored descendants of the Sangik family began to multiply, and as they sought opportunity for expansion into adjacent territory, the fifth glacier, the third of geologic count, was well advanced on its southern drift over Europe and Asia. These early colored races were extraordinarily tested by the rigors and hardships of the glacial age of their origin. This glacier was so extensive in Asia that for thousands of years migration to eastern Asia was cut off. And not until the later retreat of the Mediterranean Sea, consequent upon the elevation of Arabia, was it possible for them to reach Africa.
(79:5.1) While the story of India is that of Andite conquest and eventual submergence in the older evolutionary peoples, the narrative of eastern Asia is more properly that of the primary Sangiks, particularly the red man and the yellow man. These two races largely escaped that admixture with the debased Neanderthal strain which so greatly retarded the blue man in Europe, thus preserving the superior potential of the primary Sangik type.
(79:5.2) While the early Neanderthalers were spread out over the entire breadth of Eurasia, the eastern wing was the more contaminated with debased animal strains. These subhuman types were pushed south by the fifth glacier, the same ice sheet which so long blocked Sangik migration into eastern Asia. And when the red man moved northeast around the highlands of India, he found northeastern Asia free from these subhuman types. The tribal organization of the red races was formed earlier than that of any other peoples, and they were the first to migrate from the central Asian focus of the Sangiks. The inferior Neanderthal strains were destroyed or driven off the mainland by the later migrating yellow tribes. But the red man had reigned supreme in eastern Asia for almost one hundred thousand years before the yellow tribes arrived.
(79:5.3) More than three hundred thousand years ago the main body of the yellow race entered China from the south as coastwise migrants. Each millennium they penetrated farther and farther inland, but they did not make contact with their migrating Tibetan brethren until comparatively recent times.
(79:5.4) Growing population pressure caused the northward-moving yellow race to begin to push into the hunting grounds of the red man. This encroachment, coupled with natural racial antagonism, culminated in increasing hostilities, and thus began the crucial struggle for the fertile lands of farther Asia.
(79:5.5) The story of this agelong contest between the red and yellow races is an epic of Urantia history. For over two hundred thousand years these two superior races waged bitter and unremitting warfare. In the earlier struggles the red men were generally successful, their raiding parties spreading havoc among the yellow settlements. But the yellow man was an apt pupil in the art of warfare, and he early manifested a marked ability to live peaceably with his compatriots; the Chinese were the first to learn that in union there is strength. The red tribes continued their internecine conflicts, and presently they began to suffer repeated defeats at the aggressive hands of the relentless Chinese, who continued their inexorable march northward.
(79:5.6) One hundred thousand years ago the decimated tribes of the red race were fighting with their backs to the retreating ice of the last glacier, and when the land passage to the West, over the Bering isthmus, became passable, these tribes were not slow in forsaking the inhospitable shores of the Asiatic continent. It is eighty-five thousand years since the last of the pure red men departed from Asia, but the long struggle left its genetic imprint upon the victorious yellow race. The northern Chinese peoples, together with the Andonite Siberians, assimilated much of the red stock and were in considerable measure benefited thereby.
Java Man
Though not a settled issue, developments with dating Java Man support The Urantia Book’s account. From Wikipedia:
Dubois’s complete collection of fossils were transferred between 1895 and 1900 to what is now known as Naturalis, in Leiden in the Netherlands. …
Ralph von Koenigswald first assigned Java Man to the Trinil Fauna, a faunal assemblage that he composed from several Javanese sites.[50] He concluded that the skullcap was about 700,000 years old, thus dating from the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene.
Though this view is still widely accepted, in the 1980s, a group of Dutch paleontologists used Dubois’s collection of more than 20,000 animal fossils to reassess the date of the layer in which Java Man was found. Using only fossils from Trinil, they called that new faunal assemblage the Trinil H. K. Fauna, in which H. K. stands for Haupt Knochenschicht, or “main fossil-bearing layer”. This assessment dates the fossils of Java Man to between 900,000 and 1,000,000 years old.
Peking Man
Peking Man Summary
There is an archaeological at Zhoukoudian, which is about 25 miles southwest of Beijing, China. UNESCO placed this site on the World Heritage List in 1987 because it is an especially abundant source of early humanoid artifacts, commonly referred to as Peking Man.
Accurately dating human fossils from the Zhoukoudian site, however, has been difficult. In 2008 new and more exacting dating techniques were applied to the sediment layers where the bones were found. The results indicate that the fossils are around 200,000 years older than previous estimations of approximately 550,000 years. The new dating places these fossils in a significantly colder environment due to ice age activity that occurred 750,000 years ago.
Additionally, a recent re-evaluation of hand axes found at the site reveal a higher degree of sophistication in tool making than previously thought. This discovery indicates that these early humans were more skilled at hunting and slaughtering animals than anthropologists originally hypothesized.
Ever improving research techniques provide us with an understanding of early migration to China that is more closely aligned with the Urantia Papers.
Peking Man
On March 11, 2009 Paul Rincon, a science reporter for BBC News, published an article that reviews the research results from the Zhoukoudian site completed in 2008 and provides some history on the subject. His article states:
“Iconic ancient human fossils from China are 200,000 years older than had previously been thought, a study shows. The new dating analysis suggests the “Peking Man” fossils, unearthed in the caves of Zhoukoudian, are some 750,000 years old. The discovery should help define a more accurate timeline for early humans arriving in North-East Asia.
“A US-Chinese team of researchers has published its findings in the prestigious journal Nature. The cave system of Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, is one of the most important Paleolithic sites in the world.
“Between 1921 and 1966, archaeologists working at the site unearthed tens of thousands of stone tools and hundreds of fragmentary remains from about 40 early humans. Paleontologists later assigned these members of the human lineage to the species Homo erectus. …
“Experts have tried various methods over the years to determine the age of the remains. But they have been hampered by the lack of suitable techniques for dating cave deposits such as those at Zhoukoudian. Now, Guanjun Shen, from Nanjing Normal University in China, and colleagues have applied a relatively new method to the problem. This method is based on the radioactive decay of unstable forms, or isotopes, of the elements aluminium and beryllium in quartz grains. This enabled them to get a more precise age for the fossils.
“The results show the Peking Man fossils came from ground layers that were 680,000-780,000 years old, making them about 200,000 years older than had previously been believed. Comparisons with other sites show that Homo erectus survived successive warm and cold periods in northern Asia. Researchers Russell Ciochon and E Arthur Bettis III, from the University of Iowa, US, believe these climatic cycles may have caused the expansion of open habitats, such as grasslands and steppe. These environments would have been rich in mammals that could have been hunted or scavenged by early humans.”
Abstract from the original research:
The age of Zhoukoudian Homo erectus, commonly known as ‘Peking Man’, has long been pursued, but has remained problematic owing to the lack of suitable dating methods. Here we report cosmogenic 26Al/10Be burial dating of quartz sediments and artefacts from the lower strata of Locality 1 in the southwestern suburb of Beijing, China, where early representatives of Zhoukoudian Homo erectus were discovered. This study marks the first radioisotopic dating of any early hominin site in China beyond the range of mass spectrometric U-series dating. The weighted mean of six meaningful age measurements, 0.77 ± 0.08 million years (Myr, mean ± s.e.m.), provides the best age estimate for lower cultural layers 7–10. Together with previously reported U-series dating of speleothem calcite3 and palaeomagnetic stratigraphy4, as well as sedimentological considerations, these layers may be further correlated to S6–S7 in Chinese loess stratigraphy or marine isotope stages (MIS) 17–19, in the range of ∼0.68 to 0.78 Myr ago. These ages are substantially older than previously supposed and may imply early hominin’s presence at the site in northern China through a relatively mild glacial period corresponding to MIS 18.
Research performed by the Smithsonian Institute at a site further south in Bose, China adds additional support to both the timing and technology issues.
“Since the 1940s, archeologists had been perplexed by what seemed to be a puzzle piece missing from the prehistoric record of East Asia – large stone tools like the Acheulean handaxes so common in Africa from about 1.6 million years ago, and in Europe beginning around 500,000 years ago. Carefully shaped multi-purpose handaxes were a major invention as early hominins refined their techniques for turning stone into technology. These were an advance over the more basic toolkit of the first toolmakers, which involved chipping flakes from usually small stone cores.
“Making handaxes involved a more sophisticated understanding of a rock’s material structure and mechanical properties. . . .
“. . . As reported in the journal Science, our team found the oldest known large cutting tools in China, which resemble the handaxes of their African contemporaries in several ways. These include the intensive striking of flakes from both sides of large ovate rocks, typically river cobbles at Bose (rather than large flakes in Africa), and systematic shaping of a pointed or beveled end versus a rounded opposite end. The overall comparison indicates similar competence and skill in toolmaking in East Asia as occurred further west at the time of the Bose meteor impact, even though the large tool technology at Bose may have been independently developed.
“The artifacts were excavated together with charred samples of wood and glassy microscopic shards and larger lumps known as tektites – once-molten pieces of Earth rock that radiated out over a vast area from Australia to China produced by an atmospheric impact and heating. The tools occurred solely in the tektite layer – a stroke of luck in that the tektites can be dated accurately – to 803,000 + 3,000 years. The association of the tektites, charred tree wood, and tools suggests that the forest fires triggered by the heat of the impact and the shower of tektites may have laid waste to the landscape and exposed the vast stone cobble beds, which were sources of suitable materials for making stone tools.
“Although Paleolithic researchers are reluctant to give up the ‘Movius Line’ idea dividing east from west, its underlying basis – i.e., the inherent lack of skill of the toolmakers and the lack of a changing or challenging environment – is no longer supported. The cover of Science on March 3, 2000, highlighted these findings.”
Wikipedia provides an overview of the Movius Line and its significance:
“The Movius Line is a theoretical line drawn across northern India first proposed by the American archaeologist Hallam L. Movius in 1948 to demonstrate a technological difference between the early prehistoric tool technologies of the east and west of the Old World.”
Yunian Man
From Wikipeadi:
“Yunxian Man … is a set of three hominid skull fossils discovered at the Xuetangliangzi site in Yunyang district, Hubei, China. Two skulls were discovered, in 1989 and 1990, followed by a third in 2022. The first two were described as “crushed and distorted,” but “relatively complete,” and compared to Homo erectus or early Homo sapiens. …
“The first two skulls bear similarities to Dali Man, but are significantly older. Adjacent animal fossils allowed their age to be narrowed down to 600,000 to 400,000 years before present. Some sources have described the specimens as Homo erectus, including a 3D virtual imaging analysis in 2010. However, scholars are still divided, with some suggesting that it could be a more modern species or a mix with Homo sapiens.
“The paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer has suggested that Yunxian Man could be Homo heidelbergensis, which may thus have originated in Asia, though Chinese scholars dispute this classification.”
Migration to Loas
Archaeological evidence from Loas in 2023, dating to between 68,000 and 86,000 years ago, indicates modern humans were in southeast earlier than previous thought. This the Abstract from the original research:
“The timing of the first arrival of Homo sapiens in East Asia from Africa and the degree to which they interbred with or replaced local archaic populations is controversial. Previous discoveries from Tam Pà Ling cave (Laos) identified H. sapiens in Southeast Asia by at least 46 kyr. We report on a recently discovered frontal bone (TPL 6) and tibial fragment (TPL 7) found in the deepest layers of TPL. Bayesian modeling of luminescence dating of sediments and U-series and combined U-series-ESR dating of mammalian teeth reveals a depositional sequence spanning ~86 kyr. TPL 6 confirms the presence of H. sapiens by 70 ± 3 kyr, and TPL 7 extends this range to 77 ± 9 kyr, supporting an early dispersal of H. sapiens into Southeast Asia. Geometric morphometric analyses of TPL 6 suggest descent from a gracile immigrant population rather than evolution from or admixture with local archaic populations.”