The First Humans - Andon & Fonta - page 1

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This season, give the gift of truth about the beginning of the human race. Our human family needs to know Urantia's true history, but the only way this is possible is through revelation by the celestial beings who witnessed it and recorded it. The Urantia Book authors reveal our human origins in Paper 63 - The First Human Family. The story is copied below. I invite you to read it, and to share it. It's free and it's the truth everyone has wondered about and, until our new revelation was published, no one could answer with certainty. Thank you Father for revelation and for the divine love you ever bestow on your human children in unlimited measure.

Andon and Fonta – The First Humans

Dedicated to our Spiritual Parents, Michael and the Divine Minister

Table of Contents

1. Origin of Life
2. The First Humans
3. Flight of the Twins
4. Andon’s Family
5. The Andonic Clans
6. Andonite Dispersion
7. Onagar—The First Truth Teacher
8. Survival of Andon and Fonta

Chapter 1
Origin of Life

I am a Life Carrier. It is the responsibility of my order of being to formulate and foster life on worlds such as Urantia, Earth’s name on the universe records. We initiated life here 550,000,000 years ago. But no two formulas are alike, because each of the trillions of inhabited worlds in our incomparably vast universe is unique.

Within very definite limits, Life Carriers are permitted to experiment with the formulas of certain planets. Urantia is one such sphere. But we are permitted this latitude on only a fraction of the evolutionary worlds. And this is just one of several factors that make Urantia unusual and interesting.

During the formulation stage, we forecast your world would have briny oceans and therefore designed a life pattern based in sodium-chloride. Once the formula for a planet’s life has been tested, approved, and authorization to implant has been granted, we select suitable locations for its establishment. We chose three well separated sites; one in what is now central Eurasia, one in what became eastern Australia, and one in the region of Greenland.

At one time Urantia was without land, its entire surface was covered by one vast ocean. The emergence of land provided shorelines and protected bays well suited for the type of life we designed; the tidal pools and mild climate of that era offered an ideal environment.

All subsequent life sprang from these original implants. The formula determines the organization of life, but evolution governs how it manifests. While evolution may not be entirely predictable or controllable, its result is. Our formulas culminate in the emergence of beings capable of spiritual awareness, seekers of the originator and upholder of life. Such super-animal beings exhibit a certain capacity to worship, a definite curiosity about who and what they are, and a wish to know their purpose. Although this curiosity may be unrefined, it indicates the emergence of human will, the ability to choose independent of antecedent causation. Animals lack this ability.

A planet’s formula may be imported, or it can be organized on the world of its implantation. The latter was the method employed on Urantia. But you should not think of Life Carriers as creators, rather as life’s architects and caretakers. The spark of life that animates a world’s creatures is the bestowal of the Creative Spirit, another order of being, one far above mine.

Things material may enjoy an independent existence, but life springs only from life. Mind can be derived only from pre-existent mind. Spirit takes origin only from spirit ancestors. The creature may produce the forms of life, but only a creator personality or a creative force can supply the activating living spark. *

Not long after implantation, Urantian life sprang forth, then metamorphosed rather radically over its half billion-year history. But it followed the general pattern of all formulas designed for worlds having water and air. It began as microorganisms that evolved into plants, passed through various animal stages, finally manifesting as self-aware humans, creatures who have the ability to recognize that life must have a divine source.

The plants that proliferated in the shallow seas were powered by sunlight and the ingredients making up the atmosphere, which at that time was composed largely of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, and evaporated water. Oxygen was all but absent.

When plants respire, they take in carbon dioxide and expel oxygen, the very element needed for the next stage of life’s evolution, the emergence of animals. Gradual plant propagation and the consequent buildup of free oxygen caused the atmosphere to thicken, which, on one hand, helped protect the Earth from most of the meteoric collisions that proliferated at that time. On the other hand, it allowed oxygen content to increase to a level favorable for animal life.

When oxygen appeared in sufficient quantities, a vast assortment of animals filled the seas and overran the land. Almost all are now either extinct or so modified as to be unrecognizable as the species of origin.

We never doubted Urantia’s life formula would produce humans, but we were not certain from which line of animals they would emerge. A type of early lemur won the contest. Evolution of this line eventuated in the birth of the twins, Andon and Fonta, 993,505 years before the publication of this statement in 2020 of the western calendar. At that point, the next in a long line of planetary administrators was summoned.

Chapter 2
First Humans

It was a momentous occasion when our half billion-year vigil ended. In a then salubrious region, between the Mediterranean basin and the Indus valley, there appeared two self-aware beings, standing erect, and expressing super-animal prerogatives.

Andon and Fonta were superior to their parents in several human ways. The opposable thumb of their hands remained, but their back feet lacked this grasping ability, being perfectly human. The pair was more inclined to walk or run than to ascend the treetops. If they were forced into the trees, they climbed the way a modern human would.

The twins were different from their parents and ancestors in ways other than their physical forms. They expressed pronounced interest in certain objects and each other. They exhibited pride and self-awareness in the form of vanity. But the most human of all feelings they displayed were gratitude, humility, and wonder. We observed these traits at an early age.

As they grew, we noted yet more evidence of higher human emotions including pity, jealousy, guilt, even veneration, the foundation of the religious impulse, the reverential urge. The first humans were indeed capable of a primitive form of worship.

The twins also displayed love, hatred, and feelings of revenge. Their curiosity far exceeded that of their forebears. This trait led them into trouble more than once before they were eight. They narrowly escaped death on several occasions. By twelve they had acquired many scars. Their primate parents were constantly vexed by this inquisitive behavior.

Other human abilities and propensities became evident as the pair matured. By their tenth year, Andon and Fonta had invented more than fifty new words and signs, thereby improving the crude communications of their less intelligent and less versatile relatives. But they had little success when attempting to teach their new ideas.

These two smart and adorable twins displayed an independence of thought that marked them as truly human. One day, at about age nine, they sneaked away, going down a river path for a fateful discussion. All celestial life on Earth at that time was intrigued and hopeful this secret meeting meant a human family would soon appear.

That day we observed an unprecedented meeting of the first two truly human minds. The twins were beginning to realize their relatives were never going to rise to their level of intelligence or cleverness. Then and there they made a commitment to live with, and for, each other.

More conferences of this nature soon followed. At the final meeting, a decision to leave their family was made.

While 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. *

Shortly 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. *

Soon 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. *

In many respects, Andon and Fonta were the most remarkable pair of human beings that have ever lived on the face of Urantia. 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. *

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. *

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. *

The 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. *

Chapter 3
Flight of the Twins

After 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. *

And 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. *

They 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. *

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. *

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. *

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. *

The Primates ancestors of Andon had often replenished fire which had been kindled by lightning, but never before had the creatures of Urantia 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. *

Chapter 4
Andon’s Family

The official announcement that Urantia was an inhabited planet came almost one million years ago, when the twins were eleven. Urantia is part of the Satania System of one thousand inhabited worlds, having the number six-hundred and six. The archangels of planetary supervision sent this message in recognition of the emergence of human will:

“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.” *

And they were immediately so endowed. The indwelling spirit appears in the human mind when the first moral choice is made. Lesser animals haven’t the capacity for such choosing. This endowment of God’s spirit makes possible life after death, even life eternal. And the primary purpose of Life Carrier formulas is the emergence of beings who have the capacity to host these divine entities.

During life on evolutionary worlds a soul develops and grows with each righteous decision. The acquirement of a divine indweller, and identification with the soul, ensures the personality will resurrect in new form on the mansion worlds, the first heaven that awaits mortal survivors. When the material body dies, the indwelling gift of the Father’s spirit, the soul, and the personality that unites them reassemble and take up life on the first of seven mansion worlds.

The next question that consumed our interest was: Would the pair mate and produce human offspring with this same capacity for divine indwelling?

It was almost two years from the night of the twins’ departure from home before their first child was born. They named him Sontad; and Sontad was the first creature to be born on Urantia who was wrapped in protective coverings at the time of birth. The human race had begun, and with this new evolution there appeared the instinct properly to care for the increasingly enfeebled infants which would characterize the progressive development of mind of the intellectual order as contrasted with the more purely animal type. *

Andon 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. *

These early Andonites evinced a very marked clannish spirit; they hunted in groups and never strayed very far from the homesite. They seemed to realize that they were an isolated and unique group of living beings and should therefore avoid becoming separated. *

Andon 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. *

Upon the death of his parents, Sontad, despite a seriously injured foot, immediately assumed the leadership of the clan and was ably assisted by his wife, his eldest sister. Their first task was to roll up stones to effectively entomb their dead parents, brothers, sisters, and children. Undue significance should not attach to this act of burial. Their ideas of survival after death were very vague and indefinite, being largely derived from their fantastic and variegated dream life. *

This family of Andon and Fonta held together until the twentieth generation, when combined food competition and social friction brought about the beginning of dispersion. *

Chapter 5
The Andonic Clans

Primitive man—the Andonites—had black eyes and a swarthy complexion, something of a cross between yellow and red. Melanin is a coloring substance which is found in the skins of all human beings. It is the original Andonic skin pigment. In general appearance and skin color these early Andonites more nearly resembled the present-day Eskimo than any other type of living human beings. 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. *

The tribal life of the animal ancestors of these early men had foreshadowed the beginnings of numerous social conventions, and with the expanding emotions and augmented brain powers of these beings, there was an immediate development in social organization and a new division of clan labor. They were exceedingly imitative, but the play instinct was only slightly developed, and the sense of humor was almost entirely absent. Primitive man smiled occasionally, but he never indulged in hearty laughter. Humor was the legacy of the later Adamic race. These early human beings were not so sensitive to pain nor so reactive to unpleasant situations as were many of the later evolving mortals. Childbirth was not a painful or distressing ordeal to Fonta and her immediate progeny. *

They were a wonderful tribe. The males would fight heroically for the safety of their mates and their offspring; the females were affectionately devoted to their children. But their patriotism was wholly limited to the immediate clan. They were very loyal to their families; they would die without question in defense of their children, but they were not able to grasp the idea of trying to make the world a better place for their grandchildren. Altruism was as yet unborn in the human heart, notwithstanding that all of the emotions essential to the birth of religion were already present in these Urantia aborigines. *

These early men possessed a touching affection for their comrades and certainly had a real, although crude, idea of friendship. It was a common sight in later times, during their constantly recurring battles with the inferior tribes, to see one of these primitive men valiantly fighting with one hand while he struggled on, trying to protect and save an injured fellow warrior. Many of the most noble and highly human traits of subsequent evolutionary development were touchingly foreshadowed in these primitive peoples. *

The original Andonic clan maintained an unbroken line of leadership until the twenty-seventh generation, when, no male offspring appearing among Sontad’s direct descendants, two rival would-be rulers of the clan fell to fighting for supremacy. *

Before the extensive dispersion of the Andonic clans a well-developed language had evolved from their early efforts to intercommunicate. This language continued to grow, and almost daily additions were made to it because of the new inventions and adaptations to environment which were developed by these active, restless, and curious people. *

As time passed, the Andonic clans grew in number, and the contact of the expanding families developed friction and misunderstandings. Only two things came to occupy the minds of these peoples: hunting to obtain food and fighting to avenge themselves against some real or supposed injustice or insult at the hands of the neighboring tribes. *

Family feuds increased, tribal wars broke out, and serious losses were sustained among the very best elements of the more able and advanced groups. Some of these losses were irreparable; some of the most valuable strains of ability and intelligence were forever lost to the world. This early race and its primitive civilization were threatened with extinction by this incessant warfare of the clans. *

It is impossible to induce such primitive beings long to live together in peace. Man is the descendant of fighting animals, and when closely associated, uncultured people irritate and offend each other. *

Chapter 6
Andonite Dispersion

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. *

Before this extensive ice sheet reached France and the British Isles, the descendants of Andon and Fonta had pushed on westward over Europe and had established more than one thousand separate settlements along the great rivers leading to the then warm waters of the North Sea. *

These Andonic tribes were the early river dwellers of France; they lived along the river Somme for tens of thousands of years. The Somme is the one river unchanged by the glaciers, running down to the sea in those days much as it does today. And that explains why so much evidence of the Andonic descendants is found along the course of this river valley. *

These aborigines of Urantia were not tree dwellers, though in emergencies they still betook themselves to the treetops. They regularly dwelt under the shelter of overhanging cliffs along the rivers and in hillside grottoes which afforded a good view of the approaches and sheltered them from the elements. They could thus enjoy the comfort of their fires without being too much inconvenienced by the smoke. They were not really cave dwellers either, though in subsequent times the later ice sheets came farther south and drove their descendants to the caves. They preferred to camp near the edge of a forest and beside a stream. *

They very early became remarkably clever in disguising their partially sheltered abodes and showed great skill in constructing stone sleeping chambers, dome-shaped stone huts, into which they crawled at night. The entrance to such a hut was closed by rolling a stone in front of it, a large stone which had been placed inside for this purpose before the roof stones were finally put in place. *

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 Urantia in quest of gold, platinum, and diamonds. *

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. *

Chapter 7
Onagar—The First Truth Teacher

As the Andonic dispersion extended, the cultural and spiritual status of the clans retrogressed for nearly ten thousand years until the days of Onagar, who assumed the leadership of these tribes, brought peace among them, and for the first time, led all of them in the worship of the “Breath Giver to men and animals.” *

Andon’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. *

The Andonites early developed a fear of the elements—thunder, lightning, rain, snow, hail, and ice. But hunger was the constantly recurring urge of these early days, and since they largely subsisted on animals, they eventually evolved a form of animal worship. To Andon, the larger food animals were symbols of creative might and sustaining power. From time to time it became the custom to designate various of these larger animals as objects of worship. During the vogue of a particular animal, crude outlines of it would be drawn on the walls of the caves, and later on, as continued progress was made in the arts, such an animal god was engraved on various ornaments. *

Very early the Andonic peoples formed the habit of refraining from eating the flesh of the animal of tribal veneration. Presently, in order more suitably to impress the minds of their youths, they evolved a ceremony of reverence which was carried out about the body of one of these venerated animals; and still later on, this primitive performance developed into the more elaborate sacrificial ceremonies of their descendants. And this is the origin of sacrifices as a part of worship. *

That food was the all-important thing in the lives of these primitive human beings is shown by the prayer taught these simple folks by Onagar, their great teacher. And this prayer was:

“O Breath of Life, give us this day our daily food, deliver us from the curse of the ice, save us from our forest enemies, and with mercy receive us into the Great Beyond.” *

Onagar maintained headquarters on the northern shores of the ancient Mediterranean in the region of the present Caspian Sea at a settlement called Oban, the tarrying place on the westward turning of the travel trail leading up northward from the Mesopotamian southland. From Oban he sent out teachers to the remote settlements to spread his new doctrines of one Deity and his concept of the hereafter, which he called the Great Beyond. These emissaries of Onagar were the world’s first missionaries; they were also the first human beings to cook meat, the first regularly to use fire in the preparation of food. They cooked flesh on the ends of sticks and also on hot stones; later on they roasted large pieces in the fire, but their descendants almost entirely reverted to the use of raw flesh. *

The record of the achievements of this master mind and spiritual leader of the pre-Planetary Prince days is a thrilling recital of the organization of these primitive peoples into a real society. He instituted an efficient tribal government, the like of which was not attained by succeeding generations in many millenniums. Never again, until the arrival of the Planetary Prince, was there such a high spiritual civilization on Urantia. These simple people had a real though primitive religion, but it was subsequently lost to their deteriorating descendants. *

Normally, after human will appears, we Life Carriers are allotted a half million years of planetary time to complete our mission and turn over world affairs to the next order of sonship. We are always followed by a Planetary Prince, the first in a series of descending ministers, ones who progressively enlighten and improve the mortal race.

The Planetary Prince and his staff become living and visible ministers charged with the initial phases of elementary education and racial improvement. When he and his staff arrived on Urantia, our mission ended. Only two Life Carriers remained as advisors. I and one of my fellows still serve on Urantia in that capacity.

The corps of Life Carriers commissioned to plant life upon a new world usually consists of one hundred senior carriers, one hundred assistants, and one thousand custodians. *

During the ages intervening between life establishment and the emergence of human creatures of moral status, the Life Carriers are permitted to manipulate the life environment and otherwise favorably directionize the course of biologic evolution. And this they do for long periods of time. *

From this point forward the evolution of living things must proceed in accordance with the endowment of the inherent nature and tendencies which have already been imparted to, and established in, the planetary life formulas and patterns. The Life Carriers are not permitted to experiment or to interfere with will; they are not allowed to dominate or arbitrarily influence moral creatures. *

Chapter 8
Survival of Andon and Fonta

Andon 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. *

Andon 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. *

When your life course has been run on Urantia, and you arrive on the shores of the mansion worlds, there you will be greeted in person by the couple who so valiantly served as the sole founders and surviving progenitors of the human race.

And 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. *

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Author’s note: This short story is based in Papers 62 and 63 of The Urantia Book. Verbatim quotes were used throughout and are followed by an asterisk. Free downloads of The Urantia Book are available in the major languages at http://www.urantia.org

Other Urantia-based stories by Richard E. Warren include: Resurrection Hall – A Mansion World Odyssey; Battlefield Guardians – Angels in Vietnam; The Gardens of Eden – Life and Times of Adam and Eve. The Melchizedek Mission – Salvaging Truth.

Website: https://www.amazon.com/Richard-E-Warren/e/B07SF8DC3C?ref_=dbs_p_pbk_r00_abau_000000

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