© 2012 Halbert Katzen, JD
¶ Dog Domestication Report (preliminary information)
Identifying topics that need to have reports written about them takes a lot less time than writing them up. Consequently, we have an increasing backlog of reports to write. While somewhat frustrating, this is, of course, much better than the alternative! Below are some of the quotes from The Urantia Book and links to information that we used to identify the topic. Please get in touch if you have additional information that is relevant to the preparation of one of our upcoming reports.
¶ Quotes from The Urantia Book about the early domestication of dogs.
- The board of animal domestication and utilization. This council was dedicated to the task of selecting and breeding those animals best adapted to help human beings in bearing burdens and transporting themselves, to supply food, and later on to be of service in the cultivation of the soil. This able corps was directed by Bon.
Several types of useful animals, now extinct, were tamed, together with some that have continued as domesticated animals to the present day. Man had long lived with the dog, and the blue man had already been successful in taming the elephant. The cow was so improved by careful breeding as to become a valuable source of food; butter and cheese became common articles of human diet. Men were taught to use oxen for burden bearing, but the horse was not domesticated until a later date. The members of this corps first taught men to use the wheel for the facilitation of traction.
It was in these days that carrier pigeons were first used, being taken on long journeys for the purpose of sending messages or calls for help. Bon’s group were successful in training the great fandors as passenger birds, but they became extinct more than thirty thousand years ago. UB 66:5.4-6
7. THE UTILIZATION OF ANIMALS
To start with, the entire animal world was man’s enemy; human beings had to learn to protect themselves from the beasts. First, man ate the animals but later learned to domesticate and make them serve him.
The domestication of animals came about accidentally. The savage would hunt herds much as the American Indians hunted the bison. By surrounding the herd they could keep control of the animals, thus being able to kill them as they were required for food. Later, corrals were constructed, and entire herds would be captured.
It was easy to tame some animals, but like the elephant, many of them would not reproduce in captivity. Still further on it was discovered that certain species of animals would submit to man’s presence, and that they would reproduce in captivity. The domestication of animals was thus
The dog was the first animal to be domesticated, and the difficult experience of taming it began when a certain dog, after following a hunter around all day, actually went home with him. For ages dogs were used for food, hunting, transportation, and companionship. At first dogs only howled, but later on they learned to bark. The dog’s keen sense of smell led to the notion it could see spirits, and thus arose the dog-fetish cults. The employment of watchdogs made it first possible for the whole clan to sleep at night. It then became the custom to employ watchdogs to protect the home against spirits as well as material enemies. When the dog barked, man or beast approached, but when the dog howled, spirits were near. Even now many still believe that a dog’s howling at night betokens death.
When man was a hunter, he was fairly kind to woman, but after the domestication of animals, coupled with the Caligastia confusion, many tribes shamefully treated their women. They treated them altogether too much as they treated their animals. Man’s brutal treatment of woman constitutes one of the darkest chapters of human history.
Adam’s caravan had carried the seeds and bulbs of hundreds of plants and cereals of the first garden with them to the land between the rivers; they also had brought along extensive herds and some of all the domesticated animals. Because of this they possessed great advantages over the surrounding tribes. They enjoyed many of the benefits of the previous culture of the original Garden. UB 69:7.1-6
1. THE ADAMITES ENTER EUROPE (Adamites =35,000 BC to 15,000 BC)
Before the last Andites were driven out of the Euphrates valley, many of their brethren had entered Europe as adventurers, teachers, traders, and warriors. During the earlier days of the violet race the Mediterranean trough was protected by the Gibraltar isthmus and the Sicilian land bridge. Some of man’s very early maritime commerce was established on these inland lakes, where blue men from the north and the Saharans from the south met Nodites and Adamites from the east.
In the eastern trough of the Mediterranean the Nodites had established one of their most extensive cultures and from these centers had penetrated somewhat into southern Europe but more especially into northern Africa. The broad-headed Nodite-Andonite Syrians very early introduced pottery and agriculture in connection with their settlements on the slowly rising Nile delta. They also imported sheep, goats, cattle, and other domesticated animals and brought in greatly improved methods of metalworking, Syria then being the center of that industry.
For more than thirty thousand years Egypt received a steady stream of Mesopotamians, who brought along their art and culture to enrich that of the Nile valley. But the ingress of large numbers of the Sahara peoples greatly deteriorated the early civilization along the Nile so that Egypt reached its lowest cultural level some fifteen thousand years ago.
But during earlier times there was little to hinder the westward migration of the Adamites. The Sahara was an open grazing land overspread by herders and agriculturists. These Saharans never engaged in manufacture, nor were they city builders. They were an indigo-black group which carried extensive strains of the extinct green and orange races. But they received a very limited amount of the violet inheritance before the upthrust of land and the shifting water-laden winds dispersed the remnants of this prosperous and peaceful civilization.UB 80:1.1-4
DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CIVILIZATION
2. THE TOOLS OF CIVILIZATION
The growth of culture is predicated upon the development of the tools of civilization. And the tools which man utilized in his ascent from savagery were effective just to the extent that they released man power for the accomplishment of higher tasks.
You who now live amid latter-day scenes of budding culture and beginning progress in social affairs, who actually have some little spare time in which to think about society and civilization, must not overlook the fact that your early ancestors had little or no leisure which could be devoted to thoughtful reflection and social thinking.
The first four great advances in human civilization were:
- The taming of fire.
- The domestication of animals.
- The enslavement of captives.
- Private property.
While fire, the first great discovery, eventually unlocked the doors of the scientific world, it was of little value in this regard to primitive man. He refused to recognize natural causes as explanations for commonplace phenomena.
When asked where fire came from, the simple story of Andon and the flint was soon replaced by the legend of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The ancients sought a supernatural explanation for all natural phenomena not within the range of their personal comprehension; and many moderns continue to do this. The depersonalization of so-called natural phenomena has required ages, and it is not yet completed. But the frank, honest, and fearless search for true causes gave birth to modern science: It turned astrology into astronomy, alchemy into chemistry, and magic into medicine.
In the premachine age the only way in which man could accomplish work without doing it himself was to use an animal. Domestication of animals placed in his hands living tools, the intelligent use of which prepared the way for both agriculture and transportation. And without these animals man could not have risen from his primitive estate to the levels of subsequent civilization.
Most of the animals best suited to domestication were found in Asia, especially in the central to southwest regions. This was one reason why civilization progressed faster in that locality than in other parts of the world. Many of these animals had been twice before domesticated, and in the Andite age they were retamed once again. But the dog had remained with the hunters ever since being adopted by the blue man long, long before.
The Andites of Turkestan were the first peoples to extensively domesticate the horse, and this is another reason why their culture was for so long predominant. By 5000 B.C. the Mesopotamia, Turkestan, and Chinese farmers had begun the raising of sheep, goats, cows, camels, horses, fowls, and elephants. They employed as beasts of burden the ox, camel, horse, and yak. UB 81:2.1-7
This is a fascinating video about foxes and the genetics of being social. It focuses on foxes but has implications far beyond this, which is taken up directly in the video. Very insightful on the difference between nature and nurture! Consider the following passages in connection with this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dwjS_eI-lQ
Sacrifice as a part of religious devotions, like many other worshipful rituals, did not have a simple and single origin. The tendency to bow down before power and to prostrate oneself in worshipful adoration in the presence of mystery is foreshadowed in the fawning of the dog before its master. It is but one step from the impulse of worship to the act of sacrifice. Primitive man gauged the value of his sacrifice by the pain which he suffered. When the idea of sacrifice first attached itself to religious ceremonial, no offering was contemplated which was not productive of pain. The first sacrifices were such acts as plucking hair, cutting the flesh, mutilations, knocking out teeth, and cutting off fingers. As civilization advanced, these crude concepts of sacrifice were elevated to the level of the rituals of self-abnegation, asceticism, fasting, deprivation, and the later Christian doctrine of sanctification through sorrow, suffering, and the mortification of the flesh. (UB 89:4.1)
Then came forward Simon Zelotes to remonstrate with Norana. Said Simon: “Woman, you are a Greek-speaking gentile. It is not right that you should expect the Master to take the bread intended for the children of the favored household and cast it to the dogs.” But Norana refused to take offense at Simon’s thrust. She replied only: “Yes, teacher, I understand your words. I am only a dog in the eyes of the Jews, but as concerns your Master, I am a believing dog. I am determined that he shall see my daughter, for I am persuaded that, if he shall but look upon her, he will heal her. And even you, my good man, would not dare to deprive the dogs of the privilege of obtaining the crumbs which chance to fall from the children’s table.” (UB 156:1.5)
The dog family was represented by several groups, notably wolves and foxes; the cat tribe, by panthers and large saber-toothed tigers, the latter first evolving in North America. The modern cat and dog families increased in numbers all over the world. Weasels, martens, otters, and raccoons thrived and developed throughout the northern latitudes. (UB 61:3.13)
The dog was the first animal to be domesticated, and the difficult experience of taming it began when a certain dog, after following a hunter around all day, actually went home with him. For ages dogs were used for food, hunting, transportation, and companionship. At first dogs only howled, but later on they learned to bark. (UB 69:7.4)
These six evolutionary races are destined to be blended and exalted by amalgamation with the progeny of the Adamic uplifters. But before these peoples are blended, the inferior and unfit are largely eliminated. The Planetary Prince and the Material Son, with other suitable planetary authorities, pass upon the fitness of the reproducing strains. The difficulty of executing such a radical program on Urantia consists in the absence of competent judges to pass upon the biologic fitness or unfitness of the individuals of your world races. Notwithstanding this obstacle, it seems that you ought to be able to agree upon the biologic disfellowshiping of your more markedly unfit, defective, degenerate, and antisocial stocks. (UB 51:4.8)
If the present-day races of Urantia could be freed from the curse of their lowest strata of deteriorated, antisocial, feeble-minded, and outcast specimens, there would be little objection to a limited race amalgamation. And if such racial mixtures could take place between the highest types of the several races, still less objection could be offered. UB 82:6.4
That contemporary cultural society is a rather recent phenomenon is well shown by the present-day survival of such primitive social conditions as characterize the Australian natives and the Bushmen and Pygmies of Africa. Among these backward peoples may be observed something of the early group hostility, personal suspicion, and other highly antisocial traits which were so characteristic of all primitive races. These miserable remnants of the nonsocial peoples of ancient times bear eloquent testimony to the fact that the natural individualistic tendency of man cannot successfully compete with the more potent and powerful organizations and associations of social progression. These backward and suspicious antisocial races that speak a different dialect every forty or fifty miles illustrate what a world you might now be living in but for the combined teaching of the corporeal staff of the Planetary Prince and the later labors of the Adamic group of racial uplifters. (UB 68:1.6)
Social association is a form of survival insurance which human beings have learned is profitable; therefore are most individuals willing to pay those premiums of self-sacrifice and personal-liberty curtailment which society exacts from its members in return for this enhanced group protection. In short, the present-day social mechanism is a trial-and-error insurance plan designed to afford some degree of assurance and protection against a return to the terrible and antisocial conditions which characterized the early experiences of the human race. (UB 81:5.4)
Life during this era is pleasant and profitable. Degeneracy and the antisocial end products of the long evolutionary struggle have been virtually obliterated. (UB 52:7.5)
¶ External Links
- This report in UBTheNews
- Other reports in UBTheNews webpage
- Topical Studies in UBTheNews webpage
- http://news.discovery.com/animals/dog-domestication-prehistoric-ice-age-110728.html 33K
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog
- http://archaeology.about.com/od/dterms/a/domestication.htm chart for various animals
- http://archaeozoo.wordpress.com/2007/09/23/the-origins-of-the-domestic-dog/
- http://darrennaish.blogspot.com/2006/10/controversial-origins-of-domestic-dog.html
- http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/12/2849.full.pdf+html
- http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7357/full/475427c.html