^78:1.2 Adam and Eve also contributed much that was of value to the social, moral, and intellectual progress of mankind; civilization was immensely quickened by the presence of their offspring. But 35,000 years ago the world at large possessed little culture. Certain centres of civilization existed here and there, but most of Urantia languished in savagery. Racial and cultural distribution was as follows:

^78:1.3 1. The violet race — Adamites and Adamsonites. The chief centre of Adamite culture was in the second garden, located in the triangle of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; this was indeed the cradle of Occidental and Indian civilizations. The secondary or northern centre of the violet race was the Adamsonite headquarters, situated east of the southern shore of the Caspian Sea near the Kopet mountains. From these two centres there went forth to the surrounding lands the culture and life plasm which so immediately quickened all the races.

^78:1.4 2. Pre-Sumerians and other Nodites. There were also present in Mesopotamia, near the mouth of the rivers, remnants of the ancient culture of the days of Dalamatia. With the passing millenniums, this group became thoroughly admixed with the Adamites to the north, but they never entirely lost their Nodite traditions. Various other Nodite groups that had settled in the Levant were, in general, absorbed by the later expanding violet race.

^78:1.5 3. The Andonites maintained five or six fairly representative settlements to the north and east of the Adamson headquarters. They were also scattered throughout Turkestan, while isolated islands of them persisted throughout Eurasia, especially in mountainous regions. These aborigines still held the northlands of the Eurasian continent, together with Iceland and Greenland, but they had long since been driven from the plains of Europe by the blue man and from the river valleys of farther Asia by the expanding yellow race.

^78:1.6 4. The red man occupied the Americas, having been driven out of Asia over 50,000 years before the arrival of Adam.

^78:1.7 5. The yellow race. The Chinese peoples were well established in control of eastern Asia. Their most advanced settlements were situated to the north-west of modern China in regions bordering on Tibet.

^78:1.8 6. The blue race. The blue men were scattered all over Europe, but their better centres of culture were situated in the then fertile valleys of the Mediterranean basin and in north-western Europe. Neanderthal absorption had greatly retarded the culture of the blue man, but he was otherwise the most aggressive, adventurous, and exploratory of all the evolutionary peoples of Eurasia.

^78:1.9 7. Pre-Dravidian India. The complex mixture of races in India — embracing every race on earth, but especially the green, orange, and black — maintained a culture slightly above that of the outlying regions.

^78:1.10 8. The Sahara civilization. The superior elements of the indigo race had their most progressive settlements in what is now the great Sahara desert. This indigo-black group carried extensive strains of the submerged orange and green races.

^78:1.11 9. The Mediterranean basin. The most highly blended race outside of India occupied what is now the Mediterranean basin. Here blue men from the north and Saharans from the south met and mingled with Nodites and Adamites from the east.

^78:1.12 ¶ This was the picture of the world prior to the beginnings of the great expansions of the violet race, about 25,000 years ago. The hope of future civilization lay in the second garden between the rivers of Mesopotamia. Here in south-western Asia there existed the potential of a great civilization, the possibility of the spread to the world of the ideas and ideals which had been salvaged from the days of Dalamatia and the times of Eden.

^78:1.13 Adam and Eve had left behind a limited but potent progeny, and the celestial observers on Urantia waited anxiously to find out how these descendants of the erring Material Son and Daughter would acquit themselves.

2. THE ADAMITES IN THE SECOND GARDEN

^78:2.1 For thousands of years the sons of Adam laboured along the rivers of Mesopotamia, working out their irrigation and flood-control problems to the south, perfecting their defences to the north, and attempting to preserve their traditions of the glory of the first Eden.

^78:2.2 The heroism displayed in the leadership of the second garden constitutes one of the amazing and inspiring epics of Urantia’s history. These splendid souls never wholly lost sight of the purpose of the Adamic mission, and therefore did they valiantly fight off the influences of the surrounding and inferior tribes while they willingly sent forth their choicest sons and daughters in a steady stream as emissaries to the races of earth. Sometimes this expansion was depleting to the home culture, but always these superior peoples would rehabilitate themselves.

^78:2.3 The civilization, society, and cultural status of the Adamites were far above the general level of the evolutionary races of Urantia. Only among the old settlements of Van and Amadon and the Adamsonites was there a civilization in any way[1] comparable. But the civilization of the second Eden was an artificial structure — it had not been evolved — and was therefore doomed to deteriorate until it reached a natural evolutionary level.

^78:2.4 Adam left a great intellectual and spiritual culture behind him, but it was not advanced in mechanical appliances since every civilization is limited by available natural resources, inherent genius, and sufficient leisure to ensure inventive fruition. The civilization of the violet race was predicated on the presence of Adam and on the traditions of the first Eden. After Adam’s death and as these traditions grew dim through the passing millenniums, the cultural level of the Adamites steadily deteriorated until it reached a state of reciprocal balance with the status of the surrounding peoples and the naturally evolving cultural capacities of the violet race.

^78:2.5 But the Adamites were a real nation around 19,000 B.C., numbering 4,500,000, and already they had poured forth millions of their progeny into the surrounding peoples.

3. EARLY EXPANSIONS OF THE ADAMITES

^78:3.1 The violet race retained the Edenic traditions of peacefulness for many millenniums, which explains their long delay in making territorial conquests. When they suffered from population pressure, instead of making war to secure more territory, they sent forth their excess inhabitants as teachers to the other races. The cultural effect of these earlier migrations was not enduring, but the absorption of the Adamite teachers, traders, and explorers was biologically invigorating to the surrounding peoples.

^78:3.2 Some of the Adamites early journeyed westward to the valley of the Nile; others penetrated eastward into Asia, but these were a minority. The mass movement of the later days was extensively northward and thence westward. It was, in the main, a gradual but unremitting northward push, the greater number making their way north and then circling westward around the Caspian Sea into Europe.

^78:3.3 About 25,000 years ago many of the purer elements of the Adamites were well on their northern trek. And as they penetrated northward, they became less and less Adamic until, by the times of their occupation of Turkestan, they had become thoroughly admixed with the other races, particularly the Nodites. Very few of the pure-line violet peoples ever penetrated far into Europe or Asia.