^78:5.6 These Andites were the so-called Dravidian and later Aryan conquerors of India; and their presence in central Asia greatly upstepped the ancestors of the Turanians. Many of this race journeyed to China by way of both Sinkiang and Tibet and added desirable qualities to the later Chinese stocks. From time to time small groups made their way into Japan, Formosa, the East Indies, and southern China, though very few entered southern China by the coastal route.

^78:5.7 132 of this race, embarking in a fleet of small boats from Japan, eventually reached South America and by intermarriage with the natives of the Andes established the ancestry of the later rulers of the Incas. They crossed the Pacific by easy stages, tarrying on the many islands they found along the way. The islands of the Polynesian group were both more numerous and larger then than now, and these Andite sailors, together with some who followed them, biologically modified the native groups in transit. Many flourishing centres of civilization grew up on these now submerged lands as a result of Andite penetration. Easter Island was long a religious and administrative centre of one of these lost groups. But of the Andites who navigated the Pacific of long ago none but the 132 ever reached the mainland of the Americas.

^78:5.8 ¶ The migratory conquests of the Andites continued on down to their final dispersions, from 8000 to 6000 B.C. As they poured out of Mesopotamia, they continuously depleted the biologic reserves of their homelands while markedly strengthening the surrounding peoples. And to every nation to which they journeyed, they contributed humour, art, adventure, music, and manufacture. They were skillful domesticators of animals and expert agriculturists. For the time being, at least, their presence usually improved the religious beliefs and moral practices of the older races. And so the culture of Mesopotamia quietly spread out over Europe, India, China, northern Africa, and the Pacific Islands.

6. THE LAST ANDITE DISPERSIONS

^78:6.1 The last three waves of Andites poured out of Mesopotamia between 8000 and 6000 B.C. These three great waves of culture were forced out of Mesopotamia by the pressure of the hill tribes to the east and the harassment of the plainsmen of the west. The inhabitants of the Euphrates valley and adjacent territory went forth in their final exodus in several directions:

^78:6.2 65% entered Europe by the Caspian Sea route to conquer and amalgamate with the newly appearing white races — the blend of the blue men and the earlier Andites.

^78:6.3 10%, including a large group of the Sethite priests, moved eastward through the Elamite highlands to the Iranian plateau and Turkestan. Many of their descendants were later driven into India with their Aryan brethren from the regions to the north.

^78:6.4 10% of the Mesopotamians turned eastward in their northern trek, entering Sinkiang, where they blended with the Andite-yellow inhabitants. The majority of the able offspring of this racial union later entered China and contributed much to the immediate improvement of the northern division of the yellow race.

^78:6.5 10% of these fleeing Andites made their way across Arabia and entered Egypt.

^78:6.6 ¶ 5% of the Andites, the very superior culture of the coastal district about the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates who had kept themselves free from intermarriage with the inferior neighbouring tribesmen, refused to leave their homes. This group represented the survival of many superior Nodite and Adamite strains.

^78:6.7 ¶ The Andites had almost entirely evacuated this region by 6000 B.C., though their descendants, largely mixed with the surrounding Sangik races and the Andonites of Asia Minor, were there to give battle to the northern and eastern invaders at a much later date.

^78:6.8 The cultural age of the second garden was terminated by the increasing infiltration of the surrounding inferior stocks. Civilization moved westward to the Nile and the Mediterranean islands, where it continued to thrive and advance long after its fountainhead in Mesopotamia had deteriorated. And this unchecked influx of inferior peoples prepared the way for the later conquest of all Mesopotamia by the northern barbarians who drove out the residual strains of ability. Even in later years the cultured residue still resented the presence of these ignorant and uncouth invaders.

7. THE FLOODS IN MESOPOTAMIA

^78:7.1 The river dwellers were accustomed to rivers overflowing their banks at certain seasons; these periodic floods were annual events in their lives. But new perils threatened the valley of Mesopotamia as a result of progressive geologic changes to the north.

^78:7.2 For thousands of years after the submergence of the first Eden the mountains about the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and those to the north-west and north-east of Mesopotamia continued to rise. This elevation of the highlands was greatly accelerated about 5000 B.C., and this, together with greatly increased snowfall on the northern mountains, caused unprecedented floods each spring throughout the Euphrates valley. These spring floods grew increasingly worse so that eventually the inhabitants of the river regions were driven to the eastern highlands. For almost 1,000 years scores of cities were practically deserted because of these extensive deluges.

^78:7.3 ¶ Almost 5,000 years later, as the Hebrew priests in Babylonian captivity sought to trace the Jewish people back to Adam, they found great difficulty in piecing the story together; and it occurred to one of them to abandon the effort, to let the whole world drown in its wickedness at the time of Noah’s flood, and thus to be in a better position to trace Abraham right back to one of the three surviving sons of Noah.

^78:7.4 The traditions of a time when water covered the whole of the earth’s surface are universal. Many races harbour the story of a world-wide flood some time during past ages. The Biblical story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an invention of the Hebrew priesthood during the Babylonian captivity. There has never been a universal flood since life was established on Urantia. The only time the surface of the earth was completely covered by water was during those Archeozoic ages before the land had begun to appear.

^78:7.5 But Noah really lived; he was a wine maker of Aram, a river settlement near Erech. He kept a written record of the days of the river’s rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon himself by going up and down the river valley advocating that all houses be built of wood, boat fashion, and that the family animals be put on board each night as the flood season approached. He would go to the neighbouring river settlements every year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Finally a year came in which the annual floods were greatly augmented by unusually heavy rainfall so that the sudden rise of the waters wiped out the entire village; only Noah and his immediate family were saved in their houseboat.

^78:7.6 ¶ These floods completed the disruption of Andite civilization. With the ending of this period of deluge, the second garden was no more. Only in the south and among the Sumerians did any trace of the former glory remain.

^78:7.7 The remnants of this, one of the oldest civilizations, are to be found in these regions of Mesopotamia and to the north-east and north-west. But still older vestiges of the days of Dalamatia exist under the waters of the Persian Gulf, and the first Eden lies submerged under the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.