The British Study Edition of the Urantia Papers

Nodite history and racial superiority. They thought it ought to be a great and imposing structure which would challenge the admiration of all future generations.

^77:3.6 2. The next largest faction wanted the tower designed to commemorate the Dilmun culture. They foresaw that Bablot would become a great centre of commerce, art, and manufacture.

^77:3.7 3. The smallest and minority contingent held that the erection of the tower presented an opportunity for making atonement for the folly of their progenitors in participating in the Caligastia rebellion. They maintained that the tower should be devoted to the worship of the Father of all, that the whole purpose of the new city should be to take the place of Dalamatia — to function as the cultural and religious centre for the surrounding barbarians.

^77:3.8 ¶ The religious group were promptly voted down. The majority rejected the teaching that their ancestors had been guilty of rebellion; they resented such a racial stigma. Having disposed of one of the three angles to the dispute and failing to settle the other two by debate, they fell to fighting. The religionists, the noncombatants, fled to their homes in the south, while their fellows fought until well-nigh obliterated.

^77:3.9 ¶ About 12,000 years ago a second attempt to erect the tower of Babel was made. The mixed races of the Andites (Nodites and Adamites) undertook to raise a new temple on the ruins of the first structure, but there was not sufficient support for the enterprise; it fell of its own pretentious weight. This region was long known as the land of Babel.

4. NODITE CENTRES OF CIVILIZATION

^77:4.1 The dispersion of the Nodites was an immediate result of the internecine conflict over the tower of Babel. This internal war greatly reduced the numbers of the purer Nodites and was in many ways responsible for their failure to establish a great pre-Adamic civilization. From this time on Nodite culture declined for over 120,000 years until it was upstepped by Adamic infusion. But even in the times of Adam the Nodites were still an able people. Many of their mixed descendants were numbered among the Garden builders, and several of Van’s group captains were Nodites. Some of the most capable minds serving on Adam’s staff were of this race.

^77:4.2 Three out of the four great Nodite centres were established immediately following the Bablot conflict:

^77:4.3 1. The western or Syrian Nodites. The remnants of the nationalistic or racial memorialists journeyed northward, uniting with the Andonites to found the later Nodite centres to the north-west of Mesopotamia. This was the largest group of the dispersing Nodites, and they contributed much to the later appearing Assyrian stock.

^77:4.4 2. The eastern or Elamite Nodites. The culture and commerce advocates migrated in large numbers eastward into Elam and there united with the mixed Sangik tribes. The Elamites of 30,000-40,000 years ago had become largely Sangik in nature, although they continued to maintain a civilization superior to that of the surrounding barbarians.

^77:4.5 After the establishment of the second garden it was customary to allude to this near- by Nodite settlement as “the land of Nod”; and during the long period of relative peace between this Nodite group and the Adamites, the two races were greatly blended, for it became more and more the custom for the Sons of God (the Adamites) to intermarry with the daughters of men (the Nodites).

^77:4.6 3. The central or pre-Sumerian Nodites. A small group at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers maintained more of their racial integrity. They persisted for thousands of years and eventually furnished the Nodite ancestry which blended with the Adamites to found the Sumerian peoples of historic times.

^77:4.7 And all this explains how the Sumerians appeared so suddenly and mysteriously on the stage of action in Mesopotamia. Investigators will never be able to trace out and follow these tribes back to the beginning of the Sumerians, who had their origin 200,000 years ago after the submergence of Dalamatia. Without a trace of origin elsewhere in the world, these ancient tribes suddenly loom upon the horizon of civilization with a full-grown and superior culture, embracing temples, metalwork, agriculture, animals, pottery, weaving, commercial law, civil codes, religious ceremonial, and an old system of writing. At the beginning of the historical era they had long since lost the alphabet of Dalamatia, having adopted the peculiar writing system originating in Dilmun. The Sumerian language, though virtually lost to the world, was not Semitic; it had much in common with the so-called Aryan tongues.

^77:4.8 The elaborate records left by the Sumerians describe the site of a remarkable settlement which was located on the Persian Gulf near the earlier city of Dilmun. The Egyptians called this city of ancient glory Dilmat, while the later Adamized Sumerians confused both the first and second Nodite cities with Dalamatia and called all three Dilmun. And already have archaeologists found these ancient Sumerian clay tablets which tell of this earthly paradise “where the Gods first blessed mankind with the example of civilized and cultured life.” And these tablets, descriptive of Dilmun, the paradise of men and God, are now silently resting on the dusty shelves of many museums.

^77:4.9 The Sumerians well knew of the first and second Edens but, despite extensive intermarriage with the Adamites, continued to regard the garden dwellers to the north as an alien race. Sumerian pride in the more ancient Nodite culture led them to ignore these later vistas of glory in favour of the grandeur and paradisiacal traditions of the city of Dilmun.

^77:4.10 4. The northern Nodites and Amadonites — the Vanites. This group arose prior to the Bablot conflict. These northernmost Nodites were descendants of those who had forsaken the leadership of Nod and his successors for that of Van and Amadon.

^77:4.11 ¶ Some of the early associates of Van subsequently settled about the shores of the lake which still bears his name, and their traditions grew up about this locality. Ararat became their sacred mountain, having much the same meaning to later-day Vanites that Sinai had to the Hebrews. 10,000 years ago the Vanite ancestors of the Assyrians taught that their moral law of 7 commandments had been given to Van by the Gods upon Mount Ararat. They firmly believed that Van and his associate Amadon were taken alive from the planet while they were up on the mountain engaged in worship.

^77:4.12 Mount Ararat was the sacred mountain of northern Mesopotamia, and since much of your tradition of these ancient times was acquired in connection with the Babylonian story of the flood, it is not surprising that Mount Ararat and its region were woven into the later Jewish story of Noah and the universal flood.

^77:4.13 About 35,000 B.C. Adamson visited one of the easternmost of the old Vanite settlements to found his centre of civilization.

5. ADAMSON AND RATTA

^77:5.1 Having delineated the Nodite antecedents of the ancestry of the secondary midwayers, this narrative should now give consideration to the Adamic half of their ancestry, for the secondary midwayers are also the grandchildren of Adamson, the first-born of the violet race of Urantia.

^77:5.2 ¶ Adamson was among that group of the children of Adam and Eve who elected to remain on earth with their father and mother. Now this eldest son of Adam had often heard from Van and Amadon the story of their highland home in the north, and sometime after the establishment of the second garden he determined to go in search of this land of his youthful dreams.

^77:5.3 Adamson was 120 years old at this time and had been the father of 32 pure-line children of the first garden. He wanted to remain with his parents and assist them in upbuilding the second garden, but he was greatly disturbed by the loss of his mate and their children, who had all elected to go to Edentia along with those other Adamic children who chose to become wards of the Most Highs.

^77:5.4 Adamson would not desert his parents on Urantia, he was disinclined to flee from hardship or danger, but he found the associations of the second garden far from satisfying. He did much to forward