On Jerusem you will be amazed by the agricultural achievements of the wonderful spornagia. There the land is cultivated largely for aesthetic and ornamental effects. The spornagia are the landscape gardeners of the headquarters worlds, and they are both original and artistic in their treatment of the open spaces of Jerusem. They utilize both animals and numerous mechanical contrivances in the culture of the soil. They are intelligently expert in the employment of the power agencies of their realms as well as in the utilization of numerous orders of their lesser brethren of the lower animal creations, many of which are provided them on these special worlds. This order of animal life is now largely directed by the ascending midway creatures from the evolutionary spheres. 46:7.2

Seasons and temperature variations occur on all sunlighted and sun-heated planets. Agriculture is universal on all atmospheric worlds; tilling the soil is the one pursuit that is common to the advancing races of all such planets. 49:4.5

During this age agriculture makes its appearance. The growth of the family idea is incompatible with the roving and unsettled life of the hunter. Gradually the practices of settled habitations and the cultivation of the soil become established. The domestication of animals and the development of home arts proceed apace. Upon reaching the apex of biologic evolution, a high level of civilization has been attained, but there is little development of a mechanical order; invention is the characteristic of the succeeding age. 52:2.8

The Prince’s headquarters, though exquisitely beautiful and designed to awe the primitive men of that age, was altogether modest. The buildings were not especially large as it was the motive of these imported teachers to encourage the eventual development of agriculture through the introduction of animal husbandry. The land provision within the city walls was sufficient to provide for pasturage and gardening for the support of a population of about twenty thousand. 66:7.1

There has always been friction between the herders and the tillers of the soil. The hunter and herder were militant, warlike; the agriculturist is a more peace-loving type. Association with animals suggests struggle and force; association with plants instills patience, quiet, and peace. Agriculture and industrialism are the activities of peace. But the weakness of both, as world social activities, is that they lack excitement and adventure. 68:5.11

In early days only the crops were private, but successive crops conferred title; agriculture was thus the genesis of the private ownership of land. Individuals were first given only a life tenureship; at death land reverted to the tribe. The very first land titles granted by tribes to individuals were graves — family burying grounds. In later times land belonged to those who fenced it. But the cities always reserved certain lands for public pasturage and for use in case of siege; these “commons” represent the survival of the earlier form of collective ownership. 69:9.14

The institutions of slavery and private ownership of land came with agriculture. Slavery raised the master’s standard of living and provided more leisure for social culture. 81:2.13

Mankind was not consigned to agricultural toil as the penalty of supposed sin. “In the sweat of your face shall you eat the fruit of the fields” was not a sentence of punishment pronounced because of man’s participation in the follies of the Lucifer rebellion under the leadership of the traitorous Caligastia. The cultivation of the soil is inherent in the establishment of an advancing civilization on the evolutionary worlds, and this injunction was the center of all teaching of the Planetary Prince and his staff throughout the three hundred thousand years which intervened between their arrival on Urantia and those tragic days when Caligastia threw in his lot with the rebel Lucifer. Work with the soil is not a curse; rather is it the highest blessing to all who are thus permitted to enjoy the most human of all human activities. 66:7.19

Since slaves were so generally employed by the earlier agriculturists, the farmer was formerly looked down on by both the hunter and the herder. For ages it was considered menial to till the soil; wherefore the idea that soil toil is a curse, whereas it is the greatest of all blessings. Even in the days of Cain and Abel the sacrifices of the pastoral life were held in greater esteem than the offerings of agriculture. 81:1.4

Through agriculture, animal domestication, and improved architecture, mankind gradually escaped the worst of the incessant struggle to live and began to cast about to find wherewith to sweeten the process of living; and this was the beginning of the striving for higher and ever higher standards of material comfort. Through manufacture and industry man is gradually augmenting the pleasure content of mortal life. 81:5.2

The yellow man. The primitive yellow tribes were the first to abandon the chase, establish settled communities, and develop a home life based on agriculture. Intellectually they were somewhat inferior to the red man, but socially and collectively they proved themselves superior to all of the Sangik peoples in the matter of fostering racial civilization. Because they developed a fraternal spirit, the various tribes learning to live together in relative peace, they were able to drive the red race before them as they gradually expanded into Asia. (64:6.14)

Despite failure to fulfill the promise of an early development of advanced statehood, the yellow race did progressively move forward in the realization of the arts of civilization, especially in the realms of agriculture and horticulture. The hydraulic problems faced by the agriculturists in Shensi and Honan demanded group co-operation for solution. Such irrigation and soil-conservation difficulties contributed in no small measure to the development of interdependence with the consequent promotion of peace among farming groups. 79:8.6

The formative period of Chinese civilization, opening with the coming of the Andites, continues on down to the great ethical, moral, and semireligious awakening of the sixth century before Christ. And Chinese tradition preserves the hazy record of the evolutionary past; the transition from mother- to father-family, the establishment of agriculture, the development of architecture, the initiation of industry — all these are successively narrated. And this story presents, with greater accuracy than any other similar account, the picture of the magnificent ascent of a superior people from the levels of barbarism. During this time they passed from a primitive agricultural society to a higher social organization embracing cities, manufacture, metalworking, commercial exchange, government, writing, mathematics, art, science, and printing. 79:8.15

The evolutionary peoples (notably the Chinese) early learned to plant seeds and to cultivate crops through observation of the sprouting of seeds accidentally moistened or which had been put in graves as food for the departed. But throughout southwest Asia along the fertile river bottoms and adjacent plains, the Andites were carrying out the improved agricultural techniques inherited from their ancestors, who had made farming and gardening the chief pursuits within the boundaries of the second garden.

For thousands of years the descendants of Adam had grown wheat and barley, as improved in the Garden, throughout the highlands of the upper border of Mesopotamia. The descendants of Adam and Adamson here met, traded, and socially mingled.

It was these enforced changes in living conditions which caused such a large proportion of the human race to become omnivorous in dietetic practice. And the combination of the wheat, rice, and vegetable diet with the flesh of the herds marked a great forward step in the health and vigor of these ancient peoples. 81:1.6

The mountains surrounding the Garden abounded in precious stones and metals, though these received very little attention. The dominant idea was to be the glorification of horticulture and the exaltation of agriculture.

The site chosen for the Garden was probably the most beautiful spot of its kind in all the world, and the climate was then ideal. Nowhere else was there a location which could have lent itself so perfectly to becoming such a paradise of botanic expression. In this rendezvous the cream of the civilization of Urantia was forgathering. Without and beyond, the world lay in darkness, ignorance, and savagery. Eden was the one bright spot on Urantia; it was naturally a dream of loveliness, and it soon became a poem of exquisite and perfected landscape glory. 73:3.5

Although the work of embellishment was hardly finished at the time of Adam’s arrival, the place was already a gem of botanic beauty; and during the early days of his sojourn in Eden the whole Garden took on new form and assumed new proportions of beauty and grandeur. Never before this time nor after has Urantia harbored such a beautiful and replete exhibition of horticulture and agriculture. 73:5.8

The entire purpose of the western school system of the Garden was socialization. The forenoon periods of recess were devoted to practical horticulture and agriculture, the afternoon periods to competitive play. 74:7.2

Less than two years after Cain’s birth, Abel was born, the first child of Adam and Eve to be born in the second garden. When Abel grew up to the age of twelve years, he elected to be a herder; Cain had chosen to follow agriculture. 76:2.1

These were the times of the New Stone Age overlapping the oncoming Bronze Age. In Scandinavia it was the Bronze Age associated with mother worship. In southern France and Spain it was the New Stone Age associated with sun worship. This was the time of the building of the circular and roofless sun temples. The European white races were energetic builders, delighting to set up great stones as tokens to the sun, much as did their later-day descendants at Stonehenge. The vogue of sun worship indicates that this was a great period of agriculture in southern Europe. 80:9.13

Joseph early began to instruct Jesus in the diverse means of gaining a livelihood, explaining the advantages of agriculture over industry and trade. Galilee was a more beautiful and prosperous district than Judea, and it cost only about one fourth as much to live there as in Jerusalem and Judea. It was a province of agricultural villages and thriving industrial cities, containing more than two hundred towns of over five thousand population and thirty of over fifteen thousand. 124:2.9

This was the year that Jesus rented a considerable piece of land just to the north of their home, which was divided up as a family garden plot. Each of the older children had an individual garden, and they entered into keen competition in their agricultural efforts. Their eldest brother spent some time with them in the garden each day during the season of vegetable cultivation. As Jesus worked with his younger brothers and sisters in the garden, he many times entertained the wish that they were all located on a farm out in the country where they could enjoy the liberty and freedom of an unhampered life. But they did not find themselves growing up in the country; and Jesus, being a thoroughly practical youth as well as an idealist, intelligently and vigorously attacked his problem just as he found it, and did everything within his power to adjust himself and his family to the realities of their situation and to adapt their condition to the highest possible satisfaction of their individual and collective longings.

At one time Jesus faintly hoped that he might be able to gather up sufficient means, provided they could collect the considerable sum of money due his father for work on Herod’s palace, to warrant undertaking the purchase of a small farm. He had really given serious thought to this plan of moving his family out into the country. But when Herod refused to pay them any of the funds due Joseph, they gave up the ambition of owning a home in the country. As it was, they contrived to enjoy much of the experience of farm life as they now had three cows, four sheep, a flock of chickens, a donkey, and a dog, in addition to the doves. Even the little tots had their regular duties to perform in the well-regulated scheme of management which characterized the home life of this Nazareth family. 126:5.10