diff --git a/engine/src/main/java/org/archive/crawler/Heritrix.java b/engine/src/main/java/org/archive/crawler/Heritrix.java
index 7bffc81d..9bd9ada0 100644
--- a/engine/src/main/java/org/archive/crawler/Heritrix.java
+++ b/engine/src/main/java/org/archive/crawler/Heritrix.java
@@ -192,17 +192,7 @@ public class Heritrix {
         System.out.println(System.getProperty("java.vendor")
                 + ' ' + System.getProperty("java.runtime.name") 
                 + ' ' + System.getProperty("java.runtime.version"));
-        
-        // ensure using java 1.6+ before hitting a later cryptic error
-        String version = System.getProperty("java.version");
-        float floatVersion = Float.valueOf(version.substring(0,version.indexOf('.',2)));
-        if(floatVersion<1.6) {
-            System.err.println("Heritrix (as of version 3) requires Java 1.6 or higher.");
-            System.err.println("You attempted to launch with: "+version);
-            System.err.println("Please try again with a later Java.");
-            System.exit(1);
-        }
-        
+
         // Set some system properties early.
         // Can't use class names here without loading them.
         String ignoredSchemes = "org.archive.net.UURIFactory.ignored-schemes";