The Rudolf Steiner Archive

These early lectures reconstruct events between the origin of the earth and the beginning of recorded history and include a core investigation of the origins, achievements and fate of the Atlanteans and Lemurians. These remarkable “lost” root races developed the first concepts of “good” and “evil,” manipulated the forces of nature, laid the groundwork of all human legal and ethical systems, and defined and nurtured the distinctive yet complementary powers of men and women that brought humankind, many centuries ago, to its highest artistic, intellectual, and spiritual attainments.

This volume is presented here with the kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland.

• Introduction
• Preface by the Editor of the German Edition (1939)

1. Contemporary Civilization in the Mirror of the Science of the Spirit (1904)
2. From the Akasha Chronicle (Preface)
3. Our Atlantean Ancestors
4. Transition of the Fourth into the Fifth Root Race
5. The Lemurian Race
6. The Division into Sexes
7. The Last Periods before the Division into Sexes
8. The Hyperborean and the Polarean Epoch
9. Beginning of the Present Earth — Extrusion of the Sun
10. Extrusion of the Moon
11. Some Necessary Points of View
12. On the Origin of the Earth
13. The Earth and Its Future
14. The Life of Saturn
15. The Life of the Sun
16. Life on the Moon
17. The Life of Earth
18. The Fourfold Man of Earth
19. Answers to Questions
20. Prejudices Arising from Alleged Science (1904)