The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Our Atlantean Ancestors

[ 1 ] Our Atlantean ancestors differed more from modern humans than one might imagine if one’s understanding were limited entirely to the sensory world. This difference extends not only to outward appearance but also to mental faculties. Their knowledge, as well as their technical skills and their entire culture, was different from what can be observed today. If we go back to the earliest times of Atlantean humanity, we find a mental capacity quite different from our own. The logical mind and the ability to reason mathematically—upon which everything produced today is based—were entirely absent in the early Atlanteans. Instead, they possessed a highly developed memory. This memory was one of their most outstanding mental faculties. For example, they did not calculate, as we do, by learning certain rules and then applying them. A “times table” was something entirely unknown in Atlantean times. No one had committed to memory that three times four equals twelve. The fact that they were able to figure it out when they had to perform such a calculation was based on their recall of similar situations. They remembered how it had been on previous occasions. One must simply realize that every time a new ability develops in a being, an old one loses its power and sharpness. Compared to the Atlantean, modern man has the advantage of logical reasoning and the ability to make connections. In return, their memory has declined. Today, people think in concepts; the Atlanteans thought in images. And when an image appeared before their soul, they would recall so many similar images they had already experienced. They based their judgment on that. That is why education back then was also different from that in later times. It was not designed to equip the child with rules or to sharpen their intellect. Rather, life was presented to them in vivid images, so that later they could recall as much as possible when they had to act in this or that situation. When the child grew up and went out into the world, they could recall, in everything they had to do, that something similar had been demonstrated to them during their formative years. It could best find its way when a new situation resembled one it had already encountered. In entirely new circumstances, the Atlantean was repeatedly forced to rely on trial and error, whereas modern people are spared much in this regard because they are equipped with rules. They can easily apply these rules even in situations they have not yet encountered. Such an educational system gave the whole of life a uniform character. Over very long periods of time, things were handled in the same way, time and again. The faithful memory allowed nothing to emerge that would even remotely resemble the rapid pace of our present-day progress. People did what they had always “seen” done before. They did not devise; they remembered. An authority was not someone who had learned a great deal, but rather someone who had experienced a great deal and could therefore remember a great deal. It would have been impossible in the Atlantean era for anyone to have to decide on any important matter before reaching a certain age. Trust was placed only in those who could look back on long experience.

[ 2 ] What is said here does not apply to the Initiates and their schools. For they are, after all, ahead of the level of development of their age. And admission to such schools is determined not by age, but by whether the candidate has acquired, in his previous incarnations, the abilities necessary to receive higher wisdom. The trust placed in the initiates and their agents during the Atlantean era was based not on the breadth of their personal experience, but on the age of their wisdom. For the initiate, personality ceases to have any significance. He is entirely at the service of eternal wisdom. Therefore, the characteristics of any particular era do not apply to him either.

[ 3 ] While the Atlanteans (particularly the earlier ones) still lacked the power of logical thought, they possessed a highly developed power of memory that gave their entire way of life a distinctive character. But one human faculty is always connected to others. Memory is closer to the deeper natural foundation of the human being than the power of reason, and connected to it were other powers that were also more similar to those of lower natural beings than to the present-day active forces of human beings. Thus, the Atlanteans were able to master what is called life force. Just as we extract heat energy from coal today—which we then convert into motive power for our means of transportation—so the Atlanteans knew how to harness the seed force of living beings for their technological purposes. The following example can give one an idea of what was involved here. Consider a grain of cereal. A force lies dormant within it. This force is what causes the stalk to sprout from the seed. Nature can awaken this force lying dormant in the grain. Modern humans cannot do so at will. They must plant the grain in the earth and leave the awakening to the forces of nature. The Atlanteans, however, could do something else. They knew how to transform the power of a pile of grain into mechanical power, just as modern humans are able to transform the thermal energy of a pile of coal into such power. In Atlantean times, plants were not merely cultivated for food, but to harness the powers slumbering within them for transportation and industry. Just as we have devices to convert the latent energy in coal into kinetic energy in our locomotives, so the Atlanteans had devices that they—so to speak—fueled with plant seeds, and in which the life force was transformed into energy that could be utilized for technical purposes. This is how the Atlanteans’ vehicles, which hovered at a low altitude above the ground, were propelled. These vehicles traveled at an altitude lower than that of the mountains of the Atlantean era, and they were equipped with control mechanisms that allowed them to rise above these mountains.

[ 4 ] One must imagine that, as time has passed, all conditions on our Earth have changed significantly. The vehicles of the Atlanteans mentioned above would be completely unusable in our time. Their usability was based on the fact that, in that era, the atmosphere surrounding the Earth was much denser than it is today. Whether one can easily imagine such a greater density of air according to today’s scientific concepts is not a matter for us to concern ourselves with here. Science and logical thinking, by their very nature, can never determine what is possible or impossible. They can only explain what has been established through experience and observation. And the density of the air in question is as firmly established in occult experience as any sensory fact of today can be. — Just as firmly established, however, is the fact—perhaps even more inexplicable to modern physics and chemistry—that at that time, water was much thinner throughout the Earth than it is today. And because of this thinness, the Atlanteans were able to harness the power of water for technical purposes using the seed force they employed—purposes that are impossible today. Due to the densification of water, it has become impossible to move and direct it in such an artful manner as was once possible. This clearly demonstrates that the civilization of the Atlantean era was fundamentally different from our own. And from this it will further become clear that the physical nature of an Atlantean was also quite different from that of a modern human. The Atlantean consumed water that could be processed by the life force inherent in his own body in a manner quite different from what is possible in today’s physical body. And that is why the Atlantean could use his physical powers at will in a manner entirely different from that of modern humans. He had, so to speak, the means to increase his physical powers from within himself whenever he needed them for his tasks. One can only form a correct conception of the Atlanteans if one realizes that they also had entirely different notions of fatigue and the expenditure of energy than modern humans do.

[ 5 ] An Atlantean settlement—as is likely already evident from everything described—had a character that bore no resemblance whatsoever to that of a modern city. In such a settlement, on the contrary, everything was still in harmony with nature. There is only a faintly similar image—for example, when one says: In the early Atlantean era—roughly up to the middle of the third subrace—a settlement resembled a garden in which the houses were built from trees whose branches were artfully intertwined. What human hands created back then grew, as it were, out of nature itself. And human beings felt completely at one with nature. Consequently, their sense of community was also quite different from what it is today. Nature, after all, is common to all people. And whatever the Atlanteans built upon this natural foundation, they regarded as common property, just as people today naturally regard what their acumen and intellect produce as their private property.

[ 6 ] Anyone who familiarizes themselves with the idea that the Atlanteans were endowed with such spiritual and physical powers as have been described will also come to understand that, in even earlier times, humanity presented a picture that bears only a faint resemblance to what we are accustomed to seeing today. And not only humans, but also the natural world surrounding them has changed enormously over the course of time. Plant and animal forms have become different. The entire natural world on Earth has undergone transformations. Areas of the Earth that were once inhabited have been destroyed; others have emerged. — The ancestors of the Atlanteans lived on a vanished continent, the main part of which lay south of present-day Asia. In theosophical writings, they are called the Lemurians. After passing through various stages of development, the majority fell into decline. They became stunted human beings, whose descendants still inhabit certain parts of the Earth today as so-called “savage peoples.” Only a small portion of Lemurian humanity was capable of further development. From these, the Atlanteans emerged. — Something similar occurred again later on. The vast majority of the Atlantean population fell into decline, and the so-called Aryans—to whom our present-day civilized humanity belongs—are descended from a small portion of them. Lemurians, Atlanteans, and Aryans are, according to the terminology of esoteric science, root races of humanity. If we imagine two such root races preceding the Lemurians and two following the Aryans in the future, this gives a total of seven. One always emerges from the other in the manner just indicated with regard to the Lemurians, Atlanteans, and Aryans. And each root race has physical and spiritual characteristics that are entirely different from those of the preceding one. While, for example, the Atlanteans brought memory and everything associated with it to a particular level of development, it is now the task of the Aryans to develop the power of thought and all that pertains to it. ^{1The next communications will deal with the characteristics and life of the Lemurians, as well as with the development of the Aryans up to the present day. This will be followed by further discussions on the development of the world and humanity.}

[ 7 ] But even within each root race, various stages must be passed through. And there are always seven of them. At the beginning of the period belonging to a root race, its main characteristics are, as it were, in a youthful state; and gradually they reach maturity and, ultimately, decline. As a result, the population of a root race breaks down into seven sub-races. However, one should not imagine that a sub-race disappears immediately when a new one develops. Each may persist for a long time even as others develop alongside it. Thus, populations exhibiting different stages of development always coexist on Earth.

[ 8 ] The first subrace of the Atlanteans evolved from a very advanced and developmentally capable segment of the Lemurians. Among the Lemurians, the faculty of memory manifested itself only in the very earliest stages and only toward the end of their development. One must imagine that, while a Lemurian could form mental images of what he experienced, he was unable to retain them. He immediately forgot what he had imagined. The fact that he nevertheless lived in a certain culture—for example, that he had tools, built structures, and so on—was not due to his own power of imagination, but to a spiritual force within him that, to use the word, was instinctive. However, one must not imagine this to be the same as the instinct of animals today, but rather an instinct of a different kind.^{2More information on this will follow later.}

[ 9 ] In theosophical writings, the first subrace of the Atlanteans is called the Rmoahals. The memory of this race was focused primarily on vivid sensory impressions. Colors that the eye had seen and sounds that the ear had heard continued to resonate in the soul for a long time. This was expressed in the fact that the Rmoahals developed feelings that their Lemurian ancestors had not yet known. Attachment, for example, to what had been experienced in the past is one of these feelings.

[ 10 ] The development of language was also linked to the development of memory. As long as humans could not retain memories of the past, they could not communicate their experiences through language. And because the first stirrings of memory occurred during the late Lemurian period, it was then that the ability to name what was seen and heard also began to emerge. Only human beings who possess a memory can make sense of a name assigned to a thing. The Atlantean era is therefore also the period in which language developed. And with language, a bond was forged between the human soul and the things outside of the human being. The human being produced the spoken word within himself; and this spoken word belonged to the objects of the external world. A new bond also arises between human and human through communication by means of language. All of this was still in its infancy among the Rmoahals; yet it distinguished them profoundly from their Lemurian forefathers.

[ 11 ] The powers within the souls of these first Atlanteans still possessed something of the forces of nature. In a sense, these people were even more closely related to the natural beings surrounding them than their successors were. The powers of their souls were even more like natural forces than those of present-day humans. Thus, the spoken word they produced was also something of a natural force. They named not merely things, but in their words lay a power over things and also over their fellow human beings. The words of the Rmoahals had not only meaning, but also power. When one speaks of the magical power of words, one is alluding to something that was far more real for these people than it is for us today. When a Rmoahals person uttered a word, that word developed a power similar to that of the object itself that it designated. This is the reason why words in that era possessed healing power—why they could promote the growth of plants, tame the fury of animals, and produce other such effects. All of this gradually diminished more and more among the later subraces of the Atlanteans. One might say that the natural abundance of power was gradually lost. The Rmoahal people perceived this abundance of power entirely as a gift from mighty Nature; and their relationship to Nature took on a religious character. Language, in particular, had a sacred quality for them. And the misuse of certain sounds, which possessed significant power, would have been unthinkable. Every person felt that such misuse would inevitably bring them tremendous harm. The magic of such words would have turned into its opposite; what, when used correctly, would have bestowed a blessing, would, if used sacrilegiously, have led to the ruin of the perpetrator. In a certain innocence of feeling, the Rmoahals attributed their power less to themselves than to the divine nature working within them.

[ 12 ] Things were different with the second subrace (the so-called Tlavatli peoples). The people of this race began to feel their own personal worth. Ambition—a trait unknown to the Rmoahals—began to assert itself among them. The memory was, in a sense, transferred to their conception of communal life. Those who could look back on certain deeds demanded recognition for them from their fellow human beings. They demanded that their works be preserved in memory. And it was precisely this memory of their deeds that served as the basis for a cohesive group of people to choose one among them as their leader. A kind of royal dignity developed. Indeed, this recognition was preserved even beyond death. The memory, the remembrance of ancestors or of those who had distinguished themselves in life began to take shape. And from this, a kind of religious veneration of the deceased emerged among individual tribes—an ancestor cult. This persisted into much later times and took on a wide variety of forms. Even among the Rmoahals, a person’s worth was essentially measured only by the extent to which he could assert himself in the moment through his full power.^{3The following accounts, in connection with the life of the Lemurians, will shed light on the relationship of the leading, ruling beings at the time of the Rmoahals.} If anyone wished to be recognized for what he had done in earlier days, he had to demonstrate—through new deeds—that he still possessed his former strength. He had to, so to speak, bring his past deeds to mind through new works. The deeds themselves, as such, still counted for nothing. It was not until the second subrace that a person’s character was taken into account to such an extent that their past life was factored into the assessment of that character.

[ 13 ] Another consequence of human memory for social coexistence was the fact that groups of people formed, held together by the memory of shared deeds. Previously, such group formation had been determined entirely by natural forces and common ancestry. Through his own mind, man had not yet added anything to what nature had made of him. Now, a powerful individual rallied a number of people to a common undertaking, and the memory of this shared work formed a social group.

[ 14 ] This form of social coexistence first truly took shape among the third subrace (the Toltecs). It was therefore the people of this race who first established what might be called a community—the earliest form of statehood. And the leadership, the government of these communities, was passed down from ancestors to descendants. What had previously lived on only in the memories of their fellow human beings was now passed down from father to son. The deeds of the ancestors were not to be forgotten by the entire lineage. The descendants still valued what their ancestors had done. One must simply be aware that in those times, people truly had the power to pass on their gifts to their descendants. After all, education was designed to model life through vivid images. And the effect of this education rested on the personal power that emanated from the educator. He did not sharpen intellectual faculties, but rather gifts of a more instinctive nature. Through such an educational system, the father’s abilities were indeed passed on to the son in most cases.

[ 15 ] Under such circumstances, personal experience became increasingly important to the third subrace. When one group of people separated from another, they brought with them—to establish their new community—the vivid memory of what they had experienced in their former home. But at the same time, there was something in this memory that did not quite fit, something in which they did not feel at ease. In response to this, they then tried something new. And so, with each new such settlement, conditions improved. And it was only natural that these improvements were also emulated. These were the facts that led, during the era of the third sub-race, to the flourishing communities described in theosophical literature. And the personal experiences that were gained found support from those who were initiated into the eternal laws of spiritual development. Mighty rulers themselves received initiation so that personal competence might have full support. Through personal competence, a person gradually makes himself or herself capable of initiation. One must first develop one’s powers from the bottom up so that enlightenment may then be bestowed from above. Thus arose the initiated kings and leaders of the Atlanteans. Enormous power was in their hands; and great, too, was the reverence shown toward them.

[ 16 ] But this very fact also lay at the root of their decline and decay. The development of the power of memory led to the full power of the personality. Human beings wanted to gain prestige through this power of theirs. And the greater the power became, the more they wanted to exploit it for their own benefit. The ambition that had developed turned into outright selfishness. And with that came the abuse of these powers. When one considers what the Atlanteans were capable of through their mastery of the life force, one will understand that this abuse was bound to have tremendous consequences. A vast power over nature could be placed at the service of personal self-love.

[ 17 ] This was accomplished to the fullest extent by the fourth subrace (the Proto-Turanians). The members of this race, who were instructed in the mastery of these forces, frequently used them to satisfy their stubborn desires and cravings. When used in this way, however, these forces destroy one another’s effects. It is as if a person’s feet were stubbornly moving him forward while his upper body wanted to go backward.

[ 18 ] Such a destructive effect could only be halted by the development of a higher power within human beings. And that was the power of thought. Logical thinking acts as a restraining force on selfish personal desires. We must look to the fifth subrace (the Proto-Semites) for the origin of this logical thinking. People began to go beyond mere recollection of the past and to compare their various experiences. The power of judgment developed. And it was this power of judgment that regulated desires and cravings. People began to calculate and to combine ideas. People learned to work with their minds. Whereas in the past they had indulged every desire, they now first ask whether reason can justify the desire. While the people of the fourth subrace rushed wildly to satisfy their desires, those of the fifth began to listen to an inner voice. And this inner voice has a restraining effect on desires, even if it cannot destroy the demands of the selfish personality.

[ 19 ] Thus, the fifth sub-race shifted the impulses for action into the human inner life. Within this inner life, the human being seeks to determine for himself what he should or should not do. But what was gained in the power of thought within was lost in terms of mastery over the external forces of nature. With this combinatory thinking, one can subdue only the forces of the mineral world, not the life force. The fifth subrace thus developed thinking at the expense of mastery over the life force. But it was precisely through this that it sowed the seed for humanity’s further development. Now, no matter how great the personality, self-love, or even selfishness might become: mere thought—which operates entirely within and can no longer directly issue commands to nature—is incapable of causing such devastating effects as the misused powers of the past. From this fifth subrace, the most gifted members were selected; they survived the decline of the fourth root race and formed the seed of the fifth, the Aryan race, whose task is the full development of the power of thought with all that it entails. ^{4The following communications will explain how this development of the power of thought takes place within the fifth root race, and what significance present-day humanity has within it.}

[ 20 ] The people of the sixth subrace (the Akkadians) developed their power of thought even further than those of the fifth. They differed from the so-called Proto-Semites in that they applied this ability in a more comprehensive sense than the latter. — It has been said that while the development of the power of thought prevented the demands of the selfish personality from producing the devastating effects that were possible among earlier races, it did not destroy those demands. The Proto-Semites initially regulated their personal affairs as their power of thought dictated. Prudence took the place of mere desires and cravings. Different living conditions emerged. Whereas earlier races had been inclined to recognize as a leader someone whose deeds were deeply imprinted in their memory or who could look back on a life rich in memories, such a role was now accorded to the wise. And whereas previously what lived on in good memory was decisive, people now regarded as best whatever made the most sense to the mind. Under the influence of memory, people used to hold fast to a thing until they found it inadequate, and then, in the latter case, it followed naturally that the one who was able to remedy a deficiency would prevail with an innovation. Under the influence of the power of thought, however, a craving for innovation and a desire for change developed. Everyone wanted to impose whatever his own wisdom dictated. Turbulent conditions thus began during the fifth subrace, and in the sixth they led to the realization that the individual’s headstrong thinking needed to be brought under general laws. The splendor of the states of the third subrace was based on the fact that shared memories brought about order and harmony. In the sixth, this order had to be brought about by conceived laws. Thus, the origin of legal and legislative systems is to be found in this sixth subrace. — And while in the third sub-race the separation of a group of people occurred only when they were, so to speak, forced out of their community because they no longer felt at home within the conditions maintained by memory, in the sixth sub-race the situation was fundamentally different. The calculating power of thought sought the new for its own sake; it spurred people on to undertake new ventures and establish new settlements. Consequently, the Akkadians were an enterprising people, inclined toward colonization. In particular, trade had to nourish their newly emerging powers of thought and judgment.

[ 21 ] In the seventh subrace (the Mongols), the power of thought also developed. However, characteristics of the earlier subraces — namely, the fourth—remained present in them to a much greater degree than in the fifth and sixth. They remained true to their sense of memory. And so they came to the conviction that the oldest was also the wisest—that which could best defend itself against the power of thought. Although they, too, lost control over the life forces, the power of thought that developed within them retained something of the elemental power of those life forces. They had indeed lost power over life, but they never lost their immediate, naive faith in it. For them, this power had become their God, in whose name they did everything they deemed right. Thus, to their neighboring peoples, they appeared to be possessed by this secret power and surrendered themselves to it in blind trust. Their descendants in Asia and some European regions displayed—and still display—much of this characteristic.

[ 22 ] The power of thought planted within human beings could only attain its full value in evolution once it received a new impetus in the fifth root race. The fourth root race could, after all, only put this power to use in the service of what had been instilled in it through the gift of memory. It was not until the fifth root race that forms of life emerged for which the capacity for thought is the proper tool.