34. The Beginning and the End of the Earth
GA 68b/1907-12-16/p026
·1907-12-16
·
English
MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Da keine professionellen Stenogramme vorliegen, handelt es sich oftmals um notizenhaft festgehaltene Zusammenfassungen oder Berichte.» (Since no professional shorthand transcripts exist, these are often summaries or reports kept in the form of notes.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68b). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
We then see an age in which the earth is covered over long distances by huge, tree-like plants; we then see how animal creatures lived there that seem adventurous to us today, that are extinct today. Then we see how these creatures become extinct, then how the first mammals arise – such as marsupials – then, relatively late, when the Earth had solidified, how the later mammals gradually arise, how they develop up, how they develop up to the apes; and how then, only very, very late, humans arise.
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