Lemuria (continent)

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Lemuria
Type

Hypothetical lost continent

Notable characters

Lemurians

Lemuria /lmjri/[1] is the name of a hypothetical "lost land" variously located in

the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The concept's 19th-century origins lie in attempts to account
for discontinuities in biogeography; however, the concept of Lemuria has been rendered
obsolete by modern theories of plate tectonics. Although sunken continents do exist
like Zealandia in the Pacific as well as Mauritia[2] and the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian
Ocean there is no known geological formation under the Indian or Pacific Oceans that
corresponds to the hypothetical Lemuria.[3]
Though Lemuria is no longer considered a valid scientific hypothesis, it has been adopted by
writers involved in the occult, as well as some Tamil writers of India. Accounts of Lemuria
differ, but all share a common belief that a continent existed in ancient times and sank
beneath the ocean as a result of a geological, often cataclysmic, change, such as pole shift.
Contents
[hide]

1 Scientific origins

1.1 Superseded

2 Blavatsky, Elliot, and Bramwell

3 Lemuria and Mount Shasta

4 Kumari Kandam and Lemuria

5 In popular culture

6 See also

7 References

8 Further reading

9 External links

Scientific origins[edit]
In 1864 the zoologist and biogeographer Philip Sclater wrote an article on "The Mammals of
Madagascar" in The Quarterly Journal of Science. Using a classification he referred to
as lemurs but which included related primate groups,[4] and puzzled by the presence of
their fossils in both Madagascar and India but not in Africa or the Middle East, Sclater
proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent. He wrote:
The anomalies of the Mammal fauna of Madagascar can best be explained by supposing
that ... a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans ... that this
continent was broken up into islands, of which some have become amalgamated with ...
Africa, some ... with what is now Asia; and that in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands
we have existing relics of this great continent, for which ... I should propose the name
Lemuria![4]
Sclater's theory was hardly unusual for his time: "land bridges", real and imagined,
fascinated several of Sclater's contemporaries. tienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, also looking at
the relationship between animals in India and Madagascar, had suggested a southern
continent about two decades before Sclater, but did not give it a name. [5] The acceptance
of Darwinism led scientists to seek to trace the diffusion of species from their points
of evolutionary origin. Prior to the acceptance of continental drift, biologists frequently
postulated submerged land masses in order to account for populations of land-based species
now separated by barriers of water. Similarly, geologists tried to account for striking
resemblances of rock formations on different continents. The first systematic attempt was
made by Melchior Neumayr in his book Erdgeschichte in 1887.
Many hypothetical submerged land bridges and continents were proposed during the 19th
century, in order to account for the present distribution of species.
After gaining some acceptance within the scientific community, the concept of Lemuria began
to appear in the works of other scholars. Ernst Haeckel, a German Darwinian taxonomist,
proposed Lemuria as an explanation for the absence of "missing link" fossil records.
According to another source, Haeckel put forward this thesis prior to Sclater (but without
using the name "Lemuria").[6]Locating the origins of the human species on this lost continent,
he claimed the fossil record could not be found because it sunk beneath the sea.
Other scientists hypothesized that Lemuria had extended across parts of the Pacific oceans,
seeking to explain the distribution of various species across Asia and the Americas.

Superseded[edit]

The Lemuria theory disappeared completely from conventional scientific consideration after
the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift were accepted by the larger scientific
community. According to the theory of plate tectonics (the current accepted paradigm in
geology), Madagascar and India were indeed once part of the same landmass (thus
accounting for geological resemblances), but plate movement caused India to break away
millions of years ago, and move to its present location. The original landmass, the
supercontinent Gondwana broke apart it did not sink beneath sea level.
In 1999, drilling by the JOIDES Resolution research vessel in the Indian Ocean discovered
evidence[7] that a large island, the Kerguelen Plateau, was submerged about 20 million years
ago by rising sea levels. Samples showed pollen and fragments of wood in a 90-million-yearold sediment. Although this discovery might encourage scholars to expect similarities
in dinosaur fossil evidence, and may contribute to understanding the breakup of the Indian
and Australian land masses, it does not support the concept of Lemuria as a land bridge
for mammals.
In 2013, the study of grains of sand from the beaches of Mauritius led to the conclusion that
a similar landmass would have existed between 2,000 and 85 million years ago. [2]

Blavatsky, Elliot, and Bramwell[edit]

Map of Lemuria superimposed over the modern continents from Scott-Elliott's The Story of Atlantis and
Lost Lemuria.

"Lemuria" entered the lexicon of the occult through the works of Helena Blavatsky, who
claimed that the Mahatmas had shown her an ancient, pre-Atlantean Book of Dzyan.
Lemuria is mentioned in one of the 1882 Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett.[8] According to L.
Sprague de Camp, Blavatsky's concept of Lemuria was influenced by other
contemporaneous writers on the theme of lost continents, notably Ignatius L. Donnelly,
American cult leaderThomas Lake Harris and the French writer Louis Jacolliot.[9]
Within Blavatsky's complex cosmology, which includes seven "Root Races", the "Third Root
Race" occupied Lemuria. She describes them as about 7 feet (2.1 m) tall,
sexually hermaphroditic, egg-laying, mentally undeveloped and spiritually more pure than
the following "Root Races". Before the coming of the Lemurians, the second "Root Race" is
said to have dwelled in Hyperborea. After the subsequent creation of mammals, Mme
Blavatsky revealed to her readers, some Lemurians turned to bestiality. The gods, aghast at

the behavior of these "mindless" men, sank Lemuria into the ocean and created a "Fourth
Root Race" endowed with intellect on Atlantis.[citation needed]
The later theosophical author William Scott-Elliot gave one of the most elaborate accounts of
lost continents. The English theosophist received his knowledge from Charles Webster
Leadbeater, who communicated with the Theosophical Masters by "astral clairvoyance". [10] In
1896 he published The Story of Atlantis, followed in 1904 by The Lost Lemuria, in which he
included a map of the continent of Lemuria as stretching from the east coast of Africa across
the Indian and the Pacific Oceans.[11]
James Bramwell portrayed Lemuria in his book, Lost Atlantis, as "a continent that occupied
a large part of what is now the South Pacific Ocean".[12] He described the people of Lemuria in
detail and characterised them as one of the "root-races of humanity". According to Bramwell,
Lemurians are the ancestors of the Atlanteans, who survived the period "of the general racial
decadence which affected the Lemurians in the last stages of their evolution". From "a select
division of" the Atlanteans after their promotion to decadence Bramwell claims
the Aryan race arose. "Lemurians, Atlanteans, and Aryans are root-races of humanity",
according to Bramwell.[13]

Lemuria and Mount Shasta[edit]

In 1894, Frederick Spencer Oliver published A Dweller on Two Planets, which claimed that
survivors from a sunken continent called Lemuria were living in or on Mount Shasta in
northernCalifornia. Oliver claimed the Lemurians lived in a complex of tunnels beneath the
mountain and occasionally were seen walking the surface dressed in white robes.
In 1931 Harvey Spencer Lewis using the pseudonym Wisar Spenle Cerve[14] wrote a book
(published by the Rosicrucians) about the hidden Lemurians of Mount Shasta that a
bibliography on Mount Shasta described as "responsible for the legend's widespread
popularity."[15] This belief has since been repeated by Guy Warren Ballard, followers of
the Ascended Masters and the Great White Brotherhood, and Bridge to Freedom, The Summit
Lighthouse, Church Universal and Triumphant, and Kryon.[citation needed]

Kumari Kandam and Lemuria[edit]

"Lemuria" in Tamil nationalist mysticist literature, connecting Madagascar, South India and Australia
(covering most of the Indian Ocean).

Some Tamil writers such as Devaneya Pavanar have tried to associate Lemuria with Kumari
Kandam, a legendary sunken landmass mentioned in the Tamil literature, claiming that it
was the cradle of civilization.