Lemuria (continent)
Encyclopedia
Lemuria is the name of a hypothetical "lost land
Lost lands
Lost lands can be continents, islands or other regions supposedly existing during prehistory, having since disappeared as a result of catastrophic geological phenomena or slowly rising sea levels since the end of the last Ice Age. Lost lands, where they existed, are supposed to have subsided into...

" variously located in the Indian
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

 and Pacific
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 Oceans. The concept's 19th century origins lie in attempts to account for discontinuities in biogeography
Biogeography
Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species , organisms, and ecosystems in space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities vary in a highly regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, isolation and habitat area...

; however, the concept of Lemuria has been rendered obsolete by modern theories of plate tectonics
Plate tectonics
Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere...

. Although sunken continents do exist – like Zealandia
Zealandia (continent)
Zealandia , also known as Tasmantis or the New Zealand continent, is a nearly submerged continental fragment that sank after breaking away from Australia 60–85 million years ago, having separated from Antarctica between 85 and 130 million years ago...

 in the Pacific and the Kerguelen Plateau
Kerguelen Plateau
The Kerguelen Plateau is an underwater volcanic large igneous province , also the microcontinent and submerged continent in the southern Indian Ocean. It lies about 3,000 km to the southwest of Australia and is nearly three times the size of Japan...

 in the Indian Ocean – there is no known geological formation under the Indian or Pacific Oceans that corresponds to the hypothetical Lemuria.

Though Lemuria is no longer considered a valid scientific hypothesis, it has been adopted by writers involved in the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

, as well as some Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

 writers of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. Accounts of Lemuria differ, but all share a common belief that a continent
Continent
A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents—they are : Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia.Plate tectonics is...

 existed in ancient times and sank beneath the ocean as a result of a geological, often cataclysm
Cataclysm
The term cataclysm The term cataclysm The term cataclysm (from the Greek kataklysmos, to 'wash down' (kluzein "wash" + kata "down") may refer to:*Deluge (mythology)*a hypothetical Doomsday event*any catastrophic geological phenomenon**volcanic eruption**earthquake...

ic, change, such as pole shift. There is no scientific evidence to support these claims.

Scientific origins

In 1864 the zoologist and biogeographer Philip Sclater
Philip Sclater
Philip Lutley Sclater was an English lawyer and zoologist. In zoology, he was an expert ornithologist, and identified the main zoogeographic regions of the world...

 wrote an article on "The Mammals of Madagascar" in The Quarterly Journal of Science. Using a classification he referred to as lemur
Lemur
Lemurs are a clade of strepsirrhine primates endemic to the island of Madagascar. They are named after the lemures of Roman mythology due to the ghostly vocalizations, reflective eyes, and the nocturnal habits of some species...

s but which included related primate groups, and puzzled by the presence of their fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

s in both Madagascar and India but not in Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 or the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far 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!


Sclater's theory
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...

 was hardly unusual for his time. Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories...

, 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. The acceptance of Darwinism
Darwinism
Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....

 led scientists to seek to trace the diffusion of species from their points of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

ary origin. Prior to the acceptance of continental drift
Continental drift
Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other. The hypothesis that continents 'drift' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 and was fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912...

, biologists
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 frequently postulated submerged land masses in order to account for populations of land-based species now separated by barriers of water. Similarly, geologists
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...

 tried to account for striking resemblances of rock formations on different continents. The first systematic attempt was made by Melchior Neumayr
Melchior Neumayr
Melchior Neumayr , German palaeontologist, was born at Munich, the son of Max von Neumayr, a Bavarian Minister of State....

 in his book Erdgeschichte in 1887. Many hypothetical submerged land bridge
Land bridge
A land bridge, in biogeography, is an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, over which animals and plants are able to cross and colonise new lands...

s and continents were proposed during the 19th century, in order to account for the present distribution of species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

.

After gaining some acceptance within the scientific community, the concept of Lemuria began to appear in the works of other scholars. Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Haeckel
The "European War" became known as "The Great War", and it was not until 1920, in the book "The First World War 1914-1918" by Charles à Court Repington, that the term "First World War" was used as the official name for the conflict.-Research:...

, a German Darwinian taxonomist, proposed Lemuria as an explanation for the absence of "missing link
Missing Link
Missing link is a nonscientific term for any transitional fossil, especially one connected with human evolution; see Transitional fossil - Missing links and List of transitonal fossils - Human evolution.Missing Link may refer to:...

" fossil records. According to another source, Haeckel put forward this thesis
Thesis
A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...

 prior to Sclater (but without using the name "Lemuria"). Locating the origins of the human species on this lost continent, he claimed the fossil record could not be found because it had sunk beneath the sea.

Other scientists hypothesized that Lemuria had extended across parts of the Pacific oceans, seeking to explain distributions of species across Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 and the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

.

J. H Moore writing in his book Savage Survivals (1933) wrote:

“It is believed that man evolved somewhere in southern Asia, or possibly, still further south than the present boundary of Asia, in lands now drowned by the Indian Ocean. This supposed land is called Lemuria”.

Superseded

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 (now the only 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 broke apart – it did not sink beneath sea level.

In 1999, drilling by the JOIDES Resolution
JOIDES Resolution
thumb|right|295px|Drillship JOIDES Resolution in 1988JOIDES Resolution is a scientific drilling ship once used by the Ocean Drilling Program, then by its successor, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. It is the successor of the Glomar Challenger.The ship was launched as Sedco/BP 471, an oil...

 research vessel in the Indian Ocean discovered evidence that a large island, the Kerguelen Plateau, was submerged about 20 million years ago by rising sea levels. Samples showed pollen
Pollen
Pollen is a fine to coarse powder containing the microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce the male gametes . Pollen grains have a hard coat that protects the sperm cells during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants or from the male cone to the...

 and fragments of wood in a 90 million-year-old sediment
Sediment
Sediment is naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of fluids such as wind, water, or ice, and/or by the force of gravity acting on the particle itself....

. Although this discovery might encourage scholars to expect similarities in dinosaur
Dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

 fossil evidence, and may contribute to understanding the breakup of the Indian and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n land masses, it does not support the concept of Lemuria as a land bridge for mammal
Mammal
Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...

s.

If this continent were to exist, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 would have to be sideways while attached to half of Antarctica and Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

. Sri Lanka would also be attached to Australia while India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 would need to have drifted more from its current position it is in today. For Australia to be in its current position, the polar shift theory of a northern boundary in the east would have to be put into effect. The continent would have had to be in the Pacific before it detached from India for it to be in the position it is now. The plate movement would have had to had stretched and contracted from all directions into one new continent for its shape to occur. There would be a river in between the two continents and it would extend eastward to a larger, now submerged portion of the continent known as Mu
Mu (lost continent)
Mu is the name of a hypothetical continent that allegedly existed in one of Earth's oceans, but disappeared at the dawn of human history.The concept and the name were proposed by 19th century traveler and writer Augustus Le Plongeon, who claimed that several ancient civilizations, such as those of...

.

Blavatsky, Elliot, and Bramwell

Lemuria entered the lexicon of the Occult through the works of Helena Blavatsky, who claimed in the 1880s to have been shown an ancient, pre-Atlantean Book of Dzyan
Book of Dzyan
The Book of Dzyan is a reputedly ancient text of Tibetan origin. The Stanzas formed the basis for The Secret Doctrine, one of the foundational works of the theosophical movement, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in 1875.-Madame Blavatsky's claims regarding the Book of Dzyan:Madame Blavatsky claimed...

by the Mahatmas. According to L. Sprague de Camp
L. Sprague de Camp
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors...

, Blavatsky's concept of Lemuria was influenced by other contemporaneous writers on the theme of Lost Continents, notably Ignatius L. Donnelly, American cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...

 leader Thomas Lake Harris
Thomas Lake Harris
Thomas Lake Harris was an American mystic, spiritualistic prophet and poet.-Early life:Harris was born at Fenny Stratford in Buckinghamshire, England. His parents were Calvinistic Baptists, and very poor. They settled at Utica, New York, when Harris was five years old...

 and the French writer Louis Jacolliot
Louis Jacolliot
Louis Jacolliot was a French barrister, colonial judge, author and lecturer.Born in Charolles, Saône-et-Loire, he lived several years in Tahiti and India during the period 1865-1869....

.

Within Blavatsky's complex cosmology, which includes seven "Root Race
Root race
Root Races are stages in human evolution in the esoteric cosmology of theosophist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, as described in her book The Secret Doctrine . These races were said to have existed on now-lost continents. Blavatsky's model was developed by later theosophists, most notably William...

s", Lemuria was occupied by the "Third Root Race", described as about 7 feet (2.1 m) tall, sexually hermaphroditic
Hermaphrodite
In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...

, 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
Atlantis
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....

.

One of the most elaborate accounts of lost continents was given by the later theosophical author William Scott-Elliot
William Scott-Elliot
William Scott-Elliot was a theosophist who elaborated Helena Blavatsky's concept of root races in several publications, most notably The Story of Atlantis and The Lost Lemuria , later combined in 1925 into a single volume called The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria.-Theosophical...

. The English theosophist received his knowledge from Charles Webster Leadbeater
Charles Webster Leadbeater
Charles Webster Leadbeater was an influential member of the Theosophical Society, author on occult subjects and co-initiator with J. I. Wedgwood of the Liberal Catholic Church...

, who communicated with the Theosophical Masters by "astral clairvoyance". 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.

James Bramwell described Lemuria in his book, Lost Atlantis, as "a continent that occupied a large part of what is now the South Pacific Ocean." Bramwell described the people of Lemuria in detail and attributed them with being 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
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...

 race arose. "Lemurians, Atlanteans, and Aryans are root-races of humanity", according to Bramwell.

Lemuria and Mount Shasta

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
Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta is located at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California and at is the second highest peak in the Cascades and the fifth highest in California...

 in northern California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. Oliver claimed the Lemurians lived in a complex of tunnels beneath the mountain and occasionally were seen walking the surface dressed in white robes.

This belief has been repeated by such individuals as the cultist Guy Warren Ballard in the 1930s who formed the I AM Foundation. It is also repeated by followers of the Ascended Masters
Ascended master
Ascended Masters, in the Ascended Master Teachings is derived from the Theosophical concept of Masters of the Ancient Wisdom or "Mahatmas", though they differ in important aspects...

 and the Great White Brotherhood
Great White Brotherhood
The Great White Brotherhood, in belief systems akin to Theosophical and New Age, are said to be supernatural beings of great power who spread spiritual teachings through selected humans. The members of the Brotherhood may be known as the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom or the Ascended Masters...

. This list includes such organizations as Bridge to Freedom, The Summit Lighthouse
The Summit Lighthouse
The Summit Lighthouse is an international New Age spiritual organization founded in 1958 by Mark L. Prophet. Today it is the outreach arm of Church Universal and Triumphant, founded in 1975 by Prophet's wife, Elizabeth Clare Prophet...

, Church Universal and Triumphant
Church Universal and Triumphant
Church Universal and Triumphant is an international New Age religious organization founded in 1975 by Elizabeth Clare Prophet. It is an outgrowth of The Summit Lighthouse, founded in 1958 by Prophet's husband, Mark L. Prophet...

, and The Hearts Center. Nowadays this thesis is also described by Kryon.

Kumari Kandam and Lemuria

Kumari Kandam
Kumari Kandam
Kumari Kandam is the name of a supposed sunken landmass referred to in existing ancient Tamil literature...

 is a legendary sunken kingdom sometimes compared with Lemuria (Tamil இலெமூரியா; cf. works of G. Devaneyan, Tamil: ஞானமுத்தன் தேவநேயன்). In Tamil tradition, Kumari Kandam is referred to as the Land of Purity, a sophisticated kingdom of higher learning, located south of Kanyakumari
Kanyakumari
Kanyakumari is a town in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. It is also sometimes referred to as Cape Comorin. Located at the southernmost tip of the Indian Peninsula, it is the geographical end of the Indian mainland. The district in Tamil Nadu where the town is located is called Kanyakumari...

 (Cape Comorin).

See also

  • Evolution of lemurs, primate from Madagascar
    Madagascar
    The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

  • Lost city
    Lost city
    A "Lost City" is a term that is generally considered to refer to a well-populated area which fell into terminal decline, became extensively or completely uninhabited, and whose location has been forgotten. Some lost cities whose locations have been rediscovered have been studied extensively by...

  • Mu (lost continent)
    Mu (lost continent)
    Mu is the name of a hypothetical continent that allegedly existed in one of Earth's oceans, but disappeared at the dawn of human history.The concept and the name were proposed by 19th century traveler and writer Augustus Le Plongeon, who claimed that several ancient civilizations, such as those of...

  • Phantom island
    Phantom island
    Phantom islands are islands that were believed to exist, and appeared on maps for a period of time during recorded history, but were later removed after they were proved to be nonexistent...

  • Ramtha

Further reading


External links

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