Lemuria is the name of a hypothetical "lost land" variously located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its 19th century origins lie in attempts to account for discontinuities in biogeography. Lemuria has been rendered superfluous by modern understanding of plate tectonics.
Though Lemuria has passed out of the realm of science, it has been adopted by occult writers, as well as some Tamil people of India. Accounts of Lemuria differ according to the requirements of their contexts. However, all share a common belief that the continent existed in ancient times but sank beneath the ocean as a result of geological change, often cataclysmic.
Geologists today regard sunken continents as physical impossibilities, given the isostatic equilibrium of continental plates floating on the thermoplastic mantle.
Scientific origins
Though the living modern lemurs are only found in Madagascar and several surrounding islands, the biogeography of extinct lemurs extending from Pakistan to Malaysia inspired the name Lemuria, which was coined in 1864 by the geologist Philip Sclater in an article "The Mammals of Madagascar" in The Quarterly Journal of Science. Puzzled by the presence of fossil lemurs in both Madagascar and India, but not in Africa nor the Middle East, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent, which he named "Lemuria" for its lemurs.
Sclater's theory was hardly unusual for his time. 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.
As Lemuria gained some acceptance within the scientific community, it 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'). [1] 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, explaining distributions of species across Asia and the Americas.
The Lemuria theory disappeared completely from practical consideration after the theory of plate tectonics and continental drift were accepted by the larger scientific community.
In 1999, drilling by the JOIDES Resolution research vessel in the Indian Ocean discovered evidence [1] that a continent about a third of the size of Australia sank about 20 million years ago. Samples showed pollen and fragments of wood in a 90 million-year-old sediment. This might lead one to expect similarity of dinosaur fossil evidence and will help to understand the breakup of the Indian and Australian land masses; it does not support the concept of Lemuria as a land bridge for mammals.
Madame Blavatsky's Lemuria
Lemuria entered the lexicon of the Occult through the works of Madame Blavatsky, who claimed in the 1880s to have been shown an ancient, pre-Atlantean Book of Dzyan by the Mahatmas. Within Blavatsky's complex cosmology, which includes seven "Root Races", Lemuria was occupied by the "Third Root Race", which was about seven foot 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.
According to L. Sprague de Camp, Mme. Blavatsky was influenced by other writers on the theme of Lost Continents, notably Ignatius L. Donnelly, a cult leader named Thomas Lake Harris and the french writer Louis Jacolliot.
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 in northern California. 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 and the Great White Brotherhood. This list includes such organizations as Bridge to Freedom, The Summit Lighthouse, Church Universal and Triumphant, The Temple of The Presence, and The Hearts Center.
Popular novels have also repeated the belief that Lemurians inhabit Mount Shasta. Among such novels, Vin Smith's The Outrageous Views of Professor Fogelman links Lemurians to Ancient Egypt, UFOs and a method of travel called vortex portals--essentially a pathway to sacred places on Earth as well as points unknown in the universe.
Kumari Kandam and Lemuria
Kumari Kandam is a sunken kingdom sometimes compared with Lemuria (cf. works of G. Devaneyan, Tamil: ஞானமுத்தன் தேவநேயன்). According to these modernist interpretations of motifs in classical Tamil literature — the epics Cilappatikaram and Manimekalai that describe the submerged city of Puhar — the Dravidians originally came from land south of the present day coast of South India that became submerged by successive floods. There are various claims from Tamil authors that there was a large land mass connecting Australia and the present day Tamil Nadu coast.
Lemuria's reptilian beings
In reptilian conspiracy literature, a sunken Pacific continent (usually styled as Lemuria or Mu) is sometimes posited as the homeland of a reptilian race of creatures, often identified with dragons or nagas. Various bits of mythology and folklore are assembled in support, such as the Cambodian naga traditions. Folkloric claims of Australian aborigines sighting "dinosaur-like" creatures are also often viewed as evidence.
The earliest attestation of such notions in modern literature seems to have occurred in the works of H.P. Blavatsky, notably in The Secret Doctrine (1888), where she writes of "Dragon-men" who once had a mighty civilization on a Lemurian continent, until their rampant use of black magic brought about the end of their civilization, and their continent sank. Blavatsky in turn claims to have gotten this information from The Book of Dzyan. However, many consider that Blavatsky invented the book herself. Blavatsky believed that the terms "Dragon-men" or "Serpent-men" used to describe the Lemurian beings in the Book of Dzyan were symbolic, intended to symbolize their advanced knowledge and magical powers.
Other occurrences of the idea seem to be in the Alley Oop (1932) comic-strip, and the Brazilian Piteco (1964), where lands named Moo (or "Mu") and Lem (adapted from Mu and Lemuria respectively) are presented as dinosaur-infested lands.
