The concept of Lemuria was born in the 1860s
when a group of British geologists noted the striking
similarity between fossils and sedimentary strata found in
India and South Africa.
Geologists noted that strata of Permian
age in India, South Africa, Australia, and South America
(245 to 286 million years ago) were almost identical in the
types of sedimentary rocks that comprised them. In addition,
these strata on these continents contained identical fossils of
land plants, e.g. cordaites and "Glossopteris" and land
animals, e.g. Therapsids.
Because these land plants and
animals could not have crossed the open sea and continents
were thought to be immobile, geologists explained the
presence of identical fossil plants and animals on India,
Africa, South America, and Australia by postulating the
existence of land bridges and even whole continents that
had long since sunk beneath the oceans. In one case, they
postulated the existence a large land bridge that once
connected India and South Africa.
Ernest Heinrich Haekel, a strong advocate of the
evolutionary theory of Darwin
used the hypothetical land bridge in his theorizing.
Haekel used it to
explain the distribution of lemurs in Africa, India,
Madagascar, and Malaya Peninsula. He proposed that
this hypothetical land-bridge had stayed above water long
enough for it have served as the means by which lemurs
spread into these areas. The English biologist, Philip L.
Scalter named this land bridge "Lemuria" because of its
hypothesized association with lemurs. Thus, Lemuria
was neither named nor conceived of by prehistoric people,
but by geologists and biologists in the 1800s.
When plate tectonics and other more prosaic
theories better explained the distribution of strata, fossils,
and lemurs, it became clear that Lemuria and other such
continents and land bridges never really existed, e.g.
Wicander and Monroe (1989).
Lemuria was reincarnated as a lost continent by Madame
Blavatsky, the greatest of the modern occultists. Madame
Blavatsky incorporated this concept of Lemuria
in a book, Lemuria
became a lost continent, although still in the Indian Ocean,
populated by ape-like hermaphroditic egg-laying creatures.
Later writers of occult, lost-continent tales, e.g. Annie Besant,
W. Scott-Elliot added their own detail and embellishment to
the story of Lemuria, including dinosaurs and 12 to 15-foot
bronze humanoids. The final event in the reincarnation of
Lemuria occurred when writers of occult books moved the
location of Lemuria from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific
Ocean. Since then, mystics and psychics
have written innumerable books about Lemuria and either
tuned into the spiritual essence and vibrations or channeled
for the spirits of long departed Lemurians who never existed
to begin with.
When the theory of continental drift was developed, people
realized that it and other more prosaic theories explained
the distribution of animals, fossils, and plants better then
lost continents. As a result, Lemuria was allowed to fade
away into obscurity, while eclipsed by more realistic
theories long before there were GEOSAT and SEASAT
satellite data to demonstrate the fictional nature of Lemuria.
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