Subject: LEMURIA, A SCIENTIFIC FRANKENSTEIN - Learn from history
From: Joseph Gill <gilljoseph1949@yahoo.com>
Date: 2025-04-24 22:34:20

LEMURIA, A SCIENTIFIC FRANKENSTEIN
The concept of Lemuria, like a scientific Frankenstein,
frequently resurfaces to haunt the European scientists
who first created it....
by Paul V. Heinrich
© Copyright Paul V. Heinrich. Used with permission.
http://www.mm2000.nu/sphinxcc.html
Lemuria was a hypothesis proposed by geologists and paleontologists to
explain the distribution of lemurs (hence its name) and Permian (250
million-year-old) animal and plant fossils before the theory of plate
tectonics. The original proposed location for Lemuria was in the
Indian Ocean not the Pacific Ocean. It was only after Lemuria was
canonized as a lost civilization, that its location was moved by
various mystics to the Pacific Ocean.

The Origin of Lemuria
The concept of Lemuria, like a scientific Frankenstein, frequently
resurfaces to haunt the European scientists who first created it.
Unknown to many people, the idea of Lemuria was not created in
prehistoric times, but rather by European and American scientists in
the late 1800s as a way of explaining the distribution of rocks,
fossils, and animals in the days before continental drift when
continents were considered immovable and immutable features of the
Earth (de Camp 1954).

The Birth of Lemuria
The concept of Lemuria was born in the 1860s and 1870s, when a group
of British geologists noted the striking similarity between fossils
and sedimentary strata found in India and South Africa. Geologists
like Stow and Blanford in India and Griesbach in Africa noted that
strata of Permian age, about (245 to 286 million years ago) in India,
South Africa, South America, and Australia were almost identical in
the type of sedimentary rocks, e.g. numerous coal beds. In addition,
these strata on these continents contained the identical fossils of
land plants, e.g. cordaites and "Glossopteris," and land animals, e.g.
Therapsids. Because such land plants and animals could not have
crossed the open sea and continents were thought to be immobile, these
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. In the "Erdegeschichte" (1887) of Neumayr, this hypothetical
land bridge was called "Indo-Madagascan Peninsula" (de Camp 1954).
Ernest Heinrich Haekel, a strong advocate of the evolutionary theory
of Darwin like Thomas Huxley, found this proposed land bridge of
"Indo-Madagascan Peninsula" useful in explaining the distribution of
animals. 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 to
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 this hypothesized association with lemurs. Thus, Lemuria
was neither named nor conceived of or by prehistoric people, but by
geologists and biologists in the 1800s (de Camp 1954). When plate
tectonics or some other equally prosaic theories clearly 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).

The Reincarnation of Lemuria
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 confused form, together with Atlantis and a
bizarre mixture of scientific, occult, and Hindu religious material,
including the "Rig-Veda," in her book, "The Secret Doctrine." In this
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 and
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 (de Camp 1954). 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.

===========================================================================================================