Lemuria

Lemuria was a hypothetical continent proposed in 1864 by zoologist Philip Sclater, which would have sunk in the Indian Ocean. His proposal was later appropriated by occultists in fictional accounts and, later, conspiracy theories about the origin of humanity, despite being thoroughly discredited during the XX with the discovery of plate tectonics and continental drift.

The original hypothesis sought to explain the presence of lemur fossils in Madagascar and India, but not in Africa or the Middle East. In 1870, Ernst Haeckel suggested that Lemuria might also have been humanity's ancestral home, a postulate that took the hypothesis beyond its initial framework of study in geology and zoogeography, ensuring its popularity outside the scientific community.

At the end of the 19th century, Helena Blavatsky, occultist and founder of Theosophy, gave Lemuria an important place in the system of his mythical-religious doctrine, affirming that the continent was the homeland of the first humans, whom he called "Lemurians". Blavatsky had a major impact on Western esotericism, popularizing the myth of Lemuria and its mythical inhabitants.

All theories about Lemuria became definitively untenable when, in the 1960s, the scientific community accepted Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, presented in 1912. Despite this, Lemuria persists in certain fields of science. popular imagination, especially in relation to the Theosophical tradition and Tamil nationalism.

Evolution of the idea

Lemuria was hypothetically a continental bridge, today disappeared or sunk, which would account for or explain certain biogeographical discontinuities. This idea is totally obsolete in light of modern theories on plate tectonics, the natural phenomenon in the movement of continental masses that would make the disappearance of such vast territories impossible. Other sunken landmasses exist (eg Zealand), but there are no submerged features under the Indian Ocean that could connect or have connected India with Madagascar as originally proposed.

The idea of Lemuria was incorporated shortly after its original proposition into the philosophy of Theosophy, and then, through it, to other marginal, pseudoscientific and conspiracy theorizing currents of thought. All proposals of this nature differ from one another, but they share the common belief that a continent existed in antiquity and that it sank beneath the ocean as a result of a cataclysmic geological change.

Scientific origin

Application

In 1864 the article "The Mammals of Madagascar" ("The Mammals of Madagascar") by zoologist and biogeographer Philip Sclater. Using a nomenclature that he called & # 34;lemurs & # 34; (but which included more groups of primates than are contemplated by the taxon Lemuroidea today), Sclater noted the puzzling presence of its fossils in Madagascar and India, but not in Africa or in Middle East. Sclater proposed as an explanation a larger continent of which Madagascar and India would have originally been a part, before breaking away into a subcontinent and joining Africa and Asia respectively. He called & # 34; Lemuria & # 34; to this unknown continent.

Parallels

Scatler's theory was not unusual for its time; "land bridges", both real and hypothetical, fascinated scientists in the 19th century. Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, contemplating the same fossil problem between Madagascar and India, had already suggested a similar continent two decades before Sclater, but had not assigned a name to it. Acceptance of Darwinism led scientists to attempt to chart the path of species from its evolutionary origin to the present day, but they did not yet understand continental drift. Biologists frequently postulated the existence of submerged water masses to understand the existence of populations of terrestrial species separated by large bodies of water; in turn, geologists tried, with similar theories, to explain the striking similarities found on different continents.

Enactment

After gaining some acceptance in the scientific community, Lemuria began to appear in the work of other scholars. Ernst Haeckel, a German Darwinian taxonomist, proposed Lemuria as home to the first human species to explain the absence of a "missing link" in the fossil record.

Overcoming

The Lemurian theory disappeared completely from conventional scientific thought after the acceptance of plate tectonics and continental drift in the scientific community; according to plate tectonics, Madagascar and India were certainly part of the same landmass, Gondwana (accounting for their geological similarities), but tectonic movement caused their separation millions of years ago; in other words, Gondwana disintegrated instead of sinking under the sea.

In popular culture

Because of its historical presence in Western spiritualism and occultism, Lemuria is often named in works of fantasy and science fiction as an example of a lost continent similar to Atlantis (including Mu Online, Marvel Comics and Dark-Hunter). The Lemuria hypothesis has inspired many novelists, conductors, and musicians since the 1880s. Some of the most prominent are:

• C. S. Lewis, English writer, in his poem "The Last of the Wine".
• H. P. Lovecraft, an American writer, in his 1935 story, "The Death of Darkness."
• Gail Laughton, American jazz arpist, in his 1978 album Harps of the Ancient Temple.
• Jaime Alfonso Sandoval, a contemporary Mexican writer, in his 1999 novel The city of sfinges.
• Therion, Swedish band of symphonic metal, in his 2003 album Lemuria.
• Visions of Atlantis, Austrian synthetic metal band, in his 2018 album The Deep " the Dark.