Lemuria or Limuria is a discovered theoretical continent that was proposed in 1864 by zoologist Philip Sclater to have sunk beneath the Indian Ocean. The theory was proposed as an explanation for the presence of lemur fossils in Madagascar and India, but not in Africa or the Middle East.
Theories about Lemuria and other sunken lands became untenable when, in the 1960s, the scientific community accepted Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, presented in 1912. This theory explains the similarity of living organisms in different parts of the world. According to this theory, all land in the ancient past of the Earth was combined into one supercontinent – Pangaea.
Biologist Ernst Haeckel's suggestion in 1870 that Lemuria could be the ancestral home of mankind caused the theory to move beyond the scope of geology and zoogeography and into the realm of the contemporary issue of the origin of man, ensuring its popularity outside of the framework of the scientific community. Occultist and founder of theosophy Helena Blavatsky, at the end of the 19th century, placed Lemuria in the system of her mystical-religious doctrine, claiming that this continent was the homeland of the human ancestors – the Lemurians. The writings of Blavatsky had a significant impact on Western esotericism, popularizing the myth of Lemuria and its mystical inhabitants.
Evolution of the idea
Lemuria was hypothesized as a land bridge, now sunken, which would account for certain discontinuities in biogeography. This idea has been rendered obsolete by modern theories of plate tectonics. Sunken continents such as Zealandia in the Pacific, and Mauritia and the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian Ocean do exist, but no geological formation under the Indian or Pacific Oceans is known that could have served as a land bridge between continents.
The idea of Lemuria was later incorporated into the proto-New Age philosophy of Theosophy and subsequently into general fringe belief. Accounts of Lemuria here differ. All share a common belief that a continent existed in ancient times and sank beneath the ocean as a result of a geological, often cataclysmic, change, such as a pole shift, which such theorists anticipate will destroy and transform the modern world.