There were once three ancient continents, presumed to have been devoured by the waves of the big oceans in the course of history: Atlantis, Mu and Lemuria. However, there are no archaeological findings, preserved writings and especially no authentic traditions that would prove their past existence in the ancient world. At this time archaeologists are only assuming what might have been and who might have lived there.
Sometime between 90,000 and 30,000 B.C. Lemuria might have served as a gigantic land bridge, connecting Madagascar with Malaysia and Southern India. The name of this hypothetical continent was derived from the Lemurs, gnome-like apes, which today are still natives to Madagascar, Malaysia and India. Since these apes’ existence has been spread over two modern continents, these nocturnal mammals have attracted the interest of zoologists.
After the British naturalist and evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin had published his groundbreaking work on the Origin of Species in 1872, the British zoologist Philip L. Sclater postulated the existence of Lemuria as a huge land mass, which connected Africa with India and the associated islands of Southeast Asia over thousands of years ago. According to Sclater’s observations, the lemurs and some other animals had shown the same behavior in all areas of distribution even though the individual strains were separated from each other by the expanse of the Indian Ocean.
Proponents of Lemuria have relied on old world maps, showing a location in the southern hemisphere, an unknown continent given the name Terra Australis Incognita. Lemuria researchers on the other hand have always rejected the idea that the later-explored Australia could have been this unknown continent. They still insist today that Lemuria, the cradle of human race, existed million years ago, disappearing into the ocean during a pole shift.
The German astronomer and geophysicist Alfred Wegener introduced the theory of continental drift in 1915. Wegener’s theory is based on his belief that a once single, huge landmass slowly broke apart over a long period of time, causing the sinking of land and the rising of new continents. One result of this shift is the findings on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, the remains of an ancient continent and that of the Mu culture. This theory came from British cultural historian James Churchward whose main sources are the Naacal panels, holy scriptures that were shown to him by Hindu priests. These sacred writings of Mu are estimated to be about 15000 years old and refer to the story of creation, very similar to the one written in the Bible. The land was said to have had 64 million inhabitants, having reached a civilizing level that was superior to ours in many ways.
Whether the sunken continent of Lemuria truly existed at one point in the course of earth’s history is at the present time only a conjecture, a puzzle with many missing links, a mystery that is unlikely to be ever solved.
