What is Lemuria?
Lemuria is a phantom continent said to have once existed in the Indian Ocean and later sunk into the sea. Its name comes from the lemurs living on Madagascar and elsewhere.
Born as a scientific hypothesis
In 1864, the British zoologist Philip Sclater noticed that fossils of lemur relatives were found in both Madagascar and India, but not in Africa or the Middle East between them. He therefore suggested that land linking the two regions once existed in the Indian Ocean and named it “Lemuria.”
From hypothesis to “lost civilization”
Later, Madame Blavatsky, who taught Theosophy, and others described Lemuria as the home of an ancient civilization where humanity’s ancestors lived, and it spread as a “lost continent” alongside Atlantis and Mu. Today the theory of plate tectonics shows that the distribution of animals can be explained by continental drift, and the existence of Lemuria has been disproved.
