The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories
Sumathi Ramaswamy
Copyright Date: 2004
Published by: University of California Press
Pages: 351
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pnqbz
About the Book
During the nineteenth century, Lemuria was imagined as a land that once bridged India and Africa but disappeared into the ocean millennia ago, much like Atlantis. A sustained meditation on a lost place from a lost time, this elegantly written book is the first to explore Lemuria’s incarnations across cultures, from Victorian-era science to Euro-American occultism to colonial and postcolonial India. The Lost Land of Lemuria widens into a provocative exploration of the poetics and politics of loss to consider how this sentiment manifests itself in a fascination with vanished homelands, hidden civilizations, and forgotten peoples. More than a consideration of nostalgia, it shows how ideas once entertained but later discarded in the metropole can travel to the periphery—and can be appropriated by those seeking to construct a meaningful world within the disenchantment of modernity. Sumathi Ramaswamy ultimately reveals how loss itself has become a condition of modernity, compelling us to rethink the politics of imagination and creativity in our day.
About the Author
Sumathi Ramaswamy is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, editor of Beyond Appearances: Visual Practices and Ideologies in Modern India (2003), and author of Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970 (California, 1997).
Lost Land Of Lemuria.pdf - PDF Drive
https://www.pdfdrive.com › lost-land-of-lemuriapdf-e19236703
832 Pages·2011·22.38 MB·49,504 Downloads. Lost Books of the Bible: The Great Rejected Texts. Table of Contents. Section One. Lost Scriptures The .
Lost Land and the Myth of Kumari Kandam
S.C. JAYAKARAN
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.730.452&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Abstract: The concept of Lemuria was born in the 1860s when certain British geologists noted the striking similarity between rock formations and fossils found in India and Africa. There is confusion between the concept of the lost land south of India linked with the literary history of Tamil tradition and the myth of the lost land of Lemuria. With reference to the records of sea level fluctuations, climatic changes, glacial advances and glacial retreats, this article tries to trace the factors that had given rise to the myth of Kumari Kandam and briefly touches upon the development of the European concept of Lemuria that found its way into the Tamil literary tradition
The Lost Continent of Kumari Kandam | Ancient Origins
https://www.ancient-origins.net › myths-legends › lost-continent-kumari-k...
According to the stories, there was a portion of land that was once ruled by the Pandiyan kings and was swallowed by the sea. When narratives about Lemuria ...
Jan 3, 2016 - Download Full PDF EBOOK here { http://bit.ly/2m6jJ5M } . ... Lemuria is the name of a hypothetical "lost land" variously located in the Indian and ...
JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES
Volume 64, Issue 3
August 2005 , pp. 787-789
The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories. By Sumathi Ramaswamy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004. xvii, 334 pp. $60.00 (cloth).
Kristin Bloomer (a1)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911805002032
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 20
(PDF) Review of The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous ...
www.academia.edu › Review_of_The_Lost_Land_of_Lemuria_Fabulous_G...
Review of The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories, by Sumathi Ramaswamy. Rick Weiss.
The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories (review)
Mary Elizabeth Hancock
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
The MIT Press
Volume 37, Number 3, Winter 2007
pp. 495-496
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/205706/pdf
RAMASWAMY, SUMATHI, The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories, Berkeley: UC Press. 2004. Pp. xvii, 334. $21.95
2006
Author(s): York, Laura
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5sx8385h
Barrow on Ramaswamy, 'The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous ...
https://networks.h-net.org › node › reviews › barrow-ramaswamy-lost-land...
The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. xvii + 332 pp. ISBN 978-0-520-24032-2 ...
Sumathi Ramaswamy, The Lost Land of Lemuria - Chicago ...
www.journals.uchicago.edu › doi › pdf
The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories. By Sumathi Ramaswamy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Pp. xvii+334.
Lemuria. A modern journey to a lost continent. Lemuria. Lemuria was given it's name in the 1800s, they used lost continent as an explanation for the inconsistent
Rudolf Steiner – Atlantis and Lemuria
www.tbm100.org › Lib › Ste11
by R STEINER - 1911 - Cited by 2 - Related articles
These remarkable "lost" root races developed the first concepts of "good" and "evil," ... To-day it is this land which forms the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
The lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria - Anthroposophical ...
https://www.anthroposophy.ca › wp-content › uploads › 2018/04 › Keppie...
Paul, Ascension, and Tristan d'Acunha are the peaks of this land which still remain above water. A line of 3,500 fathoms, or say 21,000 feet, is required to sound ..
HINDU ATTACK ON TAMIL LEMURIAN LEGENDS
The Lemuria myth - Frontline
https://frontline.thehindu.com › the-nation › article30175192
Apr 22, 2011 - THE LEMURIAN AS conceived by W. Scott Elliot, a staunch Theosophist who published, in 1904, 'The Lost Lemuria'. ... Trying to explain the presence of fossil lemurs in Madagascar, he proposed that the Indian Ocean ... Kerala government passes ordinance to defer payment of part of its employees' salary.
The Lost Continent of Lemuria is an academic paper written and designed by Lita Ledesma for “History of the Western Book,” a graduate course taught by Casey Smith at the Corcoran College of Art & Design in the Fall 2012 semester.
https://issuu.com/litaledesma/docs/lemuria
Lost Continents & Sunken Civilizations - MSU Anthropology
anthropology.msu.edu › anp364-fs17 › files › 2012/10 › ANP364-Lost-C...
➁ CONNECTING THE MAYA TO LOST LANDS AND ADVANCED. CIVILIZATIONS ... LEMURIA. (THE OTHER LOST CONTINENT…AND THE LAND THE OF.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN BLOG
History of Geology
A Geologist's Dream: The Lost Continent of Lemuria
By David Bressan on May 10, 2013
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/a-geologists-dream-the-lost-continent-of-lemuria/
"Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream."
"A Dream Within A Dream"
by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
There is lot fuzz about the discovery of a slab of granite embedded into basaltic rocks of the oceanic crust - granite is a rock typical of continental crust (including island arcs), which prompted journalists to claim the discovery of a sunken continent (and no, dear journalists, granite is not formed on dry land, as plutonic rocks crystallize in the underground). Already Alfred Wegener demonstrated that continents can't simply sink, as granite has a lower mass density (2,7g/cc) it will "float" on the denser mantle materials (3g/cc).
However in past centuries lost continents were at least a geological possibility.
In the 19th century naturalists realized that many similar animals were distributed on different continents or remote islands. For short distances this was explainable by (voluntary or involuntarily) migration across the sea by "hopping" from island to island, but many distances were too great for large terrestrial animals, especially for mammals.
The British lawyer and zoologist Philip Lutley Sclater (1829-1913) noted the particular distribution of a particular group of primates - the Lemurs. Sclater however included in his Lemuridae more species than modern zoologists - the Lemurs, the Indri and the Aye-aye (found on Madagascar and shown above in a figure from SCLATER 1899), the Galagos (found in Africa), the Loris (found in Asia) and the Tarsiers (found in Indonesia). He observed that "while 30 different species of Lemurs are found in Madagascar alone, all of Africa contains some 11 or 12, while the Indian region has only 3." In a short essay of 1864 titled "The Mammals of Madagascar", published in the "The Quarterly Journal of Science", he provided a possible answer - Madagascar, with it's rich diversity of species, was the primordial homeland of lemurs which spread all over Asia and Africa by a land bridge connecting once these continents - he speculated even on a connection to America. He named this supposed land bridge/continent appropriately "Lemuria".
"The anomalies of the Mammal fauna of Madagascar can best be explained by supposing that anterior to the existence of Africa in its present shape, a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans stretching out towards (what is now) America to the west, and to India and its islands on the east; that this continent was broken up into islands, of which some have became amalgamated with the present continent of Africa, and some, possibly, with what is now Asia; and that in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands we have existing relics of this great continent, for which as the original focus of the "Stirps Lemurum," I should propose the name Lemuria!"
In later works he was more cautious:
"This fact would seem to show that the ancient "Lemuria", as the hypothetical continent which was originally the home of the Lemurs has been termed, must have extended across the Indian Ocean and the Indian Peninsula to the further side of the Bay of Bengal and over the great islands of the Indian Archipelago."
SCLATER & SCLATER (1899): "The Geography of Mammals."
Sclater was not the first to promote ancient land bridges or even a sunken continent in the Indian Ocean, as the idea of oceans as drown landmasses was a plausible geological theory at the time.
The French geologist Etienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire had speculated about a connection between Madagascar and India in 1840, the English geologist Searles V. Wood (1830-1884) hypothesized the existence of a giant southern continent during the "secondary era" (our Mesozoic). Alfred R. Wallace (1823-1913) proposed in 1859 a sunken continent to explain the fauna found on the island of Celebes, but became later one of the most eloquent critics of the theory of sunken landmasses.
In 1868 the German biologist Ernst Haeckel published his "Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte" (The history of Creation), addressed to a general public where he promoted his view of evolution. Haeckel considered the earliest humans descending from Asian primates and placed the cradle of humanity in Asia, Africa and very cautiously on the hypothetical island between these two continents. Lemuria played a major role as possible migration route of humans into Africa and Indonesia.
In later editions and the English version of the book, translated by Ray Lankester in 1876, the supposed continent is even emphasised and labelled in the map as "Paradise" and displayed as cradle of humanity.
"The primeval home, or the "Centre of Creation", of the Malays must be looked for in the south-eastern part of the Asiatic continent, or possibly in the more extensive continent which existed at the time when further India was directly connected with the Sunda Archipelago and eastern Lemuria."
HAECKEL (1876): "The history of Creation."
Fig.2. and 3. Ernst Haeckel, "A hypothetical sketch of the monophyletic origin and extension of the twelve races of Man from Lemuria over Earth", from "Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte", Plate XV. Note the differences in the German version (1868) without Lemuria and the English version (1876) with Lemuria, after 1870 Haeckel adopted and promoted the idea of a sunken continent in the Indian Ocean (image in public domain).
"The probable primeval home or "Paradise" is here assumed to be Lemuria, a tropical continent at present lying below the level of the Indian Ocean, the former existence of which in the tertiary period seems very probable from numerous facts in animal and vegetable geography. But it is also very possible that the hypothetical "cradle of the human race" lay further to the east (in Hindostan or Further India), or further to the west (in eastern Africa)."
HAECKEL in 1870.
Haeckels work, as vague at is was, however spread the idea of sunken continents to a larger public, still in 1919 the British author Herbert George Wells wrote:
"We do not know yet the region in which the ancestors of the brownish Neolithic peoples worked their way up from the Palaeolithic stage of human development. Probably it was somewhere about south-western Asia, or in some region now submerged beneath the Mediterranean Sea or the Indian Ocean, that, while the Neanderthal men still lived their hard lives in the bleak climate of a glaciated Europe, the ancestors, of the white men developed the rude arts of their Later Palaeolithic period."
WELLS (1919): "Outline of History."
The idea of Lemuria, as lost cradle of humankind, was too intriguing for pseudoscientific and esoteric groups and authors not to be incorporated in their worldview.
In 1888 the Russian medium Elena Petrovna Blavatskaja (1831-1891), strongly influenced by Asian philosophy, published her book on "The secret doctrine", in which she proposes Lemuria as the cradle of one of the seven races of humanity. These beings supposedly possessed four arms and eyes and were egg-laying hermaphrodites, sharing Lemuria with dinosaurs. The mythical Lemuria became part of popular culture…
Bibliography:
RAMASWAMY, S. (2004): The lost land of Lemuria - Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. University of California Press: 334
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
My name is David Bressan and I'm a freelance geologist working mainly in the Austroalpine crystalline rocks and the South Alpine Palaeozoic and Mesozoic cover-sediments in the Eastern Alps. I graduated with a project on Rock Glaciers dynamics and hydrology, this phase left a special interest for quaternary deposits and modern glacial environments. During my research on glaciers, studying old maps, photography and reports on the former extent of these features, I became interested in history, especially the development of geomorphologic and geological concepts by naturalists and geologists. Living in one of the key area for the history of geology, I combine field trips with the historic research done in these regions, accompanied by historic maps and depictions. I discuss broadly also general geological concepts, especially in glaciology, seismology, volcanology, palaeontology and the relationship of society and geology.
Mount Shasta Annotated Bibliography
Chapter 16
Legends: Lemuria
https://www.siskiyous.edu/library/shasta/documents/AB_Ch16.pdf
The lowly primate, the lemur, was named after ancient Roman mythological ghosts called 'lemures.' According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1970, there was a Roman festival called 'Lemuria.' But the modern name of 'Lemuria' was named for the mammal lemur. In the mid-19th Century paleontologists coined the term 'Lemuria' to describe a hypothetical continent, bridging the Indian Ocean, which would have explained the migration of lemurs from Madagascar to India. Lemuria was a continent which submerged and was no longer to be seen. By the late 19th Century occult theories had developed, mostly through the theosophists, that the people of this lost continent of Lemuria were highly advanced beings. The location of the folklore 'Lemuria' changed over time to include much of the Pacific Ocean. In the 1880s a Siskiyou County, California, resident named Frederick Spencer Oliver wrote A Dweller on Two Planets, or, the Dividing of the Way which described a secret city inside of Mt. Shasta, and in passing mentioned Lemuria. Edgar Lucian Larkin, a writer and astronomer, wrote in 1913 an article in which he reviewed the Oliver book. In 1925 a writer by the name of Selvius wrote "Descendants of Lemuria: A Description of an Ancient Cult in America" which was published in the Mystic Triangle, Aug., 1925 and which was entirely about the mystic Lemurian village at Mt. Shasta. Selvius reported that Larkin had seen the Lemurian village through a telescope. In 1931 Wishar Spenle Cervé published a widely read book entitled Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific in which the Selvius material appeared in a slightly elaborated fashion. The Lemurian–Mt. Shasta legend has developed into one of Mt. Shasta's most prominent legends. The entries in this section document the books and articles about Mt. Shasta and its Lemurians.
THE LOST LEMURIA
W. Scott-Elliot
1904
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.222654/page/n9/mode/2up
NOTE
W. SCOTT-ELLIOT (d. 1930), banker, amateur anthropologist, and adherent of Theosophy, wrote two influential books of pseudoscience, The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904) which attempted to explore the histories of the two titular lost continents in light of Helena Blavatsky's theories about root races and ancient history. These books were combined in 1925 as The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria, which H. P. Lovecraft read and used as an important influence on the development of the Cthulhu Mythos. This copy of The Lost Lemuria is reproduced from the 1904 edition and is included in my book, Theosophy on Ancient Astronauts
https://archive.org/details/lemuriawisharcerve/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/TheMountainTopsOfLemuria/page/n33/mode/2up
www.tbm100.org › Lib › Ste11
by R STEINER - 1911 - Cited by 2 - Related articles
These remarkable "lost" root races developed the first concepts of "good" and "evil," ... To-day it is this land which forms the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
The lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria - Anthroposophical ...
https://www.anthroposophy.ca › wp-content › uploads › 2018/04 › Keppie...
Paul, Ascension, and Tristan d'Acunha are the peaks of this land which still remain above water. A line of 3,500 fathoms, or say 21,000 feet, is required to sound ..
Their land was once much, much bigger, but it was sunk into the sea by Uoke because of the sins of its inhabitants. Not only legends, but the Earth itself testifies to ..
by A Crowley - Cited by 8 - Related articles
PDF Creator Stanton Studios www.bonatus.com Find more books. LIBER ... declare, so far as may found possible, the truth about that mysterious lost land. ... The root is the Lemurian "Tla" or "Tlas", black, for reasons which will appear in due.The Lemuria myth - Frontline
https://frontline.thehindu.com › the-nation › article30175192
Apr 22, 2011 - THE LEMURIAN AS conceived by W. Scott Elliot, a staunch Theosophist who published, in 1904, 'The Lost Lemuria'. ... Trying to explain the presence of fossil lemurs in Madagascar, he proposed that the Indian Ocean ... Kerala government passes ordinance to defer payment of part of its employees' salary.
The Lost Continent of Lemuria is an academic paper written and designed by Lita Ledesma for “History of the Western Book,” a graduate course taught by Casey Smith at the Corcoran College of Art & Design in the Fall 2012 semester.
https://issuu.com/litaledesma/docs/lemuria
Lost Continents & Sunken Civilizations - MSU Anthropology
anthropology.msu.edu › anp364-fs17 › files › 2012/10 › ANP364-Lost-C...
➁ CONNECTING THE MAYA TO LOST LANDS AND ADVANCED. CIVILIZATIONS ... LEMURIA. (THE OTHER LOST CONTINENT…AND THE LAND THE OF.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN BLOG
History of Geology
A Geologist's Dream: The Lost Continent of Lemuria
By David Bressan on May 10, 2013
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/a-geologists-dream-the-lost-continent-of-lemuria/
"Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream."
"A Dream Within A Dream"
by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
There is lot fuzz about the discovery of a slab of granite embedded into basaltic rocks of the oceanic crust - granite is a rock typical of continental crust (including island arcs), which prompted journalists to claim the discovery of a sunken continent (and no, dear journalists, granite is not formed on dry land, as plutonic rocks crystallize in the underground). Already Alfred Wegener demonstrated that continents can't simply sink, as granite has a lower mass density (2,7g/cc) it will "float" on the denser mantle materials (3g/cc).
However in past centuries lost continents were at least a geological possibility.
In the 19th century naturalists realized that many similar animals were distributed on different continents or remote islands. For short distances this was explainable by (voluntary or involuntarily) migration across the sea by "hopping" from island to island, but many distances were too great for large terrestrial animals, especially for mammals.
The British lawyer and zoologist Philip Lutley Sclater (1829-1913) noted the particular distribution of a particular group of primates - the Lemurs. Sclater however included in his Lemuridae more species than modern zoologists - the Lemurs, the Indri and the Aye-aye (found on Madagascar and shown above in a figure from SCLATER 1899), the Galagos (found in Africa), the Loris (found in Asia) and the Tarsiers (found in Indonesia). He observed that "while 30 different species of Lemurs are found in Madagascar alone, all of Africa contains some 11 or 12, while the Indian region has only 3." In a short essay of 1864 titled "The Mammals of Madagascar", published in the "The Quarterly Journal of Science", he provided a possible answer - Madagascar, with it's rich diversity of species, was the primordial homeland of lemurs which spread all over Asia and Africa by a land bridge connecting once these continents - he speculated even on a connection to America. He named this supposed land bridge/continent appropriately "Lemuria".
"The anomalies of the Mammal fauna of Madagascar can best be explained by supposing that anterior to the existence of Africa in its present shape, a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans stretching out towards (what is now) America to the west, and to India and its islands on the east; that this continent was broken up into islands, of which some have became amalgamated with the present continent of Africa, and some, possibly, with what is now Asia; and that in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands we have existing relics of this great continent, for which as the original focus of the "Stirps Lemurum," I should propose the name Lemuria!"
In later works he was more cautious:
"This fact would seem to show that the ancient "Lemuria", as the hypothetical continent which was originally the home of the Lemurs has been termed, must have extended across the Indian Ocean and the Indian Peninsula to the further side of the Bay of Bengal and over the great islands of the Indian Archipelago."
SCLATER & SCLATER (1899): "The Geography of Mammals."
Sclater was not the first to promote ancient land bridges or even a sunken continent in the Indian Ocean, as the idea of oceans as drown landmasses was a plausible geological theory at the time.
The French geologist Etienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire had speculated about a connection between Madagascar and India in 1840, the English geologist Searles V. Wood (1830-1884) hypothesized the existence of a giant southern continent during the "secondary era" (our Mesozoic). Alfred R. Wallace (1823-1913) proposed in 1859 a sunken continent to explain the fauna found on the island of Celebes, but became later one of the most eloquent critics of the theory of sunken landmasses.
In 1868 the German biologist Ernst Haeckel published his "Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte" (The history of Creation), addressed to a general public where he promoted his view of evolution. Haeckel considered the earliest humans descending from Asian primates and placed the cradle of humanity in Asia, Africa and very cautiously on the hypothetical island between these two continents. Lemuria played a major role as possible migration route of humans into Africa and Indonesia.
In later editions and the English version of the book, translated by Ray Lankester in 1876, the supposed continent is even emphasised and labelled in the map as "Paradise" and displayed as cradle of humanity.
"The primeval home, or the "Centre of Creation", of the Malays must be looked for in the south-eastern part of the Asiatic continent, or possibly in the more extensive continent which existed at the time when further India was directly connected with the Sunda Archipelago and eastern Lemuria."
HAECKEL (1876): "The history of Creation."
Fig.2. and 3. Ernst Haeckel, "A hypothetical sketch of the monophyletic origin and extension of the twelve races of Man from Lemuria over Earth", from "Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte", Plate XV. Note the differences in the German version (1868) without Lemuria and the English version (1876) with Lemuria, after 1870 Haeckel adopted and promoted the idea of a sunken continent in the Indian Ocean (image in public domain).
"The probable primeval home or "Paradise" is here assumed to be Lemuria, a tropical continent at present lying below the level of the Indian Ocean, the former existence of which in the tertiary period seems very probable from numerous facts in animal and vegetable geography. But it is also very possible that the hypothetical "cradle of the human race" lay further to the east (in Hindostan or Further India), or further to the west (in eastern Africa)."
HAECKEL in 1870.
Haeckels work, as vague at is was, however spread the idea of sunken continents to a larger public, still in 1919 the British author Herbert George Wells wrote:
"We do not know yet the region in which the ancestors of the brownish Neolithic peoples worked their way up from the Palaeolithic stage of human development. Probably it was somewhere about south-western Asia, or in some region now submerged beneath the Mediterranean Sea or the Indian Ocean, that, while the Neanderthal men still lived their hard lives in the bleak climate of a glaciated Europe, the ancestors, of the white men developed the rude arts of their Later Palaeolithic period."
WELLS (1919): "Outline of History."
The idea of Lemuria, as lost cradle of humankind, was too intriguing for pseudoscientific and esoteric groups and authors not to be incorporated in their worldview.
In 1888 the Russian medium Elena Petrovna Blavatskaja (1831-1891), strongly influenced by Asian philosophy, published her book on "The secret doctrine", in which she proposes Lemuria as the cradle of one of the seven races of humanity. These beings supposedly possessed four arms and eyes and were egg-laying hermaphrodites, sharing Lemuria with dinosaurs. The mythical Lemuria became part of popular culture…
Bibliography:
RAMASWAMY, S. (2004): The lost land of Lemuria - Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. University of California Press: 334
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
My name is David Bressan and I'm a freelance geologist working mainly in the Austroalpine crystalline rocks and the South Alpine Palaeozoic and Mesozoic cover-sediments in the Eastern Alps. I graduated with a project on Rock Glaciers dynamics and hydrology, this phase left a special interest for quaternary deposits and modern glacial environments. During my research on glaciers, studying old maps, photography and reports on the former extent of these features, I became interested in history, especially the development of geomorphologic and geological concepts by naturalists and geologists. Living in one of the key area for the history of geology, I combine field trips with the historic research done in these regions, accompanied by historic maps and depictions. I discuss broadly also general geological concepts, especially in glaciology, seismology, volcanology, palaeontology and the relationship of society and geology.
Mount Shasta Annotated Bibliography
Chapter 16
Legends: Lemuria
https://www.siskiyous.edu/library/shasta/documents/AB_Ch16.pdf
The lowly primate, the lemur, was named after ancient Roman mythological ghosts called 'lemures.' According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1970, there was a Roman festival called 'Lemuria.' But the modern name of 'Lemuria' was named for the mammal lemur. In the mid-19th Century paleontologists coined the term 'Lemuria' to describe a hypothetical continent, bridging the Indian Ocean, which would have explained the migration of lemurs from Madagascar to India. Lemuria was a continent which submerged and was no longer to be seen. By the late 19th Century occult theories had developed, mostly through the theosophists, that the people of this lost continent of Lemuria were highly advanced beings. The location of the folklore 'Lemuria' changed over time to include much of the Pacific Ocean. In the 1880s a Siskiyou County, California, resident named Frederick Spencer Oliver wrote A Dweller on Two Planets, or, the Dividing of the Way which described a secret city inside of Mt. Shasta, and in passing mentioned Lemuria. Edgar Lucian Larkin, a writer and astronomer, wrote in 1913 an article in which he reviewed the Oliver book. In 1925 a writer by the name of Selvius wrote "Descendants of Lemuria: A Description of an Ancient Cult in America" which was published in the Mystic Triangle, Aug., 1925 and which was entirely about the mystic Lemurian village at Mt. Shasta. Selvius reported that Larkin had seen the Lemurian village through a telescope. In 1931 Wishar Spenle Cervé published a widely read book entitled Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific in which the Selvius material appeared in a slightly elaborated fashion. The Lemurian–Mt. Shasta legend has developed into one of Mt. Shasta's most prominent legends. The entries in this section document the books and articles about Mt. Shasta and its Lemurians.
THE LOST LEMURIA
W. Scott-Elliot
1904
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.222654/page/n9/mode/2up
NOTE
W. SCOTT-ELLIOT (d. 1930), banker, amateur anthropologist, and adherent of Theosophy, wrote two influential books of pseudoscience, The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904) which attempted to explore the histories of the two titular lost continents in light of Helena Blavatsky's theories about root races and ancient history. These books were combined in 1925 as The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria, which H. P. Lovecraft read and used as an important influence on the development of the Cthulhu Mythos. This copy of The Lost Lemuria is reproduced from the 1904 edition and is included in my book, Theosophy on Ancient Astronauts
The History of Atlantis
by Lewis Spence
https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/books/TheHistoryofAtlantis_10017582
Review
Lewis Spence, a prolific author and journalist, was one of the world's foremost researchers into the lost civilization of Atlantis. The History of Atlantis is one of five works the author wrote on the topic, and perhaps his most well-known. Spence's goal with this title was to offer a historical treatment of Atlantis, the mythical sunken land that's mere existence is still debated.
Over the course of sixteen chapters, Spence presents his evidence for the existence of Atlantis, as well as a supposed history and examination of daily life in the lost land. The author begins by outlining the historical sources on which he has relied. The most prominent source is the writing of Plato, the great Greek philosopher. After presenting his sources, Spence launches into his history of the continent. Subjects addressed include the people of Atlantis, the ruling Kings, the traditions of Atlantis, religion, animal life, and the Atlantean culture-complex, among other topics. Spence presents each discussion in great detail, painting a vivid picture of the now-submerged continent. There is no doubt that The History of Atlantis is a quality work.
Over the course of sixteen chapters, Spence presents his evidence for the existence of Atlantis, as well as a supposed history and examination of daily life in the lost land. The author begins by outlining the historical sources on which he has relied. The most prominent source is the writing of Plato, the great Greek philosopher. After presenting his sources, Spence launches into his history of the continent. Subjects addressed include the people of Atlantis, the ruling Kings, the traditions of Atlantis, religion, animal life, and the Atlantean culture-complex, among other topics. Spence presents each discussion in great detail, painting a vivid picture of the now-submerged continent. There is no doubt that The History of Atlantis is a quality work.
Excerpt
Again, I have, I think, thrown much new light on the character of the Atlantean invasion of Europe, on the exact site of Atlantis, and especially on the great amount of evidence for the former existence of the island-continent which survives in British and Irish folklore and tradition. British tradition, indeed, is the touchstone of Atlantean history, and the identification of Lyonesse with Atlantis, and the grouping of Atlas with the British gods, Albion and Iberius, should go far to prove the ancient association of our islands with the sunken continent.
https://archive.org/details/lemuriawisharcerve/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/TheMountainTopsOfLemuria/page/n33/mode/2up
