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hroughout history there has been tremendous speculation about the existence of alternate lands; places of mystery with great cultural or spiritual importance, which, unlike Heaven or Hell, were geographical in nature and thus potentially discoverable through ordinary means, either by land or by sea. Through the ages there has been much written about such places, frequently with the expectation that these would or could be provable truths, despite there being no evidence to support those claims other than the ideas found in books. From the ancient Greek philosopher Plato to the writings of present day, petitions have been made for the existence of lost lands, and the methods for supporting these notions have predominantly been in the form of printed matter. It is through this medium that I will explore the path of one of the most intriguing and storied of these imagined places: the lost continent of Lemuria.
Fig. 1: The ancient Greek philosopher Plato was the founding author of the legend of Atlantis.
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In Principio There are many lost land theories in human culture, but three in particular share a strong connection in character and in association: Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu. Though located in three different parts of the world (the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans respectively), their mythologies are frequently interchangeable depending on the source. Certainly, their characteristics, at least broadly, are kindred; all three lost lands are proposed by its creators and supporters to have existed thousands of years before recorded history. All three lands share a catastrophic end, either from flood or volcanic eruption. In all three cases, the outcome of these destructive geographical events is the total annihilation or obscuration of both the physical lands and the evidence of the cultures associated with them. Finally, with all three of these lost lands, there is an impressive tapestry of mythology, scientific investigation, and literature associated with these places which all find their roots in obscure and vague textual origins with no means of authentication beyond these sources. Like Atlantis and Mu, Lemuria has a convoluted history that is complex and unsurprisingly inconsistent. However, Lemuria is distinct in that we can identify a definitive conception point for its place in lost land mythology. Even still, Lemuria shares an overlapping and frequently conflicting lineage with Atlantis and Mu. Indeed, Lemuria’s existence has always been tied to Atlantis and later, Mu, frequently sharing in their association in key writing. At times Lemuria
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has even been considered synonymous with one or both of these other lost lands. For the purposes of this paper, I have chosen to focus on Lemuria rather than Atlantis or Mu, primarily as the former has a much richer and more fully documented trajectory of original source materials. Though my focus will be Lemuria, it is useful to briefly explain the origin story of Atlantis. The earliest known written record of Atlantis can be found in the two Platonic dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. In Timaeus, Plato identifies Atlantis when he writes of the historic conquests of the Athenians: The most famous of them all was the overthrow of the island of Atlantis. This great island lay over against the Pillars of Heracles, in extent greater than Libya and Asia put together, and was the passage to other islands and to a great ocean of which the Mediterranean sea was only the harbour; and within the Pillars the empire of Atlantis reached in Europe to Tyrrhenia and in Libya to Egypt. This mighty power was arrayed against Egypt and Hellas and all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Then your city did bravely, and won renown over the whole earth. For at the peril of her own existence, and when the other Hellenes had deserted her, she repelled the invader, and of her own accord gave liberty to all the nations within the Pillars. A little while afterwards there were great earthquakes and floods, and your warrior race all sank into the earth; and the great island of Atlantis also disappeared in the sea. This is the explanation of the shallows which are found in that part of the Atlantic Ocean. (Plato, Timaeus by Plato)
Plato’s romantic and ennobling decription of Atlantis is cricital to the development of the Alantis myth and for similar lost lands like Lemuria. It is in Plato’s idealized portrayal
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of Atlantis that this particular idea of a lost civilization of great value and unrealized potential is formed in the imaginations of the Western mind. While the idea of Atlantis was not pursued vigorously for the entire duration of Western history, it held the attention of serious players in ages past, and has surfaced in notable historical accounts and cartographical records over the centuries. Once such example can be found in the work of reknowned Jesuit scholar, Athanasius Kircher (16011680.) Kircher’s epic scientific tome, Mundus Subterraneus—itself a fascinating account of his hollow earth theories, includes in its pages a detailed map of Atlantis along with a description of its tragic end, reiterating Plato’s account of the great land subsuming to the ocean’s depths after a cataclysmic earthquake: Atlanticam Insulam ingentem omnium seculorum memoria extisse ex pracedentibus patuit; quomodo autem & quando defierit, tam ignotum est, quam ignota tempora, quibus viguit. Porro si vera sunt, quae Veteres de ea reserunt, ejus sane situm alium non esse dixerim, quam qui Canariis, Asoribus & Flandricis, caeterisque in Oceano Atlantico superstitibus Insulis com- prehenditur (uti ex apposita hic Mappa patet) cujus recensitae Insualee uti ingentibus & altissimis montibus constant, ita verisimile quoque est, altiores Atlanticae Insula durioresque partes fuisse; reiiquis interjectis minorum montium, vallium, planitierumque profundioribus locis, motu terrae absorptis, atque in eorum locum Oceano succentoriato. (Kircher 82) 1
Fig. 2: Athanasius Kircher’s map of Atlantis as found in his 1678 “Mundus Subterraneus.”
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Yet even Kircher, a brilliant man with fantastical theories of his own, seemed skeptical of this lost land tale, and made a point of noting that even if the tale were true, there is no way to verify it. Curious, then, that he included it in his book, and even more curious that he chose to produce a map locating the continent between Spain and the Americas, given his own tentative description. Perhaps Kircher, a man of faith and science who was powerfully drawn to the mysteries of ancient Egypt, could not resist the pull of the mythical continent. In any event, documents like Kircher’s map kept the myth of Atlantis afloat for future Altantis and Lemuria theories. As a cartographical record authored by a notable and celebrated scholar, its air of legitimacy was significant in spite of its lack of basis in geographical evidence.
Figs. 3, 4, & 5: Map of Atlantis based on “Critias” by Plato; map of Atlantis by Patroclus Kampanakis, published in “The Procataclysm Communication of the Two Worlds via Atlantis,” Constantinople 1893; dragon from Kircher’s “Mundus Subterraneus.”
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A Modest Proposal Unlike Atlantis, Lemuria first appeared in writing relatively recently and through a very clear authorship. British zoologist Philip L. Sclater (1829-1913) was well respected, knowledgeable in many areas, and held a position of authority in his field of expertise; he was the Secretary of the Zoological Society of London for most of his professional life. Interested in the origins of the lemur populations of Madagascar and India, Sclater spent several years in study of this creature’s possible beginnings. Notable here is Sclater’s early research on this subject, published in the 1864 edition of the British Quarterly Journal of Science, wherein he cheerfully posited a casual explanatory theory on a lemur diaspora: To conclude, therefore, granted the hypothesis of the derivative origin of species, 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 Ocean stretching out towards (what is now) America on the west, and to India and its islands on the east ; that this continent was broken up into islands, of which some 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!” (P. L. Sclater, The Mammals of Madagascar 219)
Fig. 6: The unwitting father of Lemurian mythology, P.L. Sclater.
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Figs. 7, 8, & 9: Pages from Sclater’s scientific publications.
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In crafting this sentence, Sclater did not go any further than to name his imaginary continent, but as fate would have it, this moment of conception was where the life of Lemuria truly begins. That particular sentence musing on the source of Madagascar lemurs would be the source of all mythologies concerning the fictitious land of Lemuria, of which there is a startling variety. Unwittingly, Sclater had become the father of an entire continent—soon to be populated by much more than lemurs, at least in the imaginations of its believers. This is particularly amusing since in later writings, Sclater himself seemed somewhat lukewarm about his own idea; after his initial conceptualization, he couched his Lemuria theory more carefully, such as his later publication on distribution theories of fauna: This was indeed my own opinion when, writing in 1864 upon the mammals of Madagascar, I proposed the name Lemuria for that ancient land which formerly must have occupied part of the bed of the Indian Ocean and constituted the home of the lemurine family, now so widely scattered. But I need hardly point out how difficult it is to reconcile this theory with the hypothesis of a former land-connection of Madagascar and the Antilles through Africa, which I have previously adverted to. (P. L. Sclater, Some Difficulties in Zoological Distribution 1049)
Fig. 10: Early artwork of Lemur Catta by George Edwards.
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Figs. 11 & 12: Haeckel’s hypothetical maps of Lemuria.
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Sclater would later drift away from his theory of a lost continent; while he does not abandon it altogether, he does not give the impression of an impassioned attempt to propel this claim into popular acceptance. Nevertheless, other scientists of the day latched on to Sclater’s idea of Lemuria and developed it even further. Once such person was the German zoologist and ethnographer, Ernst Haeckel (1824-1919). Haeckel’s research on identifying the missing link between modern man and his genetic ancestors led him to consider Asia. In his book, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (translated as The History of Creation), Haeckel proposed that the lost continent of Lemuria was a land bridge between Asia and Africa, explaining the spread of the first humans to the other regions of the world (below italics mine): The South Sea at one time formed a large Pacific Continent, and the numerous little islands which now lie scattered in it were simply the highest peaks of the mountains covering that continent. The Indian Ocean formed a continent which extended from the Sunda Islands along the southern coast of Asia to the east coast of Africa This large continent of former times Sclater, an Englishman, has called Lemuria, from the monkey-like animals which inhabited it, and it is at the same time of great importance from being the probable cradle of the human race, which in all likelihood here first developed out of anthropoid apes. (Haeckel, History of Creation 361)
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Haeckel’s assertions about Lemuria are markedly strong in comparison to Sclater, and are now laden with an even more striking relevance. With Haeckel’s authorship, Lemuria is no longer only an enormous land mass gone missing; Haeckel grafted onto this imagined land the idea of the origin of humanity itself, thus opening the gateway for the mythical associations with Eden and similar notions for future speculation. Haeckel’s ideas on Lemuria were not embraced wholeheartedly by the scientific community, and indeed his writings on this particular subject did not carry as much weight or have as much longevity in the arena of legitimate science as some of his other research. Though Haeckel’s work as a whole was certainly wellrespected, other theories on the possible origins of humanity led scientists to dismiss his theory in favor of other origin locations such as Africa. However, Haeckel’s statement was immensely impactful on the mythological life of Lemuria.
Figs. 13 & 14: Haeckel and the frontspiece of his “History of Creation.”
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Lemuria in the Occult The 19th century was a time of materialism and rationalism. For some, the loss of God as a supernatural deity and the concomitant loss of the Biblical origin story created a need for a replacement belief system. The cold, human-free proto-earth of the burgeoning geological sciences was not an appetizing one, nor did it comfort those seeking meaning. Thus, the 19th century was a fertile place for occultism and new age thinkers. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, also known as Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891), was one such individual. This Russian-born occultist bore a passion for finding a new theology in an age of science. Hers was not the only such endeavor of its time; Blavatsky and others like her were reacting to “spiritual and epistemological struggles against Darwinism.” (Ramaswamy 85) As Rosemary Jackson notes in Fantasy: the Literature of Subversion, “in a secularized culture, desire for otherness is not displaced into alternative regions of heaven or hell, but is directed towards the absent areas of this world, transforming it into something ‘other’ than the familiar, comfortable one. Instead of an alternative order, it creates ‘alterity,’ this world re-placed and dis-located.” (Jackson 11)
Fig. 15: The title page from Blavatsky’s Theosophical masterpiece.
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It is in this climate that Blavatsky encountered and appropriated Lemuria in the service of her mission as the leader and key founding member of the Theosophical Society, an organization of mystical thinkers with a pantheistic approach to religion that placed an emphasis on the faith systems of India. In her authoring of spiritual writings on the origins of mankind, Blavatsky employed Lemuria for her Theosophical mythologies, placing a race of pre-history titans on this lost continent in her famed treatise, The Secret Doctrine. Blavatsky was a believer in a number of supernatural phenomena including gifts such as clairvoyance, telekinesis and communication with spirits, all of which factored heavily into her own spiritual experiences and in her professed mode of authorship; among Blavatsky’s claims were that much of her spiritual texts were a kind of “automatic writing,” herself merely a kind of medium for the superior spiritual energies of her antediluvian ancestors. Blavatsky’s Theosophical ideas were in need of some form of legitimization, birthed as they were during a period where mystical thinking was increasingly unpopular. Because Lemuria had no factual basis, it was easily co-opted for her pseudo-scientific, metaphysical writings. Blavatsky’s choice of Lemuria was a good one strategically, and it would appear that she was conscious of its neutral associative
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authority. In her spiritual manifesto Blavatsky argues a case for the veracity of her version of Lemuria based on science’s fingerprints: Atlantis is denied, when not confused with Lemuria and other departed continents, because, perhaps, Lemuria is half the creation of modern science, and has, therefore, to be believed in; while Plato’s Atlantis is regarded by most of the scientists as a dream. (Blavatsky 9)
Using Sclater’s theory as a solidly scientific foundation, Blavatsky composed a complex mythology on the origins and denizens of the disappeared continent of Lemuria—the so-called “Third Root-Race”. Her theology included a world wherein multiple iterations of such proto-human races, imbued with fantastical characteristics, dwelled in a halcyon past. In the case of the Lemurian Third Root-Race, characteristics included the ability to reproduce through the laying of eggs. Drawing from the ethnographic research of Haeckel to craft a spiritually-laden alternative to evolutonary theory, Blavatsky also described the Lemurians as having African or Australian characteristics, an aspect which was used to imply a relationship between Lemurians and those populations in her time. This was significant especially because Blavatsky identified a separate Root-Race, the Fifth, as the more advanced of those early ancestors, and it was this race which she assigned to the Atlantians, and later, the Europeans such as herself. Yet her
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Lemurians, while treated to a supremacist Othering, were nevertheless seen as important in the Theosophical ideation of human spiritual development. Among the numerous documents which The Theosophical Society published to further its claims concerning Lemuria, a series of detailed and realistic maps were crafted which portrayed the Lemurian society at various points in its land and population density. This too seems shrewdly strategic in nature—a form of careful package design. Presented in a refined cartographical context, the otherwise unverifiable claims of the Theosophy Society take on the aura of methodically gathered and clinically presented scientific data.
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Figs. 16 & 17: Madame Blavatsky and her partner, Col. Olcott; a Theosophical Society map of Lemuria.
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Lemuria & Mu Twelve years after Blavatsky used Haeckel's research as a springboard for her Theosophical mythologies, the pre-Columbian antiquarian, Augustus Le Plongeon (1825-1908) was disputing Haeckel’s origin theories about Lemuria. In his fantastical historical account of the lost land of Mu, Le Plongeon asserts: There are those who pretend, like Klaproth, that the cradle of humanity is to be found on the plateau of Pamir, between the high peaks of the Himalayan ranges, or like Messrs. Eenan and Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, who place it in the region of the Timasus, in the countries where the Bible says the ‘’ Garden of Eden” was situated ; while others are equally certain man came from Lemuria, that submerged continent invented by P. L. Sclater, Ernst Haeckel believes was the birthplace of the primitive ape-man, and which they say now lies under the waves of the Indian Ocean. The truth of the matter is, that these opinions are mere conjectures, simple hypotheses, and their advocates know no more when and where man first appeared on earth than the new-born babe knows of his surroundings or how he came. (Le Plongeon viii)
LePlongeon’s skepticism concerning Lemuria is based on a lack of historical evidence, but his incredulity is undermined by his own theories which were even more far-fetched and more amply supplied by imagination. LePlongeon’s disagreement with the role of Lemuria in history stems from his desire to support Mu, not Lemuria, as the true cradle of civilization. To that end, Le Plongeon attaches his theories of Mu to Plato’s Altantis, borrowing the pedigree of antiquity. He suggests that the two continents, though in entirely different parts of the world by his own
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Figs. 18 & 19: Churchill and one of his illustrated maps of Mu.
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Figs. 20 & 21: Churchill’s migrational map of Mu; his notebook for his WNYC lectures.
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account, are one and the same. (Le Plongeon xli) Perhaps because of this favored approach, he determined it necessary to disassociate his theories of Mu with the lost land of Lemuria. However, probably the most prominent supporter of Mu, Col. James Churchward (1851-1936) disagreed with Le Plongeon. Churchward devoted years of his life to the painstaking documentation of his theories and understandings of Mu, leaving behind a legacy of quaintly hand-painted maps and illustrations of this undiscovered country among his personal notebooks. Churchward had a great sense of certainty as to the geographical location of his Mu, and it was in no way to be confused with Atlantis or Lemuria: The first thing to impress upon the minds of those listening is the geographical position of Atlantis. Atlantis must not be confounded with the Land of Mu; this has been done by such prominent archaeologists as Schlumann and Le Plongeon. The Land of Mu was in the Pacific Ocean between Asia and America. (Churchward, Radio Lectures)
Yet Churchward’s substantially documented efforts to propel Mu into the limelight as distinct from the other lost lands, of which he was also a believer, would be used by future generations as supporting material linking the three places as one. An internet search today produces a number of blog posts and book abstracts that link Churchward’s writings on Mu to the Theosophical legends of Atlantis and Lemuria, along with numerous related and overlapping occult belief systems.
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Lemuria in Popular Culture In addition to the scientific and spiritual writings on Lemuria, there have been a number of quasi-journalistic or fictionalized accounts of contemporary discovery tales of this fabled land. In the 1920s E. Charles Vivian wrote City of Wonder, a rollicking, kitschy novel with a decidedly masculine tone centered around the explorations of several Western adventurers in search of fortune and glory. The blurb on the back of the 1970s reprint I read as a child offers a glimpse into Vivian’s particular kind of Lemurian mythology: Past the misty cauldron of the trembling bridge, into the weird valley ‘where ghosts chase women,’ to the final barrier and the ‘woman who ruled monkeys,’ the trail winds in torturous, mysterious ways. And at its end is Kir-Asa, the mighty, last relic of a vanished Lemuria, final outpost of an ancient race. (Vivian)
In a slightly more eccentric account, American steel worker-cum-author, Richard Sharpe Shaver (1907-1975), wrote a series of pieces for Amazing Stories starting in 1946 which claimed to be a retelling of personal experiences in a present-day, subterranean Lemuria. Shaver’s accounts, known as the “Shaver Mystery,” portrayed Lemuria in perhaps the most fantastical character to date. Shaver paired the trends of 1940s science fiction, such as the interest in refined technologies like space travel, with this lost-world myth. As well, his portrayal of the Lemurians was a sinister one,
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Fig. 22: Vintage promotional ad for “I Remember Lemuria� by Richard Shaver.
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Fig. 23: Richard Shaver’s story as featured on the cover of “Amazing Stories.”
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where sadistic practices of the cave-dwelling secret race were revealed to him in a terrifying vision. Highly successful at the beginning, Shaver’s stories were initially received by an enthusiastic public as authentic accounts, but as the story evolved and grew increasingly more outrageous, Shaver’s audience rejected his authorship as inauthentic and his writing became known to some as the “Shaver Hoax.” Nevertheless, the popularity of his stories and that of other literature in this vein is notable, particularly as it continues to flourish in present day. Films like those featuring the Indiana Jones character certainly owe a debt to Vivian and other authors who perpetuated the lost land mythology of Lemuria and its ilk. While in contemporary Western culture there seems to be even less room for mystical belief systems than there was in Blavatsky’s time, lost land mythologies continue to be thrive in the form of fiction, thus continuing to fulfill a cultural hunger, even nostalgia, for such places and what they represent. For all of the expansive documentation on Lemuria, there is a curious lack of coherence between the mythologies established by Blavatsky and other authors, both in the realm of fiction and in various anthropological or occult sciences. Instead, one finds tremendous variations, inconsistencies, and cross-pollinations through the broad body of Lemuria-related literature. Blavatsky’s Lemuria is an entirely different place, geographically, culturally, and spiritually, from Richard Shaver’s Lemuria, and so forth; only the
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name “Lemuria” and its status as both special and lost remain consistent throughout. Like a century-long game of telephone, the Lemuria mythology has taken on new forms with every new author, whether or not that authorship intends a claim of veracity. Perhaps because no one has ever (provably) been to or seen Lemuria, this process of consumption and modification is that much more pronounced. As Michel de Certeau notes in The Practice of Everyday Life, “readers are voyagers; they move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write… Reading does not keep what it acquires, or it does so poorly, and each of the places through which it passes is a repetition of the lost paradise.” (Gonzalez 49)
Fig. 24: The 1970s cover to Vivian’s “City of Wonder.”
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Figs. 25 & 26: One of Churchward’s maps of Mu; lemur illustration from one of Sclater’s publications.
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Conclusion Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu, while distinct mythological land masses, are in at least some sense one and the same. What they share is an identity of longing manifested, housed in the collective imagination of human consciousness. Lemuria and its ilk are places to locate our desire for something profoundly and irrevocably unknowable, but to which we ache to return. At one point in history this mythical place may have been called Eden by some, but in the 19th century, that garden was engulfed by the flood of rationalism that heralded the end of mystical thinking for much of the Western world. In its place sprang these more geographically approachable lands located at more credible, if elusive, points in space and time. In an effort to avert their eyes from the gaze of the abyss manufactured by materialism, Western authors such as Blavatsky and others like her emerged to craft new histories and new theologies from old ideas. However, the influence of rationalism and the attendant growth of a systematized epistemology in intellectual circles of their day meant that the bridge back to mysticism had to be forged by science in order for it to hold. Lemuria was the perfect solution to this profound need; it was authentically scientific in origin, and vague enough in description so as to become the tabula rasa for manifold historical and occultist writings.
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Because of its legitimate place in textual history, Lemuria was used as a conduit for the diverse visions of its appropriating authors and for the shifting needs and interpretations of the readers of these texts. Less of a land mass, Lemuria seems a kind of vessel for propelling the fantasies and hopes of its passengers across wide swaths of time and space. To that end, the printed word has served the legend of Lemuria spectacularly well, fueling its legacy both through the Promethean act of authorship and the inherently mutable character of readership, supporting Lemuria’s enduring yet everchanging presence in human consciousness.
Fig. 27: Argentine artist Enrique Alcatena’s illustration of the pirate Sandokån en route to the lost land of Lemuria.
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Notes 1. A rough and most definitely flawed translation of Athanasius Kircher’s Latin text is as follows: “The Atlantic Isle of antiquity. A clear historic record as to how and when it disappeared is lacking, and no one knows of the strange times in which it flourished. But if it’s true what the ancients recorded, it is certainly not a situation like the Canaries, Hazor, or the Flemish; it is understood that rest of the Atlantic Islands survived as is clear from the map included here, which shows an enormous island consisting of the highest mountains. It is also very likely that higher parts of the Atlantic island were interspersed with smaller mountains, valleys and deeper places, engulfed by a major earthquake, and swallowed by the Ocean.
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Sclater, Philip Lutley. “Some Difficulties in Zoological Distribution.” The Nineteenth Century 4 (1878): 1037-1052. Print. —. “The Mammals of Madagascar.” The Quarterly Journal of London 1 (1864): 212-219. Print. Sclater, Philip Lutley, and Sclater, William Lutley. The Geography of Mammals. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd, 1899. Print. Shaver, Richard S. I Remember Lemuria and The Return of Sathana. Evanston: Venture Books, 1948. Print. Smith, Paul A. “Lands Beneath the Sea.” The Scientific Monthly 53.5 (1941): 393-409. Web. 2012. 1-December. Steiner, Rudolph. The Submerged Continents of Atlantis and Lemuria. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1911. Print. Stemman, Eleanor Van Zandt and Roy. Mysteries of the Lost Lands. New York: Mayflower Books, 1975. Print. “The Books of the Golden Age”. 2011. Web. 2012. 29-November. Topham, Jonathan R. “A View From the Industrial Age.” Isis 95.3 (2004): 431-442. Web. 2012 . 28-November. Vivian, E. Charles. City of Wonder. New York: Centaur Press, 1973. Print. Williams, Adebayo. “The Postcolony as Trope: Searching for a Lost Continent in a Borderless World.” Research in African Literatures 31.2 (2000): 179-193. Web. 2012. 1-December. Woodbury, Richard B. “Lost Tribes and Sunken Continents: Myth and Method in the Study of American Indians.” American Anthropologist 65.4 (n.d.): 976-977. Web. 2012. 1-December.
47 The Lost Continent of Lemuria
Colophon 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. This book was set with the Adobe Garamond Premier Pro type family.