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The concept of Lemuria
was born in the later half of the nineteenth century when a group of British
geologists noted the striking similarity between fossils and sedimentary
strata found in India and South Africa. The strata on these continents contained
identical fossils of land plants, e.g. cordaites and "Glossopteris"
and land animals, e.g. "Terapsids". Darwin's Origin of Species"
was, at the time under a heated debate, and his supporters were having trouble
explaining how certain species became distributed over large areas and over
oceans. As these land plants and animals could not have crossed the open
sea, and at the time continents were thought to be immobile, geologists
explained the presence of identical fossil plants and animals in India,
Africa, South America, and Australia by postulating the existence of land
bridges and even whole continents that had long since sunk beneath the oceans. |
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Darwin's zoologist
followers had a particularly difficult time trying to explain the distribution
of the Lemurs. The Lemur is a small primitive form of primate found in Africa,
Madagascar, India, and Malay Archipelago. Some zoologists suggested a land
mass in the Indian Ocean, between Madagascar and India, millions of years
ago. An English zoologist, Philip L. Schlater, proposed the name Lemuria
for this former land of the Lemurs.
Earnst Heinrich Haeckel (1834-1919), a German naturalist and champion
of Darwin, used Lemuria to 'explain' the absence of fossil remains of
early man: If man originated on a sunken continent in the Indian Ocean,
all the fossils of the "missing link" are now under the sea.
When plate tectonics and other more prosaic theories better explained
the distribution of strata, fossils, and lemurs, it became clear that
Lemuria had never really existed, however, in the nineteenth century Haeckel's
theories were widely read and respected. As a result, the name Lemuria
was well known among educated people in Europe and America, and the myth
of Lemuria had been born.
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