Lemurea continent (Tamil old -primitive nation)

Lemuria continent

The crater is not all underwater. It is multi ringed with portions above the surface. It is dated to 65 million years ago. (Even geological deposits would put it later that 10.500 BCE, a date usually associated with the last demise of Atlantis. A bit of a difference in time scale.

Re 'Atlantis in Mexico'.....Consider an evolving civilisation rising and falling through various periods of its life. It sends out various research and colonising groups to different parts of the world. Lemuria is said to have done the same. Next thing we know, we have 'Atlantis' found in every part of the globe, with various interpretations of Plato's account to support the new location.

http://www.athenapub.com/crater1.htm (first search result in Google)

During the 160 million years of the Mesozoic era several episodes of impact cratering are known. The idea of linking the dinosaurs' demise at the end of the Cretaceous era (135-65 myr) to a giant, catastrophic impact event which caused sudden cooling of the atmosphere and an increase in sulfur content gained widespread acceptance with the 1980 Nobel Prize-winning theory by Louis and Walter Alvarez. This focused on the marked increase of iridium and other rare earth elements found in stratigraphic layers at the geological division of the Cretaceous and Tertiary eras, called the K-T boundary. The fact that iridium is more abundant in comets and asteroids than on the Earth strongly suggested an extraterrestrial, intrusive source for these elements in the time frame of the K-T stratigraphic boundary.

[Fig.2: Positions of Earth's continents at the end of the Cretaceous era, 65 million years ago.]

The giant meteor causing the Chicxulub Crater in Yucatán, becoming better known through study of subsurface gravitational anomalies, is presently the best candidate for that source. This crater, variously estimated at 180-300 km in diameter, is one of the largest impact structures known on Earth, or other planets in the solar system such as Venus, where many craters have been studied. The center of the Yucatán crater has been located at latitude 21º30' N, longitude 89º50' W, near the village of Chicxulub on the Caribbean coast near Progresso. While there is general agreement on the chronology of the impact event some 65 myr ago, based on results of dating the isotopic decay of argon and potassium in the rocks, determining the size and outer perimeters of the crater have been more difficult, since visible outcrops of the impact on land are limited to secondary, erosional features including cenotes. These sinkholes or natural wells (Maya dz'onot) are 30-500 m in diameter (fig.4).

More recent research by Morgan et al. (1997) employed seismic reflection data from the offshore portion of the crater to obtain a clearer picture of the crater's shape and size. The transient crater, or hole from the initial impact (fig.3), appears to have been 85 km in diameter, caused by a 10-14 km meteor. The overall crater would have included three rings: a peak ring 80 km in diameter, a 130 km inner ring, and a 195 km outer ring. When newly formed, this structure would have resembled other multi-ringed craters, as on Venus, Mercury, Europa, or the Moon. Beads of altered green glass called tektites probably related to the formation of Chicxulub Crater have also been found in Belize 480 km from the crater (Ocampo and Pope 1998). S

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Is Lemuria Continent/KumarikKandam is Lost Continent?

Lemuria (IPA: /lɨˈmjʊəriə/[1]) is the name of a hypothetical "lost land" variously located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its 19th century origins lie in attempts to account for discontinuities in biogeography. Lemuria has been rendered superfluous by modern understanding of plate tectonics. Although sunken continents do exist — see Zealandia in the Pacific and the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian Ocean — there is no known geological formation under the Indian or Pacific Oceans that corresponds to the hypothetical Lemuria.

Though Lemuria has passed out of the realm of conventional science, it has been adopted by occult writers, as well as some Tamil writers of India. Accounts of Lemuria differ according to the requirements of their contexts, but all share a common belief that a continent existed in ancient times and sank beneath the ocean as a result of geological change, often cataclysmic.

MORE YOU DIDNT TALK ABOUT

Lyonesse, Lyoness, or Lyonnesse is a fictional country in Arthurian legend, birthplace of the knight Tristan.

In a later tradition, Lyonesse is identified as a sunken land lying off the Isles of Scilly, to the south-west of Cornwall. The Trevelyan family of Cornwall takes its coat of arms from a local legend; "when Lyonesse sank beneath the waves only a man named Trevelyan escaped by riding a white horse." To this day the family's shield bears a white horse rising from the waves.

Cantre'r Gwaelod, (literally, The Lowland Hundred in English) is the legendary ancient sunken kingdom said to have occupied a tract of fertile land stretching northwards from Ramsey Island to Bardsey Island over what is now Cardigan Bay to the west of Wales, often described as the 'Welsh Atlantis'.

Mu is the name of a hypothetical lost continent, which is thought to have been located in the Pacific Ocean before it sank beneath the waters, similar to Atlantis and Lemuria, with which it is sometimes identified.

General acceptance by the scientific community of the theory of plate tectonics ended any scientific basis for the once popular belief in sunken continents. Plate tectonics explains that continental masses are composed of the lighter SiAl (silicon/aluminium) type rocks which literally float on the heavier SiMg (silicon/magnesium) rocks which constitute ocean bottoms. There is no evidence of SiAl rock in the Pacific basin.

Many of the details of the Atlantis story fit with what is now known about Crete. Women had a relatively high political status, both cultures were peaceful, and both enjoyed the unusual sport of ritualistic bullfighting (where an unarmed man wrestled and jumped over a bull).

Plato's Atlantis

The story of the lost continent of Atlantis starts in 355 B.C. with the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato had planned to write a trilogy of books discussing the nature of man, the creation of the world, and the story of Atlantis, as well as other subjects. Only the first book was ever completed. The second book was abandoned part way through, and the final book was never even started.

Plato used dialogues to express his ideas. In this type of writing, the author's thoughts are explored in a series of arguments and debates between various characters in the story. Plato often used real people in his dialogues, such as his teacher, Socrates, but the words he gave them were his own.

In Plato's book, Timaeus, a character named Kritias tells an account of Atlantis that has been in his family for generations. According to the character, the story was originally told to his ancestor, Solon, by a priest during Solon's visit to Egypt.

There had been a powerful empire located to the west of the "Pillars of Hercules" (what we now call the Straight of Gibraltar) on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. The nation there had been established by Poseidon, the God of the Sea. Poseidon fathered five sets of twins on the island. The firstborn, Atlas, had the continent and the surrounding ocean named for him. Poseidon divided the land into ten sections, each to be ruled by a son, or his heirs.

The capital city of Atlantis was a marvel of architecture and engineering. The city was composed of a series of concentric walls and canals. At the very center was a hill, and on top of the hill a temple to Poseidon. Inside was a gold statue of the God of the Sea showing him driving six winged horses.

About 9000 years before the time of Plato, after the people of Atlantis became corrupt and greedy, the gods decided to destroy them. A violent earthquake shook the land, giant waves rolled over the shores, and the island sank into the sea, never to be seen again.

So, is the story of Atlantis just a fable used by Plato to make a point? Or is there some reason to think he was referring to a real place? Well, at numerous points in the dialogues, Plato's characters refer to the story of Atlantis as "genuine history" and it being within "the realm of fact." Plato also seems to put into the story a lot of detail about Atlantis that would be unnecessary if he had intended to use it only as a literary device.

On the other hand according to the writings of the historian Strabo, Plato's student Aristotle remarked that Atlantis was simply created by Plato to illustrate a point. Unfortunately, Aristotle's writings on this subject, which might have cleared the mystery up, have been lost eons ago.

If the fall of the Minoans is the story of Atlantis, how did Plato get the location and time wrong? Galanopoulos suggested there was a mistake during translation of some of the figures from Egyptian to Greek and an extra zero added. This would mean 900 years ago became 9000, and the distance from Egypt to "Atlantis" went from 250 miles to 2,500. If this is true, Plato (knowing the layout of the Mediterranean Sea) would have been forced to assume the location of the island continent to be squarely in the Atlantic Ocean.

Not everyone accepts the Minoan Crete theory of the story of Atlantis, but until a convincing case can be made for some other place, it, perhaps, remains science's best guess.

Location, Location, Location

If we make the assumption that Atlantis was a real place, it seems logical that it could be found west of the Straight of Gibraltar near the Azores Islands. In 1882 a man named Ignatius Donnelly published a book titled Atlantis, the Antediluvian World. Donnelly, an American politician, had come to the belief that Plato's story represented actual historical fact. He located Atlantis in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, suggesting the Azores Islands represented what remained of the highest mountain peaks. Donnelly said he had studied zoology and geology and had come to the conclusion that civilization itself had begun with the Atlantians and had spread out throughout the world as the Atlantians established colonies in places like ancient Egypt and Peru. Donnelly's book became a world-wide best seller, but researchers could not take Donnelly's theories seriously as he offered no proof for his ideas.

As time when on it became obvious that Donnelly's theories were faulty. Modern scientific surveys of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean shows it is covered with a blanket of sediment that must have taken millions of years to accumulate. There is no sign of a sunken island continent.

Are there any other candidates for the location of Atlantis? People have made cases for places as diverse as Switzerland, in the middle of Europe, and New Zealand, in the Pacific Ocean. The explorer, Percy Fawcett, thought that it might be located in Brazil. One of the most convincing arguments, though, came from K.T. Frost, a professor of history at the Queen's University in Belfast. Later, Spyridon Marinatos, an archaeologist, and A.G. Galanopoulos, a seismologist, added evidence to Frost's ideas.

The Minoan Connection

Frost suggested that instead of being west of the Pillars of Hercules, Atlantis was east. He also thought that the catastrophic end of the island had come not 9000 years before Plato's time, but only 900. If this was true, the land of Atlantis might already be a well-known place even in Plato's time: the island of Crete. Are Pyramids a Clue?

Lewis Spence, a Scottish writer, published several books on Atlantis in the early 20th century. He was fascinated by the pyramids constructed by ancient races in different parts of the globe. Spence wondered if the creation of pyramids in diverse areas such as South America and Egypt indicated that these places had all been colonies of the Atlantis and if the Atlantians were the original pyramid makers. While the idea is interesting, most historians today believe the trend toward building pyramids occurred independently in different locations.

Crete is now a part of modern Greece and lies just south of Athens across part of the Mediterranean Sea. Before 1500 B.C. it was the seat of the Minoan Empire. The Minoans dominated the eastern Mediterranean with a powerful navy and probably extracted tribute from other surrounding nations. Archaeological excavations have shown that Minoan Crete was probably one of the most sophisticated cultures of its time. It had splendid architecture and art. A code of laws gave women equal legal status to men. Agriculture was highly developed and an extensive irrigation system existed.

Then, seemingly in a blink of an eye, the Minoan Civilization disappeared. Geological studies have shown that on an island we now know as Santorinas, located just ten miles to the north of Crete, a disaster occurred that was very capable of toppling the Minoan state.

Santorinas today is a lush Mediterranean paradise consisting of several islands in a ring shape. Twenty-five hundred years ago, though, it was a single large island with a volcano in the center. The volcano blew itself apart in a massive explosion around 1500 B.C.

To understand the effect of such an explosion, scientists have compared it with the most powerful volcanic explosion in historic times. This occurred on the Island of Krakatoa in 1883. There a giant wave, or tsunami, 120 feet high raced across the sea and hit neighboring islands, killing 36,000 people. Ash thrown up into the air blackened the skies for three days. The sound of the explosion was heard as far away as 3,000 miles.

The explosion at Santorinas was four times as powerful as Krakatoa.

The tsunami that hit Crete must have traveled inland for over half a mile, destroying any coastal towns or cities. The great Minoan fleet of ships were all sunk in a few seconds. Overnight the powerful Minoan Empire was crushed and Crete changed to a political backwater. One can hardly imagine a catastrophe more like Plato's description of Atlantis' fate than the destruction of Crete.

Sangam literature describes an area of land known as Kumari Kandam, which lay to the south of Dravida country, which had been lost to the sea in two successive inundations [1] [2] [3]. The two inundations are said to mark the division between the three sangam periods. Geological features described in the literature include two main rivers of Kumari Kandam as the Pagruliyaru and the Kumari. It is also believed to have had numerous great cities with great monuments and the foremost among those cities were the two first and second cities of Madurai. Both the first and the second Tamil literary Sangam Eras, the Muthal Sangam and the Idaii Sangam, were said to have been held in those two respective cities of Madurai. South Indian Traditions give the two Sangam periods antiquities ranging in tens of thousands of years with a timeline of about 10,000 B.C to the second. Both the Sangam Eras were supposed to have been terminated by deluges which submerged the continent

Source(s):

Source(s):

www.unmuseum.org/atlantis

wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis

www.atlan.org/

additional

The only ancient sources for the story of Atlantis are two Socratic dialogs, "Timaeus" and "Critias", both written by Plato in the 5th century BC. There is no mention of Atlantis, or anything like it, in any earlier source, which is odd if there was any kernel of truth to the tale. There is no evidence that any sizable landmass has ever existed in mid-Atlantic

Lemuria first appears in "automatic" writing sessions held by the Theosophist Society in the 1880's.

Lost worlds: Lemuria Helium - 229 days ago

Written 1864 Sclater?s article states that the African island of Madagascar must have been connected to India by some sort of land bridge or the two were part of a larger continent in the ancient past. Both western and eastern accounts of the island nation of Lemuria put it somewhere in either the Indian Ocean or the western Pacific Ocean southwest of India or northwest/east of Australia. Unlike Zealandia, geologists believe that the Kerguelen Plateau had a more northern origin in the primordial days of Earth and that it didn?t begin to sink beneath the waves until around 20 million years ago but give little support to the fact that it could have connected Madagascar with India late enough to support the legends. Ancient Indian legends speak of a sunken kingdom south of present day India known as Kumari Kandam that many believe is another possible name for Lemuria. In the eastern world and specifically the Tamil people of southern India, Lemuria was indeed a real place which was mentioned above: The Tamil believe that this great nation did reach an early demise but the survivors of the event reached the southern coast of India and developed into the once great Indus Valley Civilization that ultimately disappeared as well. Something that has perplexed historians and scientists alike for a great deal of years is the origins of the so-called Dravidian languages of southern and eastern India.

thanks;

http://informsciencenetwork.com/geology/lost-worlds-lemuria-4228487a

The Lemuria myth

S. CHRISTOPHER JAYAKARAN

How it permeated the Tamil tradition through folklore and writings as the lost continent of Kumari.

THE LEMURIAN AS conceived by W. Scott Elliot, a staunch Theosophist who published, in 1904, 'The Lost Lemuria'.

THERE is an old, persistent Tamil tradition about a land that existed south of India called Kumari kandam (continent), a belief that is linked to the myth of the lost land of Lemuria, a figment of Western imagination. Accounts of the lost continent vary, but the common theme is that a large area went under the ocean as a result of geological cataclysms, a theory that geologists of today do not subscribe to.

The last Ice Age had a profound influence on the prehistory of humankind. So in prehistoric studies of coastal areas, it is crucial to understand the consequence of changes in the sea level. About 14,500 years ago, the sea level was lower by 100 metres. With subsequent global warming and melting of large masses of ice, the level started rising, in stages.

As the sea level rose, the low-lying lands in the coastal region and the exposed continental shelves were inundated. This phenomenon gave rise to the stories and legends of deluges that permeated the African, Amerindian and Australian aboriginal folklore and Greek, Roman and Hebrew legends, and the Indian puranas, which referred to pralayas. The coastal areas south of India that were submerged in ancient times evidently gave rise to the Tamil myth of the lost continent of Kumari, while myths of the lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria were generated in the Western world.

Lemuria is the name of a mythical continent purported to have been in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The lost continent derives its name from the primate lemur belonging to the group prosimians. Lemurs now inhabit Madagascar island, the surrounding smaller islands and Comoros island.

The term “lemur” comes from the Latin word lemures, meaning “spirits of the night”, a reference to many species of lemur that are nocturnal and so have large reflective eyes. Their distribution once extended from Pakistan to Malaya. The English geologist Philip Sclater (1864) coined the term Lemuria in his article ‘The Mammals of Madagascar'. Trying to explain the presence of fossil lemurs in Madagascar, he proposed that the Indian Ocean island and India had once been part of a larger continent, Lemuria. His theory was put forward before the concepts of continental drift and plate tectonics provided the explanations for the similarity and distribution of formations and fossils in different strata and continents.

During the 19th century, scientists frequently postulated the presence of submerged land masses in order to account for the present distribution of species. As Lemuria gained some acceptance within the scientific community, it began to appear in the works of scholars such as Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834-1919), a German biologist who promoted the work of Charles Darwin in Germany. Haeckel suggested that there was a land bridge that remained above water long enough to facilitate the migration of prosimians from Africa into India and the Malay peninsula.

To explain the distribution of species across Asia and the Americas, certain other scientists hypothesised that Lemuria had extended across parts of the Pacific Ocean. But advanced research and geological findings have made clear that continents did not submerge or disappear and that Lemuria never existed. The Lemuria theory disappeared from practical consideration after the scientific community accepted the theory of plate tectonics and continental drift.

Esoteric theories

However, certain occultists adopted it. In 1888, Helena Blavatsky, a founder of the Theosophical Society, incorporated the concept of the lost continents of Lemuria and Atlantis in her controversial book The Secret Doctrine. Her information, it was claimed, was based on esoteric ancient books from the east and messages received through mystical transference and clairvoyant trances.

While explaining the evolution of man, there is a subtle but conscious attempt in the book to establish the superiority of the Aryan race. Later, some members of the Theosophical Society published essays, presented in the garb of scientific writings, on Lemuria and Atlantis. Thus the myth of Lemuria was perpetuated.

According to the teachings of the Theosophical Society, human beings evolved through seven successive root races, each of which populated and occupied different continents. Lemuria was occupied by the third root race called Lemurians, who were primitive beings. Subsequently, the more advanced inhabitants of Atlantis, called Atlanteans, replaced them. Aryans, the descendants of Atlanteans, were the fifth root race and were considered the pinnacle of evolution.

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The ring-tailed lemur. The term “lemur” comes from the Latin word lemures, meaning “spirits of the night”, a reference to many species of lemur that are nocturnal and so have large reflective eyes. Their distribution once extended from Pakistan to Malaya.

W. Scott Elliot, a staunch Theosophist, published, in 1904, The Lost Lemuria with two maps showing the distribution of land areas at different periods. There is mention about Lemurians who domesticated reptiles resembling the Plesiosaurus, which places Lemurians in the era of dinosaurs, an obvious anachronism. This writing, which uses scientific terminology extensively, is basically esoteric.

In 1931, Harvey Spencer Lewis, the founder of the mystical society called the Rosicrucians, wrote on the evolution of Lemurians in his book Lemuria: the Lost Continent of the Pacific. Maps of the lost land were produced by taking the idea from the palaeo continent of Gondwana, which existed long before the advent of humanity.

The total confusion of chronology of geological epochs and a lack of understanding of the evolution of humankind is evident in the book he wrote under the pseudonym Wishar S. Cerve. He gave details of their lifestyle and advanced technology and also wrote about floating continents, such as California and the west coast of the United States, being parts of Lemuria and of their subsequent destruction. It was claimed that the survivors of Lemuria were living in Mount Shasta in northern California (F.S. Oliver, Dwellers of Two Planets, 1894) under a network of tunnels and could be seen occasionally. This belief is repeated by certain other groups and cultists.

Lost land of Tamils

The narratives about Lemuria found their way into colonial India about the time when folklore began to permeate historic knowledge as though they were fact. The writings of Wishar Cerve and the maps of Scott Elliot were brought into Tamil writings by K. Appadurai, in his book Kumari Kandam Allathu Kadal Konda Thennadu (Kumari Continent or the Submerged Southern Land, 1941). The term Lemuria found its way into certain Tamil textbooks and was given the Tamil name Kumari kandam, or continent of Kumari. Names from Tamil classics were given to the mountain ranges, rivers, places and areas. For example, the puranic geography of an axial mountain called Meru as the centre of Jambudvipa (Sanskrit) or Navalan Theevu (Tamil) was accepted, and, later on, these names were attributed to certain parts of Lemuria, giving it acceptability among Tamil readers. In the 1920s, with Tamil revivalism and the efforts to counter the “Aryan” and associated Sanskrit dominance, the concept of Lemuria was wedded to the notion of the lost land referred to in Tamil literature.

There are a few references in Tamil Sangam classics to a landmass that was swallowed up by the sea. Historians consider the first three centuries A.D. as the Sangam period. The reference to the tradition about three Tamil Sangams (assemblies or academies) is noted in Iraiyanar Kalviyalurai, attributed to Nakeerar. According to this commentary, the Pandya kings patronised Tamil poets in their capital, where the Sangam was located. According to tradition, the Mudal Sangam (first assembly), was located in Thenmadurai. When the sea swallowed Thenmadurai, the capital was shifted to Kapatapuram and the second or Idai Sangam was established. The Idai Sangam functioned until a deluge destroyed Kapatapuram. After the deluge, the Pandyas shifted their capital to the present-day Madurai where the last or Kadai Sangam was established.

Some of the important references from Tamil Sangam classics are as follows: 1) in Purananuru 9, verses 10-11 are interpreted as a reference to a Pandya king who ruled a part of the lost land where the river Pahruli flowed. 2) in Silapathigaram (Kadu Kaan Kaathai) (11:17-22) is a reference to a Pandya king who won over kingdoms in Imayam (the Himalayas) and Gangai (the Ganga) to compensate for his land lost to the deluge. Tamil scholars such as Devaneya Paavaanar consider the deluge under reference to be the one that destroyed Thenmadurai. 3) According to Adiyarku Nallar, poem 104:1-4 from Mullai Kalithogai indicates that the Pandya king resettled the survivors of the deluge in certain Chera and Chola territories. It is portrayed by certain Tamil writers that the series of deluges destroyed the Tamil civilisation and the survivors spread out and civilised other parts of the world.

The Tamil tradition about a lost land was committed to writing after the 10th century by commentators like Nakeerar in his commentary on Iraiyanar Akapporulurai. Nachinarkiniyar and Adiyarku Nallar followed him. Those who wrote the commentaries exaggerated the extent of land that was submerged by the deluges referred to in Silapathigaram and Kalithogai. According to the commentators, there were 49 countries ( nadu) in the lost land of Kumari and the distance between the river Kumari and the river Pahruli that flowed in the lost land was 700 katham, which according to one calculation is about 770 km.

The crucial question is whether the land referred to as Kumari was as large as a continent? The advocates of Kumari kandam interpreted the term nadu to mean country. In Tamil Nadu and Kerala many small towns and villages have in their names the term nadu, which basically referred to a settlement, as opposed to kadu, or forest. In the above Tamil references there is no mention of the term kandam, referring to land the size of a continent.

According to Pingala Nikandu, a lexicon of ancient words, k andam means country. In the words of the historian N. Subrahmanian (1996), “It is possible that a small area of land (to the extent of a present-day district) was lost by sea erosion and Pahruli and Kumari were parts of that territory and that the king shifted this capital to some other place. But in all probability that event occurred only in the 5th or 4th century B.C. Such erosions on a limited scale were not unknown to the southern and eastern seaboards of Tamil Nadu. If the fiction is removed from the fact, the entire romantic superstructure called the theory of the Kumari kandam will stand exposed, as non-history” ( The Tamils - Their History, Culture and Civilisation; pages 26, 27).

If the oral traditions and the subsequent writings exaggerated the size of the submerged land called Kumari, what was the background to the lost land referred to in Sangam literature?

Sea-level changes

Geology emerged as a scientific discipline in the late 19th century when both scientific and popular imagination was dominated by Biblical accounts of creation and deluges. Dramatic geological events were attributed to catastrophes like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Eventually, the understanding of phenomena such as plate tectonics, continental drift and sea floor spreading dismissed the catastrophe theories. The speculation about land bridges and lost continents faded into obscurity elsewhere in the world but not quite so in Tamil Nadu.

Since the early part of the last century major strides have been made in the geological and geophysical understanding of the earth. For instance, in 1912 Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, explained the concept of continental drift; in 1924, the British geologist Arthur Holmes explained that the convection current in the mantle could cause continents to drift; in 1962, the American Geologist Harry Hess pointed out that continental drift could be explained by sea-floor spreading; in 1966, the concept of sea-floor spreading was established by independent oceanographic data involving microfossils, sediments of the sea floor, measure of heat flow from the earth's interior and palaeo-magnetic and seismic studies.

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THE LOST LAND of Lemuria. This representation is from the book 'Lemuria: the Lost Continent of the Pacific' by Wishar S. Cerve, which was the pseudonym of Harvey Spencer Lewis, the founder of the mystical society called the Rosicrucians.

Since the first oceanic sounding in 1840, the study of oceans, including their chemistry, biology, geology and physics, has advanced in the last century. Improved coring devices have enlarged our knowledge of the oceans, and deep ocean floors have been mapped by echo-soundings and ultra-sonic signals. In the 1940s, seismic methods were also used to study the ocean floor.

Evidence of former glaciations on a wide scale became overwhelmingly conclusive in the last century. During the past two million years, there have been five major glacial advances and five glacial retreats as the globe began to warm. The last of such periods is the present period known as Holocene. The last Ice Age caused the fragmented distribution of Homo sapiens, and the enormous environmental changes that took place with global warming had a profound influence on the prehistory of humankind.

Extensive studies were done to understand global warming during the interglacial periods; sediments were subjected to meticulous analyses to establish the age and palaeo-geographical conditions in many parts of the world.

For instance, about 18,000 years ago, during the time of the last Ice Age, ice sheets in the poles spread much wider and the sea level was more than 100 metres lower than it is today, exposing a large area of land along the continental shelf. Then Siberia was connected to Alaska and along this land bridge, the peopling of the Americas and migration of animals happened over a long period. At this time, the landmass of present-day Papua New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania were joined together as were the British Isles with Europe. After the last Ice Age the level of the Indian Ocean, like the rest of the oceans, fell. Sri Lanka was connected to the Indian peninsula by a landmass, which now lies under the Gulf of Mannar. In the following 8,000 years, global warming continued and large masses of ice and glaciers melted, raising sea levels in stages and inundating low-lying lands. The portion of the continental shelf of the south Indian peninsula and the land that connected it to Sri Lanka also went under water as the sea level rose.

Records of sea-level fluctuations and related climatic changes are preserved in the layered sediments of the seabed. These can be studied through data such as faunal contents and nature of sediments. Rajiv Nigam and N.H. Hashimi of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa, have done extensive work on sea-level rise by analysing sediments for microfossils such as pollen and foraminifera to determine palaeo-climate and by dating corals from the continental shelf in the west coast of peninsular India. The team studied marine sediments to generate proxy climate records through which changes in palaeo sea levels could be deciphered.

Nigam and P.J. Henriques, also of the NIO, have developed a regional model for palaeo depth determination on the basis of percentage of foraminifera in surface sediments of the Arabian Sea. The significant results of the study on palaeo sea levels are that the sea level was lower by 100 m about 14,500 years ago and by 60 m about 10,000 years ago and that during the last 10,000 years there had been three major episodes of sea-level fluctuation. These sea-level changes had affected human settlements and peopling of the coastal areas and had left their signatures on archaeological events.

Once the status of the periodic sea-level rise was established, it was easy to decipher the configuration of the coastline, giving allowance wherever applicable to tectonic activities and deposition of silt at the confluence of rivers. The Naval Hydrographic Office, Dehra Dun, has produced hydrographic charts (INT 717071-1986 to the scale 1:10,000,000 and INT 7007706-1973 of scale 1:3,500,000) pertaining to Cape Comorin-Gulf of Mannar, where it surveyed the depth of the sea floor with echo-sounders, which measure the sea floor contours with great accuracy.

Changes in southern India

It is possible to demarcate the land lost to the sea in the south of India from postglacial inundation maps that indicate the significant changes in the coastline.

The author has prepared inundation maps on the basis of bathymetric contours and the sea-level curve for the central west coast to work out the configuration of the coastline south of India since the last Ice Age. This study shows that about 14,500 years ago the sea level was lower by approximately 100 m than the present sea level. The land between the present coast and the bathymetric contour of 100 m roughly was the land that was exposed during that time.

In other words, hypothetically, if a 100 m column of sea water were to be removed, the land that went under water would be exposed. At that time the present Gulf of Mannar was a landmass of 36,000 sq. km connecting Sri Lanka with peninsular India and the coast was wider by about 80 km to the east, south and west of present-day Cape Comorin exposing a triangular mass of 6,500 sq. km adjoining the Cape. The coastline was 25-35 km wider than the present near Cuddalore and about 25 km wider near Colombo.

Global warming

The increased rate of global warming between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago saw the sea level rise almost 50 m, inundating low-lying lands and covering a major part of the exposed continental shelf. About 10,000 years ago, the sea level was about 50 m lower than the present sea level. At that time, the land extended about 25 km south of the Cape and the coast was about 40 km broader than the present coastline along the east and the west, which exposed about 1,000 sq km of land near Cape Comorin. Rameswaram and Mannar were joined by land and the land that extended in the present-day Gulf of Mannar was a 2,500-sq km stretch marked by sedimentary formations and coral reefs.

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

AN INUNDATION MAP by S.C. Jayakaran. He prepared the map on the basis of bathymetric contours and the sea-level curve for the central west coast to work out the configuration of the coastline south of India since the last Ice Age. It shows that about 14,500 years ago the sea level was lower by about 100 m than the present. The land between the coast now and the bathymetric contour of 100 m was the land that was exposed then.

As the research of Rajiv Nigam indicated, sea levels continued to rise and reached the present level around 6,000 years ago. This is about the time Sri Lanka evolved as an island. Between 4,000 and 3,500 years ago, heavy rains, in addition to melting of snow, also contributed to the sea level rise. It rose by a couple of metres and fell to the present level about 2,000 years ago.

It is scientifically uncontested that the earliest Homo sapiens developed in Africa 100,000 to 200,000 years ago and migrated to Europe and Asia. Genetic evidence and fossil records of early human beings indicate that they came out of Africa as early as 100,000 to 60,000 years ago. Their descendants migrated to the Far East, probably along the coastal areas adjacent to the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal around the Indian peninsula, Sri Lanka and then north into China and south into Sumatra.

As the sea levels rose, resulting in periodic flooding and deluges, prehistoric settlements that were located in the low-lying coastal lands and the exposed continental shelf were inundated. The people who lived in the coastal area of the Indian peninsula and Sri Lanka and who escaped the deluges perpetuated the oral tradition of a lost land. It is my considered opinion that it is this development that gave rise to the legend of Kumari kandam.

References

1. Barnett T.P.; ‘The estimation of global sea level change: A problem of uniquness'; Journal of Geophysical Research, 1984.

2. Blavatsky H.P.; The Secret Doctrine, Vol 12; Theosophical University Press, online edition, 2001.

3. David Shulman; ‘The Tamil Flood Myths and the Cankam Legend'; The Flood Myth; Berkeley, 1988.

4. Geiger, Wilhelm (translated by); ‘The Mahavamsa or The great chronicle of Ceylon'; Asian Educational Services, New Delhi, Madras, 1993.

5. Hashimi N.H., Nigam R., Nair R.R. & Rajagopalan G.; ‘Holocene sea-level fluctuation on western Indian continental margin: An update'; Journal of the Geological Society of India; Bangalore, 1995; Vol.46; pages 157-162.

6. Jayakaran S.C.; ‘Lost Land and the Myth of Kumari Kandam'; Indian Folklore Research Journal; Vol.1 No.4.; National Folklore Support Centre, 2004; pages 90-108.

7. Stephen Oppenheimer; ‘Out of Eden: The peopling of the World'; Constable and Robinson Ltd., London, 2003.

8. Scott Elliot W.; ‘The Lost Lemuria' (1904); Kessinger Publishing Company, Montana, U.S., 1997; paperback.

9. Subrahmanian, N.; ‘The Tamils, their History, Culture and Civilisation'; Institute of Asian Studies, 1996.

10. Sumathi Ramaswamy; ‘Catastrophic Cartographies: Mapping the Lost Continent of Lemuria'; Representations 67; The Regents of the University of California, U.S., 1999.

11. Wishar S Cerve; ‘Lemuria – The Lost Continent of the Pacific' (1931); Supreme Grand Lodge of the Ancient & Mystical Order Rosae Crucis; published by the Grand Lodge of the English Language Jurisdiction, AMORC, Inc., 1997.

12. Personal communications with K.H. Vora and Rajiv Nigam of the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa.

Maps

1. Hydrographic chart, Sheet no. INT 709 7706 of scale 1:3,500,000 (1973); hydrographic chart, sheet no. INT 717071of scale 1:10,000,000 (1986).

2. Cochin to Vishakhapatnam (hydrographic chart), Scale 1:1,500,000 (1974) – all the above three charts produced by Naval Hydrographic Office, Dehra Dun.

3. Hydrographic chart, Sheet no. INT 709 7706 of scale 1:3,500,000 (1973); hydrographic chart, sheet no. INT 717071of scale 1:10,000,000 (1986).

Thanks;http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2808/stories/20110422280809000.htm

The Lemuria Myth

Frontline, “India’s National Magazine,” for April 9-22, 2011, carries an article on “The Lemuria Myth” by S. Christopher Jayakaran. “There is an old, persistent Tamil tradition about a land that existed south of India called Kumari kandam (continent), a belief that is linked to the myth of the lost land of Lemuria, a figment of Western imagination. Accounts of the lost continent vary, but the common theme is that a large area went under the ocean as a result of geological cataclysms, a theory that geologists of today do not subscribe to,” he writes.

In 1888, Helena Blavatsky, a founder of the Theosophical Society, incorporated the concept of the lost continents of Lemuria and Atlantis in her controversial book The Secret Doctrine. Her information, it was claimed, was based on esoteric ancient books from the east and messages received through mystical transference and clairvoyant trances.

The article examines how the story entered into Tamil literature to the point where it is even taught in school textbooks. In trying to find a logical explanation for these ideas the writer believes that global warming between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago was the source for this story: “As the sea levels rose, resulting in periodic flooding and deluges, prehistoric settlements that were located in the low-lying coastal lands and the exposed continental shelf were inundated. The people who lived in the coastal area of the Indian peninsula and Sri Lanka and who escaped the deluges perpetuated the oral tradition of a lost land. It is my considered opinion that it is this development that gave rise to the legend of Kumari kandam.”

The idea of a submerged landmass south of India with its narrative of a lost homeland now plays a part in Tamil identity, for it increases the antiquity of Tamil culture. This is nothing new. Sumathi Ramaswamy, Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, has written about it in The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories, which was published by the University of California Press in 2004. The article in Frontline, which covers the main points of the book, can be read here.

Thanks;http://blavatskynews.blogspot.com/2011/04/lemuria-myth.html

Valuable details of lemuria.

"Mark Williams beautifully blends science and metaphysics in this clear account of both his worldwide explorations and his personal inward journey."

Doreen Virtue, Ph.D. (author of Angel Medicine and many other titles)

The lost continent of Lemuria, the land of Mu, is a place that history has nearly forgotten. Yet it lives on in the mythology of Hindus and Australian Aborigines, Polynesians and American Indians. Its place is likewise secure beside Atlantis in the metaphysical speculations of Occult pioneers Madame Blavatsky and Edgar Cayce, as well as New Age channelers and soothsayers.

But did Lemuria really exist? And if so when, and where was it located? Was it home to a gentle race of mystics and dreamers, as some claim, or an advanced society whose technology helped bring it down? And what happened to Lemuria in the end? Can an entire continent sink or vanish into the mist?

The story begins with a writer's chance exposure to a trance-channeling session at which Lemuria is described in vivid detail. Puzzled by the lack of historical evidence for such a place, he begins a quest through ancient ruins in India and Sumatra, the islands of Oceania, and Bolivia's high and barren altiplano. The search continues through temple sites in Mesoamerica and the Pueblo mesas of northern Arizona, mystical Mount Shasta and seemingly barren islands off California's coast.

The writer finds that mythological references support the theory of a lost continent, whether its name be Rutas (from the Hindu Vedas), the Polynesian Hawaiki, or the Hopis' Third World of Sotuknang. Moreover, enigmatic piles of stone and cultural artifacts of hazy origin beg for further explanation. Yet none is forthcoming, and each answer only brings more troubling questions. The author's challenge is clear: to find if Lemuria and its lost civilization really existed or to prove once and for all that it is merely an illusion, a utopian daydream, a paradise inhabited by fools.

He encounters the Lemurian Fellowship, an obscure California group devoted to Mu and its ancient wisdom. And the Rosicrucians, whose little book about the elusive continent helped spark a Lemuria craze back in the 1930s. A phenomenon propelled by the series of "Mu" books by James Churchward, mankind's secret history as recorded on cryptic stone tablets. The search takes him to the archives of the Theosophical Society and Edgar Cayce Foundation, to Buddhist scholars and New Age gurus, and to the hallowed halls of mainstream science.

Was Lemuria a part of Gondwanaland or the place where the first humans evolved, as scientists believed a century ago? Are primitive peoples like the Ainu and Andaman Islanders the last remnants of a lost world that sank beneath the waves? Why do spirals, swastikas and other cryptic symbols appear in art on both sides of the ocean? Could they derive from a common source? The author even investigates particle physics and cutting-edge scientific theory, exploring the world of quarks and quantum leaps, holograms and parallel universes. All in search of a place that historians and scientists would prefer to ignore.

Along the way the author, as a skeptical yet doggedly curious observer, grapples with New Age theory and practice. He weaves into the story a formidable array of related themes: channeling and reincarnation; mind power and firewalking; androgyny and meditation; crystal healing and teleportation. In Hawaii he meets an old kahuna and discovers that the "new" is really very old. Having traveled half the world in his search, he finally decides to try a past-life regression and is surprised by the results.

The writer also learns that many people believe Lemuria will rise again. Hopi elders, Theosophists and adepts of the Lemurian Fellowship all predict a grim scenario: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and a pole shift followed by the emergence of land for a colony of elite survivors. Mankind is ready to evolve to a higher level, it's said, and an emerging island-continent will serve as home to a new race and a new order.

In Search of Lemuria seeks out the truth behind the myriad tales of a sunken Pacific continent. It tells the story of a writer's obsessive struggle, which in the end becomes much more than a search for a lost tropical island. He has embarked on a metaphysical journey as well, whose outcome is uncertain.

About the Author

Mark Williams is a freelance writer currently based in the San Francisco area. In Europe, he worked as contributing writer for the International Herald Tribune (Paris) and senior staff writer for Lookout Magazine (Spain). Later, he was chief editor of the Chevron Travel Club's Odyssey Magazine and a contributor to the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Westways, Travel-Holiday, and many other publications. The author's other books include The Story of Spain and In Search of Lemuria. Mark Williams has a Masters degree in History from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Thanks;http://www.goldenerabooks.com/lemuria.syn.html

$$$

Kumarikandam (Lemuria) Tamil Myth

Kumari Kandam is a land mass that is supposed to be submerged under the India Ocean, extending from the southern tip of peninsular India, to Madagascar in the west, and Australia in the east. It is sometimes considered as part or all of Lemuria, a hypothetical continent variously located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. References to Kumari Kandam can be found in the Tamil literature. Inferring from these references suggest that extensive land areas occupied by the Tamils have been lost to the sea due to massive tidal waves or tsunami. Legends say two sangams were established. First two sangams - Muthal sangam, Idai sangam was in kumari kandam and it was devoured by sea only the pandya king escaped and thus we don't have any literature of this period.

1. History of kumari kandam (Lemuria) theory.

1860 Philip Lutley Sclater Puzzled by the presence of fossil lemurs in both Madagascar and India, but not in Africa nor the Middle East, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent, which he named "Lemuria" for its lemurs.The acceptance of Darwinism led scientists to seek to trace the diffusion of species from their points of evolutionary origin

2. Melchior Neumayr in his book Erdgeschichte in 1887. Many hypothetical submerged land bridges and continents were proposed during the 19th century, in order to account for the present distribution of species.

3. Ernst Haeckel, a German Darwinian taxonomist, proposed Lemuria as an explanation for the absence of "missing link" fossil records. According to another source, Haeckel put forward this thesis prior to Sclater (but without using the name 'Lemuria'). Locating the origins of the human species on this lost continent, he claimed the fossil record could not be found because it had sunk beneath the sea.

4. In 1999, drilling by the JOIDES Resolution research vessel in the Indian Ocean discovered evidence that a continent about a third of the size of Australia sank about 20 million years ago. Samples showed pollen and fragments of wood in a 90 million-year-old sediment. This might lead one to expect similarity of dinosaur fossil evidence and will help to understand the breakup of the Indian and Australian land masses.It does not support the concept of Lemuria as a land bridge for mammals.

5. Madame Blavatsky's Lemuria,Lemuria entered the lexicon of the Occult through the works of Madame Blavatsky, who claimed in the 1880s to have been shown an ancient, pre-Atlantean Book of Dzyan by the Mahatmas. Within Blavatsky's complex cosmology, which includes seven "Root Races", Lemuria was occupied by the "Third Root Race", which was about seven foot tall, sexually hermaphroditic, egg-laying, mentally undeveloped and spiritually more pure than the following "Root Races". Before the coming of the Lemurians, the second "Root Race" is said to have dwelled in Hyperborea.After the subsequent creation of mammals, Mme. Blavatsky revealed to her readers, some Lemurians turned to bestiality. The gods, aghast at the behavior of these "mindless" men, sank Lemuria into the ocean and created a "Fourth Root Race"—endowed with intellect—on Atlantis.Lemuria and Mount Shasta

6. In 1894, Frederick Spencer Oliver published A Dweller on Two Planets, which claimed that survivors from a sunken continent called Lemuria were living in or on Mount Shasta in northern California. The Lemurians lived in a complex of tunnels beneath the mountain and occasionally were seen walking the surface dressed in white robes.This belief has been repeated by such individuals as the cultist Guy Warren Ballard in the 1930s who formed the I AM Foundation. It is also repeated by followers of the Ascended Masters and the Great White Brotherhood. This list includes such organizations as Bridge to Freedom, The Summit Lighthouse, Church Universal and Triumphant, The Temple of The Presence, and The Hearts Center.According to L. Sprague de Camp, Mme. Blavatsky was influenced by other writers on the theme of Lost Continents, notably Ignatius L. Donnelly, a cult leader named Thomas Lake Harris and the French writer Louis Jacolliot.

7. Dravidologist Devaneya Pavanar, who held that all languages on earth were merely corrupted Tamil dialects proposed Kumari Kandam is a sunken kingdom also known as Lemuria . According to these modernist interpretations of motifs in classical Tamil literature — the epics Cilappatikaram and Manimekalai that describe the submerged city of Puhar — the Dravidians originally came from land south of the present day coast of South India that became submerged by successive floods. There are various claims from Tamil authors that there was a large land mass connecting Australia and the present day Tamil Nadu coast.Adiyarkkunelar, described the distance between the Prahuli and Kumari rivers as 700 kavathams. This distance has been interpreted as about 7,000 modern miles (11,000 km).

What does the Tamil Literature say exactly?Three literary sources are said to say something about the kumari kandam , let us see what they say.

Silapathikaram says,kumarikOdum kodunkadal koLLa..." The mighty sea at the end of kumari(kanyakumari) submergedHere the author ilango adigal speaks about sea around kumari submerging the puhar(keveri pattinam) port.Silappadikaram'also describes Kadal Vadimpalampa Nindra Pandyan said to have thrown his spear towards the sea. The sea retaliated by swallowing a large area including Pahruli river and Panmalai Adukkam.

Manimekalai says,Records the same incident of the puhar being engulfed by sea.Both silapathikaram and manimekalai both not being eyewitness accounts and known for gross exageration of facts clearly talk sea engulfing the city of puhar.

Kalittogai Sangam literary work, `Kalithogai' (Mullaikkali, verse number 4) calls it `Kadal vowal.' The poem says that when tidal waves swept away his land, the Pandyan monarch did not despair, but forged ahead into the territories of Cheras and Chozhas and brought the invaded country under his sway, thus making good the loss of territory due to the sea-swell.

What does the sinhala literature say?Mahavamsa records sea taking the land in 326BC which is also mentioned in Rajwalikathe.

Analysis;

All the above theories about Lemuriya went out of the window, the Continental dift theory was proposed.Kumari kandam was thrown out of the window when the tsunami data was analaysed, Still the Tani tamil Iyakkam and tamil elam activists held the theory for legitimisation of tamil elam demand. But after the Tsunami hit the sub continent, everybody knew what is said in the Silapathikaram and manimekalai is either strom surges or Tsunami.

Still many hold on to the theory , because it advances the age of Sangam , they can always claim all the literature was lost to the sea. Interestingly the three sangams were proposed in 11th century AD by Iraniyar agamporul.

Conclusion

There is no such thing as kumari kandam , it is just another attempt to increase tamil antiquity to prehistoric times.

Thanks ;http://controversialhistory.blogspot.com/2007/06/kumarikandam-lemuria-tamil-myth.html

History of Lemuria

The legend of Mu is found on islands all over the Pacific Ocean. For thousands of years the Polynesians have handed down the story of a civilization in the Pacific that was motherland of mankind.

The name of Mu somehow sounds like an uninteresting contraction of a more exotic name. In contrast, the word Lemuria invokes a picture of a land at the dawn of time, a land forgotten in our histories but not in our dreams.

The name Lemuria resulted from a Nineteenth Century controversy over Darwin's Origin of the Species. Defenders of Darwin had trouble explaining how certain species became distributed over large areas. Zoologists had a particularly difficult time explaining the distribution of the lemurs. The lemur is a small primitive form of primate found in Africa, Madagascar, India, and the East Indian archipelago. Some zoologists suggested a land mass in the Indian Ocean, between Madagascar and India, millions of years ago. An English zoologist, Phillip L. Schlater, proposed the name Lemuria (LEMURia) for this former land of the LEMURS in the Indian Ocean.

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. To quote Haeckel: "Schlater has given this continent the name of Lemuria, from the semi-apes which were characteristic of it."

Zoologists have now explained the distribution of lemurs without resorting to the use of a land bridge. And anthropologists have discovered many bones of ancient man in Africa. 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.

Madame Elena Petrovna Blavatsky (born Helena Hahn 1831-1891), the founder of Theosophy, in her book The Secret Doctrine (1888), claimed to have learned of Lemuria in The Book of Dzyan, which she said was composed in Atlantis and shown to her by the Mahatmas. However, in her writings she did give Philip Schlater the honor of inventing the name, Lemuria.

Mme Blasvatsky located her Lemuria in the Indian Ocean about 150 million years ago. She may have obtained her ideas of a sunken land in the Indian Ocean from Sanskrit legends of the former continent of Rutas that sank beneath the sea. But the name Rutas sounds too spiritless and uninspiring to have held such a prominent place in cosmic history.

She described the Lemurians as the third root race to inhabit the earth. They were egg-laying beings with a third eye that gave them psychic powers and allowed them to function without a brain. Originally bisexual, their downfall came about after they discovered sex.

The English Theosophist W. Scott-Elliot, who said he received his knowledge from the Theosophical Masters by "astral clairvoyance", writes in The Story of Atlantis & The Lost Lemuria (1896), that the sexual exploits of the Lemurians so revolted the spiritual beings, the Lhas, that they refused to follow the cosmic plan of becoming the first to incarnate into the bodies of the Lemurians. Scott-Elliot located his Lemuria not only in the Indian Ocean: He described it as stretching from the east coast of Africa across the Indian AND the Pacific Oceans.

In this century, writers have increasingly placed Lemuria in the Pacific Ocean. Even psychics and modern prophets channel beings who were citizens of Lemuria. Today just about everyone who has heard of Lemuria assumes that the legends of Mu are identical with the English zoologist's land of the lemurs.

The Lost Continent Lemuria

THE LOST PACIFIC CONTINENT OF LEMURIA is a place that history has nearly forgotten. Yet it survives in the mythology of Hindus and Australian aborigines, Polynesians and Native Americans. Its place is likewise secure among occult pioneers Madame Blavatsky and Edgar Cayce, as well as many New Age channelers and mediums. But did Lemuria really exist? And if so, when and where was it located? Given the amount of time elapsed - many centuries before the first Egyptian pyramids - there is scant archaeological evidence. Even the myths and creation stories from the Pacific area are the faintest of glimmers. Yet enough has surfaced to make a case for Lemuria, even though most geologists vehemently deny its existence. But geologists have been wrong before.

Where was it? Theories abound about the exact location of Lemuria (also called Mu, Pacifica, etc.) The consensus favors Polynesia, somewhere between the Hawaiian chain and Easter Island far to the south. However, H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, placed her "Third Continent of the Third Root Race" in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Malaysia (in her book The Secret Doctrine). Surprisingly, many scientists of her day concurred and even came up with the name, derived from lemur, the ghostlike primates who supposedly lived there. (It's interesting that the Indian government is currently searching coastal waters off Kanyakumari(cap comerin-TAMILNADU.India. for ruins of a lost civilization.) The myths and traditions of India abound with references. The Rig Veda in particular speaks of "the three continents that were"; the third was home to a race called the Danavas. A land called Rutas was an immense continent far to the east of India and home to a race of sun-worshippers. But Rutas was torn asunder by a volcanic upheaval and sent to the ocean depths. Fragments remained as Indonesia and the Pacific islands, and a few survivors reached India, where they became the elite Brahman caste.

The Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner claimed that during the sixth and seventh subraces (of the Third Root Race) colonies were established as far away as Easter Island. The continent girdled much of the Pacific near the Equator, and thousands of island peaks remain to mark its former glory. Edgar Cayce made a distinction between Mu, which floated off the coast of Baja California, and Lemuria, whose location is confusing to say the least. According to Cayce: "The Andean, or the Pacific coast of South America, occupied then the extreme western portion of Lemuria." Either he meant eastern or Earth"s land masses have changed a lot, perhaps due to a pole shift or crustal slippage. The channeled entity Seth spoke of a civilization called Lumania on the island of Maskara, whose mountain peaks today form Indonesia...

Thanks; © 2002 Mark R. Williams

" © 2002 Mark R. Williams THE LOST PACIFIC CONTINENT OF LEMURIA is a place that history has nearly forgotten. Yet it survives in the mythology of Hindus and Australian aborigines, Polynesians and Native Americans. Its place is likewise

secure among occult pioneers Madame Blavatsky and Edg..."

http://www.hotspotsz.com/The_Lost_Continent_Lemuria_%28Article-264%29.html super'b

The Lost Lands of Mu and Lemuria

2007 09 02

By Brian Haughton | newdawnmagazine.com

Was Australia Once Part of a Sunken Continent?

Lemuria and Mu are interchangeable names given to a lost land believed to have been located somewhere in either the southern Pacific or Indian Oceans. This ancient continent was apparently the home of an advanced and highly spiritual culture, perhaps the mother race of all mankind, but it sank beneath the waves many thousands of years ago as the result of a geological cataclysm of some kind.

The thousands of rocky islands scattered throughout the Pacific, including Easter Island, Tahiti, Hawaii and Samoa, have been claimed by some to be the only surviving remains of this once great continent. The theory of a lost continent in this area has been put forward by many different people, most notably in the mid 19th century by scientists in order to explain the unusual distribution of various animals and plants around the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

In the late 19th century occultist Madame Blavatsky reincarnated the idea of Lemuria as a lost continent / spiritual homeland and influenced a host of subsequent occultists and mystics including well known American psychic healer and Prophet Edgar Cayce. The popularisation of Lemuria / Mu as a purely physical place began in the 20th century with ex-British army officer Colonel James Churchward, and the idea still has many adherents today.

But is there any physical evidence to back up these claims of an ancient continent beneath the Pacific or Indian Ocean? Or should these ‘lost homeland’ stories be interpreted in another way entirely, perhaps as the symbol of a mythical vanished ‘Golden Age’ of man?

The Land of Mu

The idea of a lost continent known as ‘Mu’ in the Pacific Ocean does not actually have a particularly long history, neither is it mentioned specifically in any ancient mythologies as some writers have suggested. The title ‘Mu’ originated with eccentric amateur archaeologist Augustus le Plongeon (1826-1908), who was the first to make photographical records of the ruins of the archaeological site of Chichen Itza in Yucatán, Mexico. Plongeon’s credibility was badly damaged by his attempted translation of a Mayan book known as the ‘Troana Codex’ (also known as the ‘Madrid Codex’).

In his books Sacred Mysteries Among the Mayans and Quiches (1886) and Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx (1896) Plongeon interpreted part of the text of the Troana Codex as revealing that the Maya ofYucatán were the ancestors of the Egyptians and many other civilisations. He also believed that an ancient continent, which he called Mu, had been destroyed by a volcanic eruption, the survivors of this

cataclysm founding the Mayan civilisation. Plongeon equates Mu with Atlantis and states that a ‘Queen Moo’ originally from Atlantis, travelled to Egypt where she became known as Isis, and founded the Egyptian civilisation. However, Plongeon’s interpretation of the Mayan book is considered by experts in Mayan archaeology and history as completely erroneous, indeed much of what he interpreted as hieroglyphics turned out to be ornamental design.

Lemuria

‘Lemuria’, the alternative name for the lost continent, also originated in the nineteenth century. Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834-1919), a German naturalist and supporter of Darwin, proposed that a land bridge spanning the Indian Ocean separating Madagascar from India could explain the widespread distribution of lemurs, small, primitive tree-dwelling mammals found in Africa, Madagascar, India and the East Indian archipelago. More bizarrely, Haeckel also suggested that lemurs were the ancestors of the human race and that this land bridge was the “probable cradle of the human race.”

Other well-known scientists, such as the evolutionist T.H. Huxley and the naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, had no doubt about the existence of a huge continent in the Pacific millions of years previously, which had been destroyed in a disastrous earthquake that submerged it beneath the waves, much as Atlantis was thought to have been drowned.

Before the discovery of continental drift it was not unusual in the mid to late 19th century for scientists to propose submerged land masses and land bridges to explain the distribution of the world’s flora and fauna. In 1864, the English zoologist Philip Lutley Sclater (1829-1913) gave the hypothetical continent the name ‘Lemuria’ in an article ‘The Mammals of Madagascar’ in The Quarterly Journal of Science, and since then it has stuck.

The Geologists’ View

Zoologists and geologists now explain the distribution of lemurs and other plants and animals in the area of the Pacific and Indian Oceans to be the result of plate tectonics and continental drift. The theory of plate tectonics, and it is still a theory, affirms that moving plates of the Earth’s crust supported on less rigid mantle rocks causes continental drift, volcanic and seismic activity, and the formation of mountain chains. The concept of continental drift was first proposed by German scientist Alfred Wegener in 1912, but the theory did not gain general acceptance in the scientific community for another 50 years.

With this understanding of plate tectonics geologists now regard the theory of a sunken continent beneath the Pacific as an impossibility. They also point out that theories of lost lands in the Pacific mostly originate in the 19th century, when knowledge of the area was limited and well before the Pacific sea floor had been mapped.

Blavatsky’s Lemuria

The idea of Lemuria as something more than a physical place, or at least somewhere which had been inhabited by non-human entities before the appearance of man, derives from the writings of colourful Russian occultist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891). Blavatsky was the co-founder, together with lawyer Henry Steel Olcott, of the Theosophical Society, in New York in 1875. The Society was an esoteric order designed to study the mystical teachings of both Christianity and Eastern religions.

In her massive tome The Secret Doctrine (1888) Blavatsky describes a history originating millions of years ago with the ‘Lords of Flame’ and goes on to discusses five ‘Root Races’ which have existed on earth, each one dying out in an earth-shattering cataclysm. The third of these Root Races she called the ‘Lemurian’, which lived a million years ago, and who were bizarre telepathic giants who kept dinosaurs as pets.

The Lemurians eventually drowned when their continent was submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean. The progeny of the Lemurians was the fourth Root Race, the human Atlanteans, who were brought down by their use of black magic, their continent of Atlantis sinking beneath the waves 850,000 years ago. Present humanity represents the Fifth Root Race.

Blavatsky envisioned her Lemuria as covering a vast area. In her own words it stretched from

...the foot of the Himalayas, which separated it from the inland sea rolling its waves over what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the great desert of Schamo (Gobi); from Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to Assam. From thence, it stretched South across what is known to us as Southern India, Ceylon, and Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as we go South, Madagascar on its right hand and Australia and Tasmania on its left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic Circle; when, from Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it extended far into the Pacific Ocean...

Blavatsky also describes survivors of the catastrophic destruction of Lemuria escaping to become the ancestors of some of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia. She maintained that she took all of her information regarding Lemuria from ‘The Book of Dzyan’, supposed to have been written in Atlantis and shown to her by the Indian adepts known as ‘Mahatmas’.

Madame Blavatsky never claimed to have discovered Lemuria; in fact she refers to Philip Schlater coining the name Lemuria, in her writings. It has to be said that The Secret Doctrine is an extremely difficult book, a complex mixture of Eastern and Western cosmologies, mystical ramblings and esoteric wisdom, much of it not meant to be taken literally.

Blavatsky’s is the first ‘occult’ interpretation of Lemuria, but on one level it should not be equated with the physical continent later proposed by Churchward. What Blavatsky and other occultists since have suggested concerning Lemuria could be partly interpreted as an ideal spiritual condition of the soul, a kind of spiritual-historical vision.

Nevertheless, there are some psychics and prophets who even today regard the existence of ancient Lemuria / Mu as a physical reality. Indeed, there are a few who when ‘hypnotically regressed’ have recalled former lives as citizens on the doomed continent.

Lemuria and Australia

The writings of Blavatsky and other Theosophists about Lemuria, and the idea of Australia as part of this ancient lost continent and the scene of a lost golden age, had a significant influence on mystics and occultists in the country at the end of the 19th century.

Queensland-born novelist Rosa Campbell Praed represented Australia as the last remnant of ancient Lemuria and believed the myth of the lost continent to be based on fact. In Praed’s case, she used the theosophical idea of Lemuria to present an idealised primeval history of Australia, a land very different to the Queensland frontier country wracked by racial violence she had witnessed first-hand as a child.

Other evidence for this fascination with ancient Lemuria comes in the series of Australian adventure of the 1890s known as “the Lemurian novels.” In The Last Lemurian, written in 1898 by historian of Australian exploration and adventure-romance novelist George Firth Scott, the narrator Dick Halwood discovers the remains of legendary Lemuria out in the Australian desert, in a plot involving reincarnation, pygmies, a bunyip-monster, and an occult Yellow Queen.

John David Hennessey’s An Australian Bush Track (1896) calls Lemuria ‘Zoo-Zoo land’, and locates it somewhere in northern Queensland. Its inhabitants, the Zoo-Zooans, are a “remnant of a great nation which came there from some part of the mainland of Asia,” but had lost all the arts of high civilisation they once possessed. The Lost Explorer (1890) by James Francis Hogan has Lemuria as ‘Malua’, located in the centre of Australia, and ruled by the cannibalistic Queen Mocata, the last survivor of a superior race that once lived in “the interior of the great southern continent.”

The idea that Australia was once part of this lost Eden has also influenced those of a more practical bent, and attempts have been made to locate traces of Lemurian civilisation on both the west and east coasts of Australia.

Aboriginal art, artefacts and mythology have also been used to identify the Aborigines as prehistoric remnants of the Lemurians (following Blavatsky again), who somehow escaped the devastation of 20,000 or so years ago. Indeed, in some Theosophical publications of the first quarter of the 20th century Aborigines were described as the last of the Lemurians. However, the Aborigines of Australia had already been established on the continent for at least 30,000 years at the time of the supposed destruction of Lemuria, in fact they have perhaps the longest continuous cultural history of any people on Earth, so the theory of them having a Lemurian origin does not hold water.

Colonel James Churchward

The lost civilisation of Lemuria / Mu was brought dramatically back to public attention in 1931 with the publication of Colonel James Churchward’s bizarre The Lost Continent of Mu, the first in a series of five books by Churchward about the lost continent.

In the book he claimed that the lost continent of Mu had once extended from an area north of Hawaii southwards as far as Fiji and Easter Island. According to Churchward, Mu was the original Garden of Eden and a technologically advanced civilisation which boasted 64,000,000 inhabitants. Around 12,000 years ago Mu was wiped out by an earthquake and submerged beneath the Pacific. Apparently Atlantis, a colony of Mu, was destroyed in the same way a thousand years later. All the world’s major ancient civilisations, from the Babylonians and the Persians, to the Maya and the Egyptians, were the remains of the colonies of Mu.

Churchward claimed he received this sensational information when, as a young officer in India during a famine in the 1880s, he became friendly with an Indian priest. This priest told Churchward that he and two cousins were the only

survivors of a 70,000 year old esoteric order which originated on Mu itself. This order was known as the ‘Naacal Brotherhood’.

The priest showed Churchward a number of ancient tablets written by the Naacal Order in a forgotten ancient language, supposed to be the original language of mankind, which he taught the officer to read. Churchward later asserted that certain stone artefacts recovered in Mexico contained parts of the ‘Sacred Inspired Writings of Mu’, perhaps taking ideas from Augustus le Plongeon and his use of the Troana Codex to provide evidence for the existence of Mu.

Unfortunately, Churchward never produced any evidence to back up his exotic claims, he never published translations of the enigmatic Naacal tablets, and his books, though they still have many followers today, are perhaps better read as entertainment than factual studies of Lemuria / Mu.

Nan Madol

It was James Churchward who first posited the theory that the site of Nan Modal, on Pohnpei Island in the North Pacific Ocean, was one of the seven cities of ancient Mu / Lemuria.

The cyclopean ruins of Nan Modal, at one time a ceremonial centre covering 11 square miles, consist of around 90 small artificial islands built up out of a lagoon, and interlinked by a network of tidal canals. These islands, situated on the tidal flats southeast of Temwen Island, Micronesia, contain house foundations, sea walls – thirty feet tall in places, tunnels and burial vaults, all constructed entirely from prismatic basalt columns stacked crisscross like log cabins. These rocks weigh several tons on average, with the largest weighing 25 tons.

What makes the construction all the more remarkable is that the stone had to be transported some distance to the site, as no quarries have been found nearby, though they do exist elsewhere on the island. A clue to how this feat was achieved are crystal basalt columns discovered at the bottom of the lagoon near Temwen Island and on the shores of other islets in the area, which would suggest that the stones were transported by raft.

Modern Pohnpeians, on the other hand, believe the stones were flown over the island using black magic. Radio carbon dates and analysis of pottery from Nan Madol reveal that construction of the site began around 1200 CE, though the area may have been occupied from as early as 200 BCE. Such dates would certainly preclude any connection with Churchward’s Lemurians or their descendents.

At the beginning of the 13th century CE the island of Pohnpei is thought to have been conquered and unified by the mysterious ‘saudeleur’ dynasty, and it was then that the spectacular complex was constructed as a ceremonial and political seat for the new royal line. The saudeleur line was brought to an end in the 1500s by exiled Pohnpeian warrior, Isokelekel. The new chiefs, known as Nahnmwarki, occupied Nan Madol for a couple of hundred years, but by the 1800’s when the first Europeans arrived, the site was deserted. Why this happened remains one of the many mysteries of this incredible site.

The Kerguelen Continent

In the last twenty or so years submerged civilisations have once again been in the news due in particular to a number of intriguing underwater discoveries. In 1999 the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling (JOIDES) Resolution research vessel made an amazing discovery drilling in an area of the southern Indian Ocean about 3,000 km to the southwest of Australia.

The researchers discovered that an underwater plateau about a third the size of Australia, known as the Kerguelen Plateau, was actually the remains of a lost continent, which sank beneath the waves around 20 million years ago. The team found fragments of wood, a seed, spores and pollen, in 90 million year old sediment, as well as types of rocks associated with explosive volcanism.

One of the many fascinating points about the Kerguelen Plateau is that it contains sedimentary rocks similar to those found in India and Australia, which indicates that they were at one time connected. Scientists believe that around 50 million years ago, the continent may have had tropical flora and fauna, including small dinosaurs. With further research planned, the fascinating puzzle of the Kerguelen Plateau may yet resurrect the Lemuria debate.

Yonaguni Island and the Gulf of Cambay

In 1985 off the southern coast of Yonaguni Island, the westernmost island of Japan, a Japanese dive tour operator discovered a previously unknown stepped pyramidal edifice. Shortly afterwards, Professor Masaki Kimura, a marine geologist at Ryukyu University in Okinawa, confirmed the existence of the 183m wide, 27m high structure.

This rectangular stone ziggurat, part of a complex of underwater stone structures in the area which resemble ramps, steps and terraces, is thought to date from somewhere between 3,000 to 8,000 years ago. Some researchers have suggested these ruins are the remains of a submerged civilisation – and that the structures represent perhaps the oldest architecture in the world. Connections with Lemuria and Atlantis have also been mentioned.

However, some geologists, such as Robert Schoch of Boston University, and others with knowledge of the area, insist that the underwater ‘buildings’ are natural, mainly the result of ocean erosion and coral reef settlements and similar to other known geological formations in the region. Furthermore, archaeologists also point out that no man-made tools or weapons have been recovered from the site, which would indicate human settlement.

In December 2000 a team from the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) claimed to have discovered the remains of a huge lost city 36 metres underwater in the Gulf of Cambay, off the western coast of India. A year later further acoustic imaging surveys were undertaken and evidence recorded for apparent human settlement at the site, which included the foundations of huge structures, pottery, sections of walls, beads, pieces of sculpture and human bone. One of the wooden finds supposedly from the city has given a radiocarbon date of 7500 BCE, which would make the site 4,000 years earlier than the oldest known civilisation in India.

Research is ongoing at this fascinating site, now known as the Gulf of Khambat Cultural Complex (GKCC), which if the dates are proved correct, may one day radically alter our understanding of the world’s first civilisations. However, it must be added that a number of marine geologists believe that the NIOT scientists have made serious errors in their interpretations of the sonar images obtained from the area. The opinion of these researchers is that the supposedly ancient ‘ruins’, shown as geometric patterns on the images, are natural rock formations and there is no evidence that the artefacts discovered in the area of the site, including the radio-carbon dated block of wood, are associated with it. The debate is still continuing among geologists, archaeologists and historians on this controversial discovery.

Whether any of these underwater finds in the Pacific and Indian Oceans prove to be the remains of forgotten civilisations or not, one thing is certain – man will always be searching for a lost homeland or a more spiritually satisfying ancient past. In this sense Lemuria or Mu will always be more than just a physical place.

Sources and Further Reading

The Lost Continent of Mu by J. Churchward, C.W. Daniel Co. Ltd, 1994 (1931).

The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories by Sumathi Ramaswamy, University of California Press, 2005.

The Secret Doctrine II – Anthropogenesis by H.P. Blavatsky, Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, California, 1970 (1888).

Other Temples, Other Gods: The Occult in Australia by N. Drury & G. Tillett, Sydney, Hodder & Stoughton, 1982.

‘Lost Continent Discovered’. The Kerguelen discovery.

‘Questionable Claims’. The finds in the Gulf of Khambat.

Morien Institue page about Yonaguni.

‘Pohnpei – Between Time and Tide’.

Dr. William S. Ayres’s site about his work in Nan Madol.

BRIAN HAUGHTON is an author and researcher who lives and writes in Patra, Greece. His publications include an article 'The Watseka Wonder' in issue 1 of the UK's Paranormal Magazine, articles on the BBC’s Legacies website, and in Bizarre Bazaar, All Destiny and World Mysteries. His latest book Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries is published by New Page books. Brian has established a website devoted to the lives of mysterious, strange and paranormal people at www.mysteriouspeople.com. He can be contacted via email at brian@mysteriouspeople.com.

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The_Lost_Lands_of_Mu_and_Lemuria.html

question and answer ;

   

Lemuria Continent (or Kumari Kandam) - The Lost Continent?(hari krishnan)

I would like to collect information on the Lost Continents like

Lemuria and Atlantis.

Lemuria (IPA: /lɨˈmjʊəriə/[1]) is the name of a hypothetical "lost land" variously located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its 19th century origins lie in attempts to account for discontinuities in biogeography. Lemuria has been rendered superfluous by modern understanding of plate tectonics. Although sunken continents do exist — see Zealandia in the Pacific and the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian Ocean — there is no known geological formation under the Indian or Pacific Oceans that corresponds to the hypothetical Lemuria.

Though Lemuria has passed out of the realm of conventional science, it has been adopted by occult writers, as well as some Tamil writers of India. Accounts of Lemuria differ according to the requirements of their contexts, but all share a common belief that a continent existed in ancient times and sank beneath the ocean as a result of geological change, often cataclysmic.

MORE YOU DIDNT TALK ABOUT

Lyonesse, Lyoness, or Lyonnesse is a fictional country in Arthurian legend, birthplace of the knight Tristan.

In a later tradition, Lyonesse is identified as a sunken land lying off the Isles of Scilly, to the south-west of Cornwall. The Trevelyan family of Cornwall takes its coat of arms from a local legend; "when Lyonesse sank beneath the waves only a man named Trevelyan escaped by riding a white horse." To this day the family's shield bears a white horse rising from the waves.

Cantre'r Gwaelod, (literally, The Lowland Hundred in English) is the legendary ancient sunken kingdom said to have occupied a tract of fertile land stretching northwards from Ramsey Island to Bardsey Island over what is now Cardigan Bay to the west of Wales, often described as the 'Welsh Atlantis'.

Mu is the name of a hypothetical lost continent, which is thought to have been located in the Pacific Ocean before it sank beneath the waters, similar to Atlantis and Lemuria, with which it is sometimes identified.

General acceptance by the scientific community of the theory of plate tectonics ended any scientific basis for the once popular belief in sunken continents. Plate tectonics explains that continental masses are composed of the lighter SiAl (silicon/aluminium) type rocks which literally float on the heavier SiMg (silicon/magnesium) rocks which constitute ocean bottoms. There is no evidence of SiAl rock in the Pacific basin.

　        Many of the details of the Atlantis story fit with what is now known about Crete. Women had a relatively high political status, both cultures were peaceful, and both enjoyed the unusual sport of ritualistic bullfighting (where an unarmed man wrestled and jumped over a bull).

　                                                   Plato's Atlantis

The story of the lost continent of Atlantis starts in 355 B.C. with the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato had planned to write a trilogy of books discussing the nature of man, the creation of the world, and the story of Atlantis, as well as other subjects. Only the first book was ever completed. The second book was abandoned part way through, and the final book was never even started.

Plato used dialogues to express his ideas. In this type of writing, the author's thoughts are explored in a series of arguments and debates between various characters in the story. Plato often used real people in his dialogues, such as his teacher, Socrates, but the words he gave them were his own.

In Plato's book, Timaeus, a character named Kritias tells an account of Atlantis that has been in his family for generations. According to the character, the story was originally told to his ancestor, Solon, by a priest during Solon's visit to Egypt.

There had been a powerful empire located to the west of the "Pillars of Hercules" (what we now call the Straight of Gibraltar) on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. The nation there had been established by Poseidon, the God of the Sea. Poseidon fathered five sets of twins on the island. The firstborn, Atlas, had the continent and the surrounding ocean named for him. Poseidon divided the land into ten sections, each to be ruled by a son, or his heirs.

The capital city of Atlantis was a marvel of architecture and engineering. The city was composed of a series of concentric walls and canals. At the very center was a hill, and on top of the hill a temple to Poseidon. Inside was a gold statue of the God of the Sea showing him driving six winged horses.

About 9000 years before the time of Plato, after the people of Atlantis became corrupt and greedy, the gods decided to destroy them. A violent earthquake shook the land, giant waves rolled over the shores, and the island sank into the sea, never to be seen again.

So, is the story of Atlantis just a fable used by Plato to make a point? Or is there some reason to think he was referring to a real place? Well, at numerous points in the dialogues, Plato's characters refer to the story of Atlantis as "genuine history" and it being within "the realm of fact." Plato also seems to put into the story a lot of detail about Atlantis that would be unnecessary if he had intended to use it only as a literary device.

On the other hand according to the writings of the historian Strabo, Plato's student Aristotle remarked that Atlantis was simply created by Plato to illustrate a point. Unfortunately, Aristotle's writings on this subject, which might have cleared the mystery up, have been lost eons ago.

　    If the fall of the Minoans is the story of Atlantis, how did Plato get the location and time wrong? Galanopoulos suggested there was a mistake during translation of some of the figures from Egyptian to Greek and an extra zero added. This would mean 900 years ago became 9000, and the distance from Egypt to "Atlantis" went from 250 miles to 2,500. If this is true, Plato (knowing the layout of the Mediterranean Sea) would have been forced to assume the location of the island continent to be squarely in the Atlantic Ocean.

Not everyone accepts the Minoan Crete theory of the story of Atlantis, but until a convincing case can be made for some other place, it, perhaps, remains science's best guess.

Location, Location, Location

If we make the assumption that Atlantis was a real place, it seems logical that it could be found west of the Straight of Gibraltar near the Azores Islands. In 1882 a man named Ignatius Donnelly published a book titled Atlantis, the Antediluvian World. Donnelly, an American politician, had come to the belief that Plato's story represented actual historical fact. He located Atlantis in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, suggesting the Azores Islands represented what remained of the highest mountain peaks. Donnelly said he had studied zoology and geology and had come to the conclusion that civilization itself had begun with the Atlantians and had spread out throughout the world as the Atlantians established colonies in places like ancient Egypt and Peru. Donnelly's book became a world-wide best seller, but researchers could not take Donnelly's theories seriously as he offered no proof for his ideas.

As time when on it became obvious that Donnelly's theories were faulty. Modern scientific surveys of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean shows it is covered with a blanket of sediment that must have taken millions of years to accumulate. There is no sign of a sunken island continent.

Are there any other candidates for the location of Atlantis? People have made cases for places as diverse as Switzerland, in the middle of Europe, and New Zealand, in the Pacific Ocean. The explorer, Percy Fawcett, thought that it might be located in Brazil. One of the most convincing arguments, though, came from K.T. Frost, a professor of history at the Queen's University in Belfast. Later, Spyridon Marinatos, an archaeologist, and A.G. Galanopoulos, a seismologist, added evidence to Frost's ideas.

The Minoan Connection

Frost suggested that instead of being west of the Pillars of Hercules, Atlantis was east. He also thought that the catastrophic end of the island had come not 9000 years before Plato's time, but only 900. If this was true, the land of Atlantis might already be a well-known place even in Plato's time: the island of Crete. Are Pyramids a Clue?

Lewis Spence, a Scottish writer, published several books on Atlantis in the early 20th century. He was fascinated by the pyramids constructed by ancient races in different parts of the globe. Spence wondered if the creation of pyramids in diverse areas such as South America and Egypt indicated that these places had all been colonies of the Atlantis and if the Atlantians were the original pyramid makers. While the idea is interesting, most historians today believe the trend toward building pyramids occurred independently in different locations.

　　    Crete is now a part of modern Greece and lies just south of Athens across part of the Mediterranean Sea. Before 1500 B.C. it was the seat of the Minoan Empire. The Minoans dominated the eastern Mediterranean with a powerful navy and probably extracted tribute from other surrounding nations. Archaeological excavations have shown that Minoan Crete was probably one of the most sophisticated cultures of its time. It had splendid architecture and art. A code of laws gave women equal legal status to men. Agriculture was highly developed and an extensive irrigation system existed.

Then, seemingly in a blink of an eye, the Minoan Civilization disappeared. Geological studies have shown that on an island we now know as Santorinas, located just ten miles to the north of Crete, a disaster occurred that was very capable of toppling the Minoan state.

Santorinas today is a lush Mediterranean paradise consisting of several islands in a ring shape. Twenty-five hundred years ago, though, it was a single large island with a volcano in the center. The volcano blew itself apart in a massive explosion around 1500 B.C.

To understand the effect of such an explosion, scientists have compared it with the most powerful volcanic explosion in historic times. This occurred on the Island of Krakatoa in 1883. There a giant wave, or tsunami, 120 feet high raced across the sea and hit neighboring islands, killing 36,000 people. Ash thrown up into the air blackened the skies for three days. The sound of the explosion was heard as far away as 3,000 miles.

The explosion at Santorinas was four times as powerful as Krakatoa.

The tsunami that hit Crete must have traveled inland for over half a mile, destroying any coastal towns or cities. The great Minoan fleet of ships were all sunk in a few seconds. Overnight the powerful Minoan Empire was crushed and Crete changed to a political backwater. One can hardly imagine a catastrophe more like Plato's description of Atlantis' fate than the destruction of Crete.

　

　    Sangam literature describes an area of land known as Kumari Kandam, which lay to the south of Dravida country, which had been lost to the sea in two successive inundations [1] [2] [3]. The two inundations are said to mark the division between the three sangam periods. Geological features described in the literature include two main rivers of Kumari Kandam as the Pagruliyaru and the Kumari. It is also believed to have had numerous great cities with great monuments and the foremost among those cities were the two first and second cities of Madurai. Both the first and the second Tamil literary Sangam Eras, the Muthal Sangam and the Idaii Sangam, were said to have been held in those two respective cities of Madurai. South Indian Traditions give the two Sangam periods antiquities ranging in tens of thousands of years with a timeline of about 10,000 B.C to the second. Both the Sangam Eras were supposed to have been terminated by deluges which submerged the continent.Mr.p.shay.

Source(s):

Source(s):

www.unmuseum.org/atlantis

wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis

www.atlan.org/