Short Stuff: The Lost (?) Continent of Lemuria

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Episode: Short Stuff: The Lost (?) Continent of Lemuria
Date: August 20, 2025
Hosts: Josh and Chuck

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the curious history of Lemuria—a supposed sunken continent invented in the 19th century to explain puzzling animal and plant distributions across continents. Josh and Chuck trace how a scientific hypothesis turned into fertile ground for pseudoscience, occult myth, and enduring cultural legends.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Roots of the Lemuria Theory

[00:38–02:21]

• Philip Sclater:

  • British zoologist, author of The Mammals of Madagascar (1864).
  • Noted Madagascar’s many lemur species vs. Africa and India’s lack of lemurs.
  • Hypothesized a now-lost land bridge—"Lemuria"—once connecting Madagascar to India and Africa to explain species’ distribution.

  Quote:

  • “He said, I know what it was. There used to be a great continent…and that's how they got there. And that thing is now underwater. And I'm even going to name it Lemuria.” (Chuck, 01:42)

• Pre-Continental Drift Era:

  • Land bridges were a popular solution before the theory of continental drift gained traction in the 1920s.
  • Sclater’s idea was a serious scientific hypothesis at the time—crackpot interpretations came later.

2. From Science to Speculation

[02:21–05:22]

• Ernst Haeckel:

  • German biologist and contemporary of Darwin.
  • Proposed in History of Creation that Lemuria was the "cradle of humanity"—the birthplace of the human race and source of “12 varieties of men.”
  • Based further evolutionary theories on Lemuria, despite a lack of evidence.

  Quote:

  • “This Lemuria place that my comrade Sclater came up with, I think not only was that a place, but that was where it all started. That's the cradle of mankind and humanity.” (Chuck, 03:50)

• Problems:

  • There was no actual fossil or geological evidence for Lemuria.
  • In fact, neither India nor Africa has native lemurs.

3. Darwin and the Scientific Community’s Skepticism

[07:41–08:28]

• Darwin was critical of the idea of literal continents sinking into the sea.
• He sarcastically commented in a letter to Charles Lyell (geologist):
  Quote:
  • “‘If there be a lower region for the punishment of geologists, I believe my great master, you will go there.’” (Chuck quoting Darwin, 08:12)

4. Lemuria’s Descent into Occult and New Age Lore

[08:32–10:33]

• Helena Blavatsky:

  • 19th-century Russian occultist, founder of the Theosophical Society.
  • Claimed spiritual contact could reveal true origins of humanity.
  • In The Secret Doctrine (1888), she borrowed Lemuria as the home of her “third root race”—giant, hermaphroditic, egg-laying ancestors of humans.

• Her fantastical accounts turned Lemuria into a mainstay of spiritualist and New Age beliefs.

  Memorable Passage:

  • “She said that they're gigantic humans who were hermaphroditic and laid eggs, but because we're evolved from them, they eventually grew distinct sexual organs.” (Josh summing up Blavatsky, 10:08)

5. Lemuria in Modern Cultural and Regional Identity

[10:43–12:36]

• The Lemuria myth intersected with existing Tamil legends (Kumari Kandam), about a lost continent south of India.

• Some British ethnologists speculated Dravidian-speaking Tamil people were Lemuria’s descendants, giving a mythical origin story to South Indian identity.

• Lemuria remains part of Tamil cultural imagination, sometimes as the source of the oldest language and civilization.

  Quote:

  • “They're like, hey, everybody, we're from Lemuria. That makes us the oldest civilization, which makes us the most civilized civilization. Eat that.” (Josh, 12:13)

• Lemuria now persists in New Age communities (e.g., as “Lemurian crystals”).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the legitimacy of early Lemuria hypotheses:
  “It seems off to us now, but this is a legitimate man of science proposing a legitimate hypothesis… It was the crackpots who took it and turned it into a crackpot theory.” (Josh, 02:58)

• On Blavatsky’s occult reinterpretation:
  “There's actually few people that fully embody everything I scorn like Helena Blavatsky does.” (Josh, 09:02)

• About continuing interest in Lemuria:
  “If you look it up online, there's a lot of New Agey sites that are talking about Lemuria… you can buy Lemurian crystals and things like that for the low, low price of $25.” (Chuck, 10:43)

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Episode Structure & Timestamps

• [00:38–02:21] – Sclater’s hypothesis and 19th-century context
• [02:21–05:22] – Spread of the idea through figures like Haeckel
• [07:41–08:28] – Darwin’s response
• [08:32–10:33] – Theosophy, Blavatsky, and New Age twists
• [10:43–12:36] – Lemuria in Tamil identity and ongoing cultural impact

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Tone and Approach

As ever, Josh and Chuck bring their signature playful, skeptical, and digressive style:

• Gentle ribbing (“Schlotter” vs. “Sclater”), nerdy asides, and imagined historical moments (“I just imagined [Haeckel] B-boy dancing up to Darwin…” Josh, 07:41)
• Acknowledgment of their own changing approach to fringe ideas (“Remember how we used to just be totally into 40 and stuff and, like, unexplained stuff? … And now we're just like…” Josh, 12:47)

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Summary:
This episode traces Lemuria’s journey from a 19th-century scientific theory trying to answer real distributional puzzles, to its wild reinterpretation by occultists and its enduring status in both New Age shops and Tamil cultural lore. The hosts deftly balance historical context, myth-busting, and wry humor, making the episode accessible for newcomers to the story of “the lost continent of Lemuria.”

Transcript

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[Josh]

Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Dave's not here, Jerry's here, and I'll tell you who else is here. It's Philip Schlatter, his ghost. He's a 19th century British zoologist and he's come across the plane of existence to be here with us today.

[Chuck]

I think you added an H in there, my friend.

[Josh]

Sklater. Yeah. He always wished his name was Schlatter.

[Chuck]

Yeah, we're talking about Philip Sclater. I guess that's even. That's a weird name. I like Schlotter better, too.

[Josh]

Sure.

[Chuck]

Because he took part in something that was going on in the mid 19th century where people were trying to figure out where stuff came from that didn't seem like it belonged there, like in their country. Like, why is this animal here when they were from another continent? Or this plant. That doesn't make a lot of sense. And we've talked about this stuff before in terms of like land bridges and things like that. But he wrote a book in 1864 called the Mammals of Madagascar. No colon, just clean and simple.

[Josh]

Good for you, Schlader.

[Chuck]

Where he wondered, like, Madagascar is off the east coast of Africa and they have dozens of species of lemurs, but all of Africa and India have only a few species of lemur. In fact, it was worse than that. They don't have any species of lemur. He was just mistaken and thought some other big eyed primates were lemurs. But he was on the right track as far as saying, like, what happened here? And he said, I know what it was. There used to be a great continent that connected these things and that's how they got there. And that thing is now underwater. And I'm even going to name it Lemuria.

[Josh]

Yeah. After his lemur friends.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Yeah. And this was the reason that he was coming up with an idea like this. And he wasn't the only One, apparently land bridges were very much in vogue at the time because we didn't understand, like you were saying, how, like, a plant could be on one continent and also on another. And we hadn't figured out continental drift yet. That didn't really get traction until the 1920s. So this is an attempt to explain that before the theory of continental drift came along or drifted along, and this continent of Lemuria supposedly was on the bottom of the Indian Ocean now, but basically spanned from India all the way to Africa. And Slater. Slater, yeah. He basically said, this is where lemurs originated, and then they spread out from there. Case closed. And we should say, like, it seems off to us now, but this is a legitimate man of science proposing a legitimate hypothesis that may or may not have been able to be tested. I don't. I'm not sure, but, like, it wasn't meant to be crackpot. It was the crackpots who took it and turned it into a crackpot theory.

[Chuck]

Yeah, exactly. It kind of gained traction in other circles, and we're going to talk about a few of those. There was one guy, a German biologist named Ernst Haeckel, and he wrote a book called History of Creation. No colon. They didn't have colons back then. No.

[Josh]

They invented the colon with the continental drift theory. That's right.

[Chuck]

He had a theory about evolution that kind of flew in the face of Darwin, where he said, you know what? This Lemuria place that my comrade Sclater came up with, I think not only was that a place, but that was where it all started. That's the cradle of mankind and humanity. There were 12 varieties of men, and the first humans evolved from ancient primates and spread from there. And they did so from Lemuria.

[Josh]

Right. I mean, this is problematic through and through, but it's also worth saying that Haeckel himself was a respected man of science, too. He was a very accomplished one of those guys who's like, I'm a biologist now. I'm a geologist now, I'm a geographer. What else do you want me to be? He was one of those dudes who really contributed to science. But again, at the time, this was like. It just seems to be like crackpot theories to us now. But they were still just trying to explain what they were seeing, and it just turned out to be kind of wrong. One of the big problems with it was that he based it on Lemuria, which there was no evidence aside from, you know. Oh, well, it kind of explains why this plant's here, this lemur's on this continent, and these lemurs are on this continent. There was no evidence for it whatsoever. So it's probably faulty to really start basing other hypotheses on this hypothetical sunken continent, right?

[Chuck]

Especially when there weren't even really lemurs at all in either India or Africa.

[Josh]

Yep.

[Chuck]

Should we take a break?

[Josh]

Yep.

[Chuck]

All right. We'll be right.

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[Josh]

Sheesh.

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[Chuck]

You kidding me?

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[Josh]

You mentioned Darwin. I can't remember what you said about Hakel, but I just imagined, ha, like B boy dancing up to Darwin and like running his hand, like waving his hand in between their faces. You know how they do that? And then dancing Off. I can't remember what you said, but it triggered that image and it cracked me up. So thanks for that, Chuck.

[Chuck]

Yeah, kind of that. It just flew in the face of what Darwin thought. And apparently Darwin was not a fan of any of these theories about continents just sinking.

[Josh]

No. He would shoot his TV when it was mentioned on the news.

[Chuck]

He wrote a letter to a guy named Charles Lyell, who was a geologist who also thought that continents sank. He said, if there. This is such a nerd burned. If there be a lower region for the punishment of geologists, I believe my great master, you will go there.

[Josh]

And Charles Lyell, worth saying, respected man of science, too.

[Chuck]

That's right. You know who was not?

[Josh]

I do tell everybody.

[Chuck]

A woman named Helena Blavatsky, who was a 19th century Russian occultist, and she founded something called the Theosophical Society that believed that religion or science hadn't fully captured the full truth of the origins of Earth. Which. I'm like, yeah, I'm down with that. But she thought, through psychic gifts, that people like herself could access that lost wisdom. And that's where she lost me.

[Josh]

And there's actually few people that fully embody everything I scorn like Helena Blavatsky does. Yeah. She wrote a book called the Secret Doctrine, came out in 1888. And by this time, Lemuria is not. It's no longer like, it's out of the realm of science. It's now into the New Age movement, the Theosophists. It was the movement that Blavatsky, Madame Blavatsky, helped found. And I think it was also the basis of spiritualism, too. We did a whole episode on spiritualism. She played a big role in that. But that whole trend of, like, going to seances and stuff in the Victorian age, she helped kick that off. And in this book, the Secret Doctrine, she was saying, hey, I've read Ernest Hankel before, so I kind of understand his idea that Lemuria was the cradle of civilization. He said that there's 12 varieties of men. I'm going to say instead that there's seven. I'm going to call them root races. And Lemuria in particular was home to the third root race. And people said, well, what's the third root race? And she said, read on, dear reader. And in the next passage, she said that they're gigantic humans who were hermaphroditic and laid eggs, but because we're evolved from them, they eventually grew distinct sexual organs.

[Chuck]

Moving on. Yeah, yeah. I mean, do we even need to comment on that. Besides, it's hysterical. Yeah.

[Josh]

I don't even find it hysterical. Like, it's just, man.

[Chuck]

Yeah, no, I'm with you. But this is the 19th century, so, you know.

[Josh]

Yeah, but have you been on YouTube lately? This is so, like, of the moment still, too.

[Chuck]

Yeah. I mean, Lemuria, if you look it up online, there's a lot of New Agey sites that are talking about Lemuria. And, you know, you can buy Lemurian crystals and things like that for the low, low price of $25, that kind of thing. I think what is interesting is this final sort of twist to the story. Back in India, when it was a colony of the Brits, there were some ethnologists from Britain who were, at the time, they were really fascinated. Like, where did the original Indians come from? Here they're so diverse racially and ethnically. Like, what was the original ancestry? And they really honed in on the Dravidian speaking people in southern India. One of the languages, Dravidians was a language family. And one of those people that spoke one of those languages were the Tamil people. T A M I L. And one theory was, oh, those people were the first people. And they were from Lemuria.

[Josh]

Yes. So the Tamil people really love that. They actually had a legend already of some. I think it's a Hindu legend about Kumari Kandam. And it's a lost civilization or under the sea, under the Indian Ocean. So they're like. They're really kind of jibes. Hey, everybody, we're from Lemuria. That makes us the oldest civilization, which makes us the most civilized civilization. Eat that.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And thus have the oldest language eat that as well. And apparently today, even if you are. I want to say Tamilian, but I guess just Tamil, there's still apparently this sort of fascination with this sort of lost world that they. Their original people came from, and they, like, populated planet Earth.

[Josh]

Yeah. So, yeah, I find that more charming than New Agey stuff. Even though.

[Chuck]

Yeah, Blabotsky.

[Josh]

Yeah, I know. Yeah.

[Chuck]

Wow.

[Josh]

How much have we, like, evolved over time? Remember how we used to just be totally into 40 and stuff and, like, unexplained stuff? And, like, our minds were open, we were curious, and we wouldn't poo poo stuff. And now we're just like.

[Chuck]

Yeah, Madame Blavaria. Blavaria. Blavatsky. Lemuria. I'm confused now.

[Josh]

Lamotsky. Schlemiel. Schlamazel.

[Chuck]

You short stuff out.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

Okay. Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app.

[Noah de Barrasso]

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