Lemuria

Lemuria was a continent that existed about thirty-four million years ago, according to The Secret Doctrine, and was the home of the Third Root-Race. It was destroyed by volcanic fires and most of its land lies now under the ocean.

Early Lemuria

The extension and shape of the continent of Lemuria varied throughout it evolutionary cycle. During the early stages it was an extensive island. According to H. P. Blavatsky:

Their Sweta-Dwipa [the White Island], during the early day of Lemuria stood out like a giant-peak from the bottom of the sea; the area between Atlas [in North Africa] and Madagascar being occupied by the waters till about the early period of Atlantis (after the disappearance of Lemuria), when Africa emerged from the bottom of the ocean, and Atlas was half-sunk.

Middle Lemuria

Lemuria's main continent at the peak of its development included part of what is now Asia and South into the Pacific Ocean:

“Lemuria,” as we have called the continent of the Third Race, was then a gigantic land. It covered the whole area of space 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, not only beyond Rapa-nui (Teapy, or Easter Island) which now lies in latitude 26 S., and longitude 110 W.

The Mid Atlantic Ridge rises 9,000 feet underwater.

However, the continent also extended North, showing the shape of a "horse-shoe":

Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root-Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but extended in the shape of a horse-shoe past Madagascar, round “South Africa” (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the Atlantic up to Norway. The great English fresh-water deposit called the Wealden—which every geologist regards as the mouth of a former great river—is the bed of the main stream which drained Northern Lemuria in the Secondary Age.

This "horse-shoe" became the basis for the future continent of Atlantis:

No more striking confirmation of our position could be given, than the fact that the ELEVATED RIDGE in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in height, which runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point near the British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then shifts almost at right angles to proceed in a SOUTH-EASTERLY line toward the African coast, whence it runs on southward to Tristan d’Acunha. This ridge is a remnant of an Atlantic continent, and, could it be traced further, would establish the reality of a submarine horse-shoe junction with a former continent in the Indian Ocean.
The Atlantic portion of Lemuria was the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis. The latter, indeed, must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria, than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth Root-Race.

[Lemuria] stretched, during the Third Race, east and west, as far as where the two Americas now lie, and since the present Australia is but a portion of it, as are also a few surviving islands sown hither and thither on the face of the Pacific and a large bit of California, which belonged to it.

As evidence for the existence of this lost continent Blavatsky refers to references present in the ancient legends of people in India, Greece, Madagascar, Sumatra, Java the Polynesia, and the Americas:

Both Malacca and Polynesia, which lie at the two extremities of the ocean, and which, since the memory of man never had, and never could have any intercourse with, or even a knowledge of each other, have yet a tradition common to all the islands and islets, that their respective countries extended far, far into the Sea.

She also refers to the similarity of the Oceanic languages as a proof that these islands were once part of a common continent.

Late Lemuria

Towards the end of its cycle, "the gigantic continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller continents":

In the epoch we are treating of, the Continent of “Lemuria,” had already broken asunder in many places, and formed new separate continents. There was, nevertheless, neither Africa nor the Americas, still less Europe in those days, all these slumbering yet on the Ocean floors. Nor was there much of present Asia; for the cis-Himalayan regions were covered with seas, and beyond this stretched the “lotus leaves” of Sveta-dwipa, the countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc., etc. The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it. Easter Isle, for instance, belongs to the earliest civilisation of the Third Race. Submerged with the rest, a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor, raised the small relic of the Archaic ages untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of northern polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria. It is said that some of the Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last descendants of the Third Race.

Destruction

Following a reference in The Mahatma Letters, Blavatsky wrote:

Lemuria is said to have perished about 700,000 years before the commencement of what is now called the Tertiary age (the Eocene), and it is during this Deluge also—an actual geological deluge this time—that Vaivasvata Manu is again shown as saving mankind (allegorically it is mankind, or a portion of it, the Fourth Race, which is saved).

The length of the Eocene age in the nineteenth century was different from what scientists believe today. Blavatsky regarded it to have started less than 9 million years ago. Before the sinking of Lemuria, a group of people of the Third Root-Race was rescued by the Manu to form the seed of the Fourth Root-Race.

Blavatsky talks about "the destruction of 'Lemuria' by subterranean fires" (volcanoes), which caused the continent to sink:

The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it.

She mentions that the land to which the Easter Island belonged was "destroyed in one day by its volcanic fires and lava." Later, part of the land resurfaced to form the island we know today:

Submerged with the rest, a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor, raised the small relic of the Archaic ages untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of northern polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria.

Blavatsky also explained:

The sinking and transformation of Lemuria beginning nearly at the Arctic Circle (Norway), the Third Race ended its career in Lanka, or rather on that which became Lanka with the Atlanteans. The small remnant now known as Ceylon is the Northern highland of ancient Lanka, while the enormous island of that name was, in the Lemurian period, the gigantic continent described a few pages back.

See also

• Lemuria (Steiner)

Additional resources

• "The Hidden History of Humanity" by Mehmet Şentürk. 30 June 2019. "Focuses on the evolution of consciousness over millions of years while revealing the secret chronology of human history from ancient Lemuria and Atlantis to our current root race."
• Lemuria in Theosophy World.