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 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.

James Churchward, in books such as The Lost Continent of Mu (1931), wrote that the Motherland stretched from the Hawaiian Islands to Fiji and from Easter Island to the Marianas. Churchward considered the Nan Modal site on Pohnpei Island one of the seven sacred cities of Mu. Today its ruins sit on a swampy lagoon filled with mangrove trees. Rising about 30 feet in height, black volcanic stones weighing many tons are stacked crisscross like a child's frontier fort. It's one of the more enigmatic sites in the entire Pacific, yet archaeologists cannot explain how it got there.

Indeed, stone monuments of mysterious origin dot the entire Pacific, from Japan's spectacular underwater site at Yonaguni to cryptic petroglyphs on Hawaii's Big Island. Menehune Ditch on Kauai is built from dressed and fitted stone slabs like something ancient Romans would have erected, very different from typical Polynesian style. And of course there is Easter Island, centerpiece of many Lemuria theories. Its hundreds of colossal stone statues and written language point to an advanced culture, yet it appeared on the world's most remote spot. Why?

The legends of Easter Island speak of Hiva, which sank beneath the waves as people fled, while Samoans called a similar place Bolutu. It was stocked with trees and plants bearing fruits and flowers, which were immediately replaced when picked. On Bolutu men could walk through trees, houses, and other physical objects without any resistance. The Maoris of New Zealand still talk about arriving long ago from a sinking island called Hawaiki, a vast and mountainous place on the other side of the water.

There's yet another puzzling piece of evidence. A map of the lost continent published by the Lemurian Fellowship corresponds almost exactly to boundaries of the Pacific Plate. But the map first appeared long before geologists even knew of the plate's existence. Their detailed map places the capital just north of present day Maui, near the center of a vast continent stretching from Australia to the Rocky Mountains!

When was it?

Both Blavatsky and Ruth Montgomery (The World Before) dated Lemuria to millions of years ago. Yet most sources define the Lemurian era as roughly 75,000 to 20,000 B.C., still prior to Atlantis. Some scholars believe the two civilizations co-existed for thousands of years. A handful of radical geologists (called Catastrophists) believe a continent called Pacifica existed within the last 100,000 years, and that its fairly rapid submersion caused mountains on the perimeter to rise and created hundreds of volcanoes called the Ring of Fire. Sea levels worldwide were disrupted as water rushed in to fill an enormous basin created by the sinking and caused oceans to drop hundreds of feet.

Lemuria's appearance with a full-blown culture has spawned many interesting theories, including visits from extraterrestials who introduced a new species of genetically engineered humans to replace their dim-witted ancestors. (This might explain the reference in Genesis to the 'sons of gods' mating with the 'daughters of men.') In any case there is no question humanity made a kind of great leap around 40,000 B.C. with advances in transportation, technology, art, and language. In Europe the Cro-Magnons, in the Pacific Lemurians.

What was Lemuria like?

Was it home to a gentle race of mystics and dreamers or an advanced society whose technology helped bring it down? According to Theosophy Lemurians had pliable, jelly-like bodies and slowly developed physicality. The first Lemurian subraces were apelike, egg-laying hermaphrodites who communicated by mental telepathy through a 'third eye.' This atrophied after Lemuria's fall and became the pineal gland still found in modern humans. These androgynous beings lived in perpetual torpor like the Lemurian Dreamers that the channeled entity Lazaris speaks about.

Finally, the ever-increasing density of matter helped usher in an era of sexual reproduction, and two distinct sexes emerged from one being. This marked the fall of man, and henceforth male and female would strive to reunite as one body through sexual intercourse.

Yet most sources claim Lemurians were much more like modern humans, living in an idyllic paradise, largely agrarian with lush forests and an abundance of flowers and fruit trees. Feminine principles of sharing, cooperation, and creativity produced a society virtually free of crime, strife, and warfare. Lemurians were vegetarians and lived in harmony with nature and other creatures, and they had a highly developed psychic and telepathic senses, which were applied in practical endeavors such as horticulture. People believed in 'mind over matter' and were adept at manifestation and other 'reality creating' techniques. This tradition survives, some claim, in the Polynesian concept of mana and various fire-walking ceremonies throughout the region.

Even traditional anthropologists are puzzled by a pre-Polynesian culture that stretched across most of the Pacific. Widely separated locales displayed astonishing similarities in village life, religious cults, myths, and foods such as coconuts, bananas, and taro. Over time each area, such as Polynesia, grew more diverse and distinctive and eventually lost contact with the other. The languages of this culture were thought to be Austronesian., which includes hundreds of related tongues still found today from Polynesia to distant Madagascar.

What happened to Lemuria?

Can an entire continent sink or vanish? That's something most geologists say is impossible. Yet the event is widely supported by Pacific area mythology from Australia to Arizona. From Hopi legend: 'Down on the bottom of the seas lie all the proud cities, the flying patuwvotas, and the worldly treasures corrupted with evil . . ." Faced with disaster, some people hid inside the earth while others escaped by crossing the ocean on reed rafts, using the islands as stepping-stones. The same story of escape to dry land appears in the Popul Vu epic of the Quiche Maya and the Modoc tribe near Mt. Shasta among many others.

According to the Rosicrucians of San Jose, California, the disastrous cycle began with volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and collapse of subterranean gas belts. Magnetic waves started moving around the globe, and Lemuria began to go under. Fortunately, there was time enough for small groups to salvage part of Lemuria's precious wisdom, which was stored in crystals. Some colonists reached India and from there Mesopotamia and Egypt, while others migrated eastward on crude rafts to the Americas, forming the racial core of the earliest Indian tribes. In fact, California was home to history's oldest people: pure Lemurians who later became the California Indians. That would explain why America's oldest human artefacts were found on Santa Rosa Island off Santa Barbara, dated around 25,000 B.C. The same time Lemuria may have slipped beneath the waves.

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© 2002 Mark R. Williams