Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: The Lost (?) Continent of Lemuria

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Why aren't there lemurs in Africa? That question created a whole theory about a lost continent. Turns out it's not true.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Maximize your edge by shopping at Lenovo.com during their back-to-school sale. That's Lenovo.com. No, Novo. 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 Schlauter. His ghost. He's a 19th century British zoologist, and he's come across the plane of existence to be here with us today. I think you added an H in there, my friend. Sclater? Yeah.

He always wished his name was Schlauter. Yeah, we're talking about Philip Sklater, I guess. That's a weird name. I like Schlaher better, too. Sure. 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. Good for you, Schleader. 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. And 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, La Miria. Yeah, after his lemur friends. Yeah.

Yeah, and this was the reason that he was coming up with the idea like this. And he wasn't the only one. Apparently, Lambridges were very much in vogue at the time. Because we didn't understand, like you were saying, how 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 was 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 span from India all the way to Africa and Slater, Schlaeder, 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'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.

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 Heckel, and he wrote a book called History of Creation, no colon. They didn't have colons back then. No, they invented the colon with the continental drift theory. That's right. He had a theory about evolution that kind of flew in the face of dark. 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. Right. I mean, this is problematic through and through, but it's also worth saying that Hakel 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 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 lemurs 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, especially when there weren't even really lemurs at all, and either. India or Africa. Yeah.

Should we take a break? Yep. All right. We'll be right back. Oh, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful,

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carbon powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. Hi, I'm Master Model Builder Noel at Legoland Discovery Center Toronto, inviting you to build a best summer ever. Jump into a world of fun, creativity, and playful learning at the ultimate indoor Lego playground. Explore Miniland created from over a million bricks. Join me in a

creative workshop class. Ride Kingdom Quest, enjoy a 4D movie, discover eye-catching build and play zones, and much more at Legoland Discovery Center. Get your tickets online now at Legoland Discovery Center.com slash Toronto. You mentioned Darwin. I can't remember what you said about Hakele, but I just imagined Hakel, 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. 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. No, he would shoot his TV when it was mentioned on the news. He wrote a letter to a guy named Charles Lyle, who's a geologist who also thought that continent sank. He said, this is such a nerd burn.

If there be a lower region for the punishment of geologists, I believe, my great master, you will go there. And Charles Lyle, we're saying, respected man of science, too. that's right you know who was not i do tell everybody a woman named helena blavatsky who was a 19th century russian occultus 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 Mm-hmm. 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 Henkel 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 him root races. and Lumuria 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. Moving on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, do we even need to comment on that besides it's hysterical? Yeah, I don't even find a hysterical.

Like, it drives me nuts, man, yeah. No, I'm with you. But this is the 19th century, so, you know. Yeah, but have you been on YouTube lately? This is so, like, of the moment still, too. 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 to, you know, for the 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. What was the original ancestry? And they really honed in on the Dravidians, 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 Limeria.

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 condom, and it's a lost civilization or under the sea, under the Indian Ocean. So they're like, that 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.

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 a fascination with this sort of lost world that they, their original people came from and they like populated planet Earth. Yeah. So yeah, I find that more charming than new agey stuff. Yeah, Blabatsky. Yeah, I know.

Yeah, wow, 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? and we were curious, and we wouldn't poo-poo stuff, and now we're just like... Yeah, Madame Blavaria. Blabariya? Blabotsky? Mm-hmm. Lemuria? I'm confused now.

Lomotsky. Shlamil Shlamazel. You're short stuff out? Yeah. Okay. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts to My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app.

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