August 20, 2025 • 11 mins
Why aren't there lemurs in Africa? That question created a whole theory about a lost continent. Turns out it's not true.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, I'm open to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
Dave's not here, Jared's here, and I'll tell you who
else it's here. It's Philip Schlatter, his ghost. He's a
nineteenth century British zoologist, and he's come across the plane
of existence to be here with us today.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I think you added an h in there, my friend Sclater.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah, he always wished his name was Schlatter.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, we're talking about Philip Sklater. I guess that's even
that's a weird name. I like schlaughter better too, sure,
because he took part in something that was going on
in the mid nineteenth 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
(00:51):
this animal here when they were from another continent for
this plant? That doesn't make a lot of sense. We've
talked about this stuff before in terms of like land
bridges and things like that. But he wrote a book
in eighteen sixty four called The Mammals of Madagascar No Colon,
just clean and simple.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Good for you, Schleeter, where he.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Wondered, like madagascars 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 leamer. He was just mistaken and thought
some other big eyed primates were lemurs. But he was
(01:30):
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 Lemeria.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
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, lamb
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
(02:06):
really get traction until the nineteen twenties. So this was
an attempt to explain that before the theory of continental
drift came along or drifted along, and this continent of
Lemiria 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
(02:32):
where lemurs originated and then they spread out from their
case closed and we should say, like, it seems off
to us now, but this was 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
(02:54):
who took it and turned it into a crackpot theory.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
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 colon's back then.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
No, they invented the colon with the continental drift theory.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
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's my comrade. Sklater came up with
I think not only was that a place, but that
was where it all started. That's the cradle of mankind.
In humanity, there were twelve varieties of men, and the
(03:37):
first humans evolved from ancient primates and spread from there,
and they did so from Limyria, right.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I mean, this is problematic through and through. But it's
also worth saying that Hackel 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,
(04:08):
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 the Maria, which there was
no evidence aside from you know, O, well it kind
of explains why this plant's here, this lemurs on this continent,
(04:29):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Right, especially when there weren't even really lemurs at all
in either Indio or Africa.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, should we take a break, Yep, all right, we'll
be right back. Uh. You mentioned Darwin. I can't remember
(05:18):
what you said about Hackel, but I just imagined Hackel
like b boy, dancing up to Darwin and like running
his hand, like waving his hand in between their faces,
you know how they did, 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 choke.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, kind of that. It just flew in the face
of what Darwin thought. And apparently Darwin was not a
fan of this, uh, any of these theories about continents
just sinking.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
No, he would shoot his TV when it was mentioned
on the news.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
He wrote a letter to a guy named Charles Lyle
who's a geologist who also thought that continent sank. He said,
if there this is such a nerd burn, if there
be a lower region for the punishment of geologists, I believe,
my great master.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
You will there And Charles lyell, we're saying respective man
of science.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Too, that's right, you knew who was not?
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I do tell everybody a woman.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Named Helena Blavatsky who was a nineteenth century Russian occultists,
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 loss wisdom, and that's
(06:33):
where she lost me.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
And there's actually few people that fully embody everything I
scorn like Helena Blovotsky does. Yeah, she wrote a book
called The Secret Doctrine, came out in eighteen eighty eight,
and by this time, Lamiria 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
(06:58):
movement that Blovatsky, Madame Blovotsky, 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
(07:21):
kind of understand his idea that Lemria was the cradle
of civilization. He said that there's twelve varieties of men.
I'm going to say instead that there's seven. I when
I 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
to your reader, and in the next passage she said
(07:42):
that they're gigantic humans. There were who were hermaphroditics and
laid eggs, but because we're evolved from them, they eventually
grew distinct sexual organs.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Moving on, Yeah, uh yeah, do we even need to
comment on that? Besides it's hysterical.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yeah, I don't even find it hysterical, like you just yeah,
you past that, evins Man.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, now, I'm with you. But this is the nineteenth century,
so you know.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, but have you been on YouTube lately? This is
so like of the moment still too.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, I mean Lemuria, if you if you look it
up online, there's a lot of new ag sites that
are talking about Lemiria and uh, you know, you can
buy Lamerian crystals and things like that to you know,
for the low price of twenty five dollars, that kind
of thing. I think what is interesting is this final
sort of twist to the story. Back in India when
(08:38):
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 the original Indians come from?
Here they have they're so diverse racially and ethnically, like
what were the was the original ancestry, And they really
honed in on the Dravidian speaking people in southern India.
(09:03):
One of the languages a 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 Limyria.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
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 kandom 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 Limyria.
That makes us the oldest civilization, which makes us the
(09:43):
most civilized civilization. Eat that.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, and thus have the oldest language.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Eat that as well.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And apparently today, even if you are I want to
say Tamelion, 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.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, so yeah, I find that more charming than new
ag stuff, even though yeah, I know, yeah, wow, how
much have we like evolved over time? Remember how we
used to just be totally into Fortian stuff and like
unexplained stuff, and like our minds were open, we were
(10:29):
curious and we wouldn't do stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And now we're just like, yeah, Madam Blavaria, Blavaria, Blevotski, Lameria,
I'm confused.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Now, Lamotsky, Schlamiel, schlamazl say short stuff out?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, okay, stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app
Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hey, I'm open to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
Dave's not here, Jared's here, and I'll tell you who
else it's here. It's Philip Schlatter, his ghost. He's a
nineteenth century British zoologist, and he's come across the plane
of existence to be here with us today.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I think you added an h in there, my friend Sclater.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah, he always wished his name was Schlatter.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, we're talking about Philip Sklater. I guess that's even
that's a weird name. I like schlaughter better too, sure,
because he took part in something that was going on
in the mid nineteenth 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
(00:51):
this animal here when they were from another continent for
this plant? That doesn't make a lot of sense. We've
talked about this stuff before in terms of like land
bridges and things like that. But he wrote a book
in eighteen sixty four called The Mammals of Madagascar No Colon,
just clean and simple.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Good for you, Schleeter, where he.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Wondered, like madagascars 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 leamer. He was just mistaken and thought
some other big eyed primates were lemurs. But he was
(01:30):
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 Lemeria.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
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, lamb
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
(02:06):
really get traction until the nineteen twenties. So this was
an attempt to explain that before the theory of continental
drift came along or drifted along, and this continent of
Lemiria 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
(02:32):
where lemurs originated and then they spread out from their
case closed and we should say, like, it seems off
to us now, but this was 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
(02:54):
who took it and turned it into a crackpot theory.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
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 colon's back then.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
No, they invented the colon with the continental drift theory.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
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's my comrade. Sklater came up with
I think not only was that a place, but that
was where it all started. That's the cradle of mankind.
In humanity, there were twelve varieties of men, and the
(03:37):
first humans evolved from ancient primates and spread from there,
and they did so from Limyria, right.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I mean, this is problematic through and through. But it's
also worth saying that Hackel 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,
(04:08):
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 the Maria, which there was
no evidence aside from you know, O, well it kind
of explains why this plant's here, this lemurs on this continent,
(04:29):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Right, especially when there weren't even really lemurs at all
in either Indio or Africa.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, should we take a break, Yep, all right, we'll
be right back. Uh. You mentioned Darwin. I can't remember
(05:18):
what you said about Hackel, but I just imagined Hackel
like b boy, dancing up to Darwin and like running
his hand, like waving his hand in between their faces,
you know how they did, 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 choke.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, kind of that. It just flew in the face
of what Darwin thought. And apparently Darwin was not a
fan of this, uh, any of these theories about continents
just sinking.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
No, he would shoot his TV when it was mentioned
on the news.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
He wrote a letter to a guy named Charles Lyle
who's a geologist who also thought that continent sank. He said,
if there this is such a nerd burn, if there
be a lower region for the punishment of geologists, I believe,
my great master.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
You will there And Charles lyell, we're saying respective man
of science.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Too, that's right, you knew who was not?
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I do tell everybody a woman.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Named Helena Blavatsky who was a nineteenth century Russian occultists,
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 loss wisdom, and that's
(06:33):
where she lost me.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
And there's actually few people that fully embody everything I
scorn like Helena Blovotsky does. Yeah, she wrote a book
called The Secret Doctrine, came out in eighteen eighty eight,
and by this time, Lamiria 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
(06:58):
movement that Blovatsky, Madame Blovotsky, 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
(07:21):
kind of understand his idea that Lemria was the cradle
of civilization. He said that there's twelve varieties of men.
I'm going to say instead that there's seven. I when
I 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
to your reader, and in the next passage she said
(07:42):
that they're gigantic humans. There were who were hermaphroditics and
laid eggs, but because we're evolved from them, they eventually
grew distinct sexual organs.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Moving on, Yeah, uh yeah, do we even need to
comment on that? Besides it's hysterical.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Yeah, I don't even find it hysterical, like you just yeah,
you past that, evins Man.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, now, I'm with you. But this is the nineteenth century,
so you know.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, but have you been on YouTube lately? This is
so like of the moment still too.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, I mean Lemuria, if you if you look it
up online, there's a lot of new ag sites that
are talking about Lemiria and uh, you know, you can
buy Lamerian crystals and things like that to you know,
for the low price of twenty five dollars, that kind
of thing. I think what is interesting is this final
sort of twist to the story. Back in India when
(08:38):
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 the original Indians come from?
Here they have they're so diverse racially and ethnically, like
what were the was the original ancestry, And they really
honed in on the Dravidian speaking people in southern India.
(09:03):
One of the languages a 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 Limyria.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
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 kandom 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 Limyria.
That makes us the oldest civilization, which makes us the
(09:43):
most civilized civilization. Eat that.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, and thus have the oldest language.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Eat that as well.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And apparently today, even if you are I want to
say Tamelion, 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.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, so yeah, I find that more charming than new
ag stuff, even though yeah, I know, yeah, wow, how
much have we like evolved over time? Remember how we
used to just be totally into Fortian stuff and like
unexplained stuff, and like our minds were open, we were
(10:29):
curious and we wouldn't do stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And now we're just like, yeah, Madam Blavaria, Blavaria, Blevotski, Lameria,
I'm confused.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Now, Lamotsky, Schlamiel, schlamazl say short stuff out?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, okay, stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app
Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
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