IT IS GENERALLY RECOGNISED BY SCIENCE THAT WHAT IS NOW DRY LAND, on the surface of our globe, was once the ocean floor, and that what is now the ocean floor was once dry land. Geologists have in some cases been able to specify the exact portions of the earth’s surface where these subsidencies and upheavals have taken place, and although the lost continent of Atlantis has so far received scant recognition from the world of science, the general consensus of opinion has for long pointed to the existence, at some prehistoric time, of a vast southern continent to which the name of Lemuria has been assigned.
The history of the earth’s development shows us that the distribution of land and water on its surface is ever changes of the earth’s crust, elevations and depressions of the ground take place everywhere, sometimes more strongly marked in one place, sometimes in another. Even if they
happen so slowly that in the course of centuries the seashore rises or sinks only a few inches, or even only a few lines, still they nevertheless effect great results in the course of long time have not been wanting in the earth’s history.
During the course of many millions of years, ever since organic life existed on the earth, land and water have perpetually struggled for supremacy. Continents and islands have sunk into the sea, new ones have arisen out of its bosom. Lakes and seas have been slowly raised and dried up, and near water basins have arisen by the sinking of the ground. Peninsulas have become islands by the narrow neck of land which connected them with the mainland sinking into the water. The islands of an archipelago have become the peaks of a continuous chain of mountains by the whole floor of their sea being considerably raised.
“Thus the Mediterranean at one time was an inland sea, when in the place of the Straits of Gibraltar, an isthmus connected Africa with Spain. England even during the more recent history of the earth, when man already (misted, has repeatedly been connected with the European continent and been repeatedly separated from it. Nay, even Europe and North America have been directly connected.
The South Sea at one time formed a large Pacific Continent. and the numerous little islands which now lie scattered in it were simply the highest peaks of the mountains covering that continent. The Indian Ocean formed a continent which extended from the Sunda Islands along the southern coast of Asia to the east coast of Africa. This large continent of former times. So later, an Englishman has called Lemuria, from the monkey-like animals which inhabited it, and it is at the same time of great importance from being the probable cradle of the human race, which in all likelihood here first developed out of anthropoid apes.