WEBVTT - Short Stuff: The Lost (?) Continent of Lemuria

0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:06.840
<v Speaker 1>Hey, I'm open to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,

0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:10.040
<v Speaker 1>Dave's not here, Jared's here, and I'll tell you who

0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:13.720
<v Speaker 1>else it's here. It's Philip Schlatter, his ghost. He's a

0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:18.759
<v Speaker 1>nineteenth century British zoologist, and he's come across the plane

0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:20.440
<v Speaker 1>of existence to be here with us today.

0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:24.240
<v Speaker 2>I think you added an h in there, my friend Sclater.

0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:27.600
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, he always wished his name was Schlatter.

0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:33.200
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we're talking about Philip Sklater. I guess that's even

0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:35.440
<v Speaker 2>that's a weird name. I like schlaughter better too, sure,

0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:40.360
<v Speaker 2>because he took part in something that was going on

0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:46.479
<v Speaker 2>in the mid nineteenth century where people were trying to

0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.159
<v Speaker 2>figure out where stuff came from that didn't seem like

0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:51.680
<v Speaker 2>it belonged there, like in their country, Like why is

0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:55.960
<v Speaker 2>this animal here when they were from another continent for

0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:58.240
<v Speaker 2>this plant? That doesn't make a lot of sense. We've

0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:00.840
<v Speaker 2>talked about this stuff before in terms of like land

0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:02.800
<v Speaker 2>bridges and things like that. But he wrote a book

0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:06.400
<v Speaker 2>in eighteen sixty four called The Mammals of Madagascar No Colon,

0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:07.800
<v Speaker 2>just clean and simple.

0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:10.000
<v Speaker 1>Good for you, Schleeter, where he.

0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:13.319
<v Speaker 2>Wondered, like madagascars off the east coast of Africa, and

0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:17.679
<v Speaker 2>they have dozens of species of lemurs, but all of

0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:21.440
<v Speaker 2>Africa and India have only a few species of lemur.

0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:23.240
<v Speaker 2>In fact, it was worse than that, they don't have

0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:26.640
<v Speaker 2>any species of leamer. He was just mistaken and thought

0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:30.240
<v Speaker 2>some other big eyed primates were lemurs. But he was

0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:33.080
<v Speaker 2>on the right track as far as saying, like what

0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:35.600
<v Speaker 2>happened here? And he said, I know what it was.

0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:39.280
<v Speaker 2>There used to be a great continent that connected these

0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:42.160
<v Speaker 2>things and that's how they got there, and that thing

0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.240
<v Speaker 2>is now underwater, and I'm even going to name it Lemeria.

0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:48.120
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, after his lemur friends. Yeah, yeah, And this was

0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:50.600
<v Speaker 1>the reason that he was coming up with the idea

0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:53.240
<v Speaker 1>like this, and he wasn't the only one. Apparently, lamb

0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:57.720
<v Speaker 1>bridges were very much in vogue at the time because

0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:01.440
<v Speaker 1>we didn't understand, like you were saying, how like a

0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:03.720
<v Speaker 1>plant could be on one continent and also on another,

0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:06.640
<v Speaker 1>And we hadn't figured out continental drift yet. That didn't

0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.600
<v Speaker 1>really get traction until the nineteen twenties. So this was

0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:12.519
<v Speaker 1>an attempt to explain that before the theory of continental

0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:17.880
<v Speaker 1>drift came along or drifted along, and this continent of

0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:20.720
<v Speaker 1>Lemiria supposedly was on the bottom of the Indian Ocean

0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:24.440
<v Speaker 1>now but basically spanned from India all the way to

0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:32.320
<v Speaker 1>Africa and Slater Slater. Yeah, he basically said, this is

0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:35.240
<v Speaker 1>where lemurs originated and then they spread out from their

0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:39.240
<v Speaker 1>case closed and we should say, like, it seems off

0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:42.160
<v Speaker 1>to us now, but this was a legitimate man of

0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:47.000
<v Speaker 1>science proposing a legitimate hypothesis that may or may not

0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:51.120
<v Speaker 1>have been able to be tested. I'm not sure, but like,

0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:54.200
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't meant to be crackpot. It was the crackpots

0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:56.639
<v Speaker 1>who took it and turned it into a crackpot theory.

0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, exactly. It kind of gained traction in other circles,

0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:01.560
<v Speaker 2>and we're going to talk about a few of those.

0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:05.000
<v Speaker 2>There was one guy, a German biologist named Ernst Heckel,

0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.560
<v Speaker 2>and he wrote a book called History of Creation. No colon,

0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:11.240
<v Speaker 2>they didn't have colon's back then.

0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:14.120
<v Speaker 1>No, they invented the colon with the continental drift theory.

0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:14.839
<v Speaker 1>That's right.

0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:18.399
<v Speaker 2>He had a theory about evolution that kind of flew

0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:21.320
<v Speaker 2>in the face of Darwin where he said, you know what,

0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:27.720
<v Speaker 2>this Lemuria place, that's my comrade. Sklater came up with

0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:31.120
<v Speaker 2>I think not only was that a place, but that

0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:33.640
<v Speaker 2>was where it all started. That's the cradle of mankind.

0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:37.680
<v Speaker 2>In humanity, there were twelve varieties of men, and the

0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:42.560
<v Speaker 2>first humans evolved from ancient primates and spread from there,

0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:45.440
<v Speaker 2>and they did so from Limyria, right.

0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:49.480
<v Speaker 1>I mean, this is problematic through and through. But it's

0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:52.200
<v Speaker 1>also worth saying that Hackel himself was a respected man

0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:56.680
<v Speaker 1>of science too. He was a very accomplished one of

0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:00.000
<v Speaker 1>those guys who's like, I'm a biologist, now I'm a geologist,

0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.160
<v Speaker 1>now I'm a geographer. What else do you want me

0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:03.880
<v Speaker 1>to be? He was one of those dudes who really

0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:08.760
<v Speaker 1>contributed to science. But again, at the time, this was like,

0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:11.560
<v Speaker 1>it just seems to be like crackpot theories to us now,

0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:16.320
<v Speaker 1>but they were still just trying to explain what they

0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:19.680
<v Speaker 1>were seeing and it just turned out to be kind

0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:21.760
<v Speaker 1>of wrong. One of the big problems with it was

0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:23.960
<v Speaker 1>that he based it on the Maria, which there was

0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:27.120
<v Speaker 1>no evidence aside from you know, O, well it kind

0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:29.800
<v Speaker 1>of explains why this plant's here, this lemurs on this continent,

0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:32.040
<v Speaker 1>and these lemurs are on this continent. There was no

0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:35.880
<v Speaker 1>evidence for it whatsoever. So it's probably faulty to really

0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:41.680
<v Speaker 1>start basing other hypotheses on this hypothetical sunken continent.

0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:44.680
<v Speaker 2>Right, especially when there weren't even really lemurs at all

0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:46.440
<v Speaker 2>in either Indio or Africa.

0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:50.360
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, should we take a break, Yep, all right, we'll

0:04:50.360 --> 0:05:18.320
<v Speaker 1>be right back. Uh. You mentioned Darwin. I can't remember

0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:21.840
<v Speaker 1>what you said about Hackel, but I just imagined Hackel

0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:25.240
<v Speaker 1>like b boy, dancing up to Darwin and like running

0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:27.520
<v Speaker 1>his hand, like waving his hand in between their faces,

0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:29.680
<v Speaker 1>you know how they did, and then dancing off. I

0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:31.719
<v Speaker 1>can't remember what you said, but it triggered that image

0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:33.839
<v Speaker 1>and it cracked me up. So thanks for that choke.

0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:35.560
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, kind of that. It just flew in the face

0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:38.360
<v Speaker 2>of what Darwin thought. And apparently Darwin was not a

0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:41.520
<v Speaker 2>fan of this, uh, any of these theories about continents

0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:42.000
<v Speaker 2>just sinking.

0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:44.520
<v Speaker 1>No, he would shoot his TV when it was mentioned

0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:45.120
<v Speaker 1>on the news.

0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:47.880
<v Speaker 2>He wrote a letter to a guy named Charles Lyle

0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:52.080
<v Speaker 2>who's a geologist who also thought that continent sank. He said,

0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:56.200
<v Speaker 2>if there this is such a nerd burn, if there

0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:59.039
<v Speaker 2>be a lower region for the punishment of geologists, I believe,

0:05:59.080 --> 0:05:59.799
<v Speaker 2>my great master.

0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:03.960
<v Speaker 1>You will there And Charles lyell, we're saying respective man

0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:04.920
<v Speaker 1>of science.

0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:06.640
<v Speaker 2>Too, that's right, you knew who was not?

0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:11.240
<v Speaker 1>I do tell everybody a woman.

0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:15.479
<v Speaker 2>Named Helena Blavatsky who was a nineteenth century Russian occultists,

0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:20.640
<v Speaker 2>and she founded something called the Theosophical Society that believed

0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:24.800
<v Speaker 2>that religion or science hadn't fully captured the full truth

0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:27.480
<v Speaker 2>of the origins of Earth, which I'm like, yeah, I'm

0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:30.960
<v Speaker 2>down with that. But she thought through psychic gifts that

0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:33.880
<v Speaker 2>people like herself could access that loss wisdom, and that's

0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:34.560
<v Speaker 2>where she lost me.

0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:40.200
<v Speaker 1>And there's actually few people that fully embody everything I

0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:44.960
<v Speaker 1>scorn like Helena Blovotsky does. Yeah, she wrote a book

0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:47.480
<v Speaker 1>called The Secret Doctrine, came out in eighteen eighty eight,

0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:50.599
<v Speaker 1>and by this time, Lamiria is not It's no longer

0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:54.240
<v Speaker 1>like it's out of the realm of science. It's now

0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:58.280
<v Speaker 1>into the new age movement, the Theosophists. It was the

0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:03.760
<v Speaker 1>movement that Blovatsky, Madame Blovotsky, helped found, and I think

0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:06.280
<v Speaker 1>it was also the basis of spiritualism too. We did

0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:08.760
<v Speaker 1>a whole episode on spiritualism. She played a big role

0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:10.960
<v Speaker 1>in that. But that whole trend of like going to

0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:14.160
<v Speaker 1>seances and stuff. In the Victorian age, she helped kick

0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:17.360
<v Speaker 1>that off. And in this book, The Secret Doctrine, she

0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:21.080
<v Speaker 1>was saying, Hey, I've read Ernest Henkel before, so I

0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.760
<v Speaker 1>kind of understand his idea that Lemria was the cradle

0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:28.240
<v Speaker 1>of civilization. He said that there's twelve varieties of men.

0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:31.440
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to say instead that there's seven. I when

0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:35.120
<v Speaker 1>I call them root races. And Lemuria in particular was

0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:37.880
<v Speaker 1>home to the third root race. And people said, well,

0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:39.680
<v Speaker 1>what's the third root race? And she said, read on

0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:42.320
<v Speaker 1>to your reader, and in the next passage she said

0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:46.400
<v Speaker 1>that they're gigantic humans. There were who were hermaphroditics and

0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:50.960
<v Speaker 1>laid eggs, but because we're evolved from them, they eventually

0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:54.920
<v Speaker 1>grew distinct sexual organs.

0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.760
<v Speaker 2>Moving on, Yeah, uh yeah, do we even need to

0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:02.360
<v Speaker 2>comment on that? Besides it's hysterical.

0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:05.880
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I don't even find it hysterical, like you just yeah,

0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:07.200
<v Speaker 1>you past that, evins Man.

0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:10.320
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, now, I'm with you. But this is the nineteenth century,

0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:10.840
<v Speaker 2>so you know.

0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:13.280
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but have you been on YouTube lately? This is

0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:16.560
<v Speaker 1>so like of the moment still too.

0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:19.160
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean Lemuria, if you if you look it

0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:21.080
<v Speaker 2>up online, there's a lot of new ag sites that

0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:25.040
<v Speaker 2>are talking about Lemiria and uh, you know, you can

0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:29.320
<v Speaker 2>buy Lamerian crystals and things like that to you know,

0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:31.440
<v Speaker 2>for the low price of twenty five dollars, that kind

0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:34.880
<v Speaker 2>of thing. I think what is interesting is this final

0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:38.520
<v Speaker 2>sort of twist to the story. Back in India when

0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:41.679
<v Speaker 2>it was a colony of the Brits. There were some

0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.520
<v Speaker 2>ethnologists from Britain who were at the time. They were

0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:50.520
<v Speaker 2>really fascinated like where did the the original Indians come from?

0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:53.880
<v Speaker 2>Here they have they're so diverse racially and ethnically, like

0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:57.120
<v Speaker 2>what were the was the original ancestry, And they really

0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:02.000
<v Speaker 2>honed in on the Dravidian speaking people in southern India.

0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:06.920
<v Speaker 2>One of the languages a Dravidians was a language family,

0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.280
<v Speaker 2>and one of those people that spoke one of those

0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:12.120
<v Speaker 2>languages were the Tamil people t A m I l.

0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:17.000
<v Speaker 2>And one theory was, oh, those people were the first

0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:19.480
<v Speaker 2>people and they were from Limyria.

0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:24.560
<v Speaker 1>Yes, so the Tamil people really love that. They actually

0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:26.959
<v Speaker 1>had a legend already of some I think it's a

0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:32.559
<v Speaker 1>Hindu legend about Kumari kandom and it's a lost civilization

0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:35.719
<v Speaker 1>or under the sea under the Indian Ocean, so they're like,

0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:39.880
<v Speaker 1>they're really kind of jibes. Hey, everybody, we're from Limyria.

0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:43.120
<v Speaker 1>That makes us the oldest civilization, which makes us the

0:09:43.120 --> 0:09:45.760
<v Speaker 1>most civilized civilization. Eat that.

0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:49.400
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and thus have the oldest language.

0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:51.360
<v Speaker 1>Eat that as well.

0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:57.079
<v Speaker 2>And apparently today, even if you are I want to

0:09:57.080 --> 0:10:01.480
<v Speaker 2>say Tamelion, but I guess just Tamil, there's still apparently

0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:05.160
<v Speaker 2>this sort of fascination with this sort of lost world

0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:08.120
<v Speaker 2>that they their original people came from and they like

0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:09.600
<v Speaker 2>populated planet Earth.

0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:13.600
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so yeah, I find that more charming than new

0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:20.800
<v Speaker 1>ag stuff, even though yeah, I know, yeah, wow, how

0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:23.880
<v Speaker 1>much have we like evolved over time? Remember how we

0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.240
<v Speaker 1>used to just be totally into Fortian stuff and like

0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:29.920
<v Speaker 1>unexplained stuff, and like our minds were open, we were

0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:31.600
<v Speaker 1>curious and we wouldn't do stuff.

0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:37.920
<v Speaker 2>And now we're just like, yeah, Madam Blavaria, Blavaria, Blevotski, Lameria,

0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:39.520
<v Speaker 2>I'm confused.

0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:45.000
<v Speaker 1>Now, Lamotsky, Schlamiel, schlamazl say short stuff out?

0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:52.079
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, okay, stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.

0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:55.800
<v Speaker 2>For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app

0:10:56.000 --> 0:11:03.160
<v Speaker 2>Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,