Lemuria was the vast prairie which the Greeks called Elysian Fields and which the Egyptians named "the Field of Reeds" (Sekhet Aaru) or, yet, "the Ancestral Land" (To-wer), the overseas Paradise where they formerly lived, in Zep Tepi ("Primordial Time"). The sunken continent became the Land of the Dead, the dreadful, forbidden region where no mariner ever ventured to go, for it was "the Land of No Return".

Interestingly enough the name "Ancestral Land" (or Serendip) is precisely the Dravidian name of Taprobane (Sumatra), the island where the Hindus placed their pristine Paradise, likewise sunken in a cataclysm. The gloomy, pestilential place that remained above the water was named Sheol ("Hell") by the Jews, and, in the spared spots, "Island of the Blest" (Makarion nesos) or Hades by the Greeks, Amenti or Punt by the Egyptians, Dilmun by the Mesopotamians, Hawaiki by the Polynesians, Svarga by the Hindus, and so on.

The Celts whose legends are perhaps the best recollection of the sunken golden realm called the place Avallon, Emain Abbalach or, yet, Ynis Wydr ("Island of Glass"). They also associated the eerie place with the Holy Grail and the resurrection of their dead heroes, as we detail in other, forthcoming articles of ours. And we already mentioned above the Yvymaraney of the Tupian Indians of Brazil, or the Aztlan or Atitlan of the Mayas of Yucatan, the submerged land which these Indians were obliged to flee, when it sunk underseas.

The Seminal Exodus

The greatest of all Lemurian colonies was Atlantis, founded in India, already during the heydays of Lemuria, and which, in time, reached the apex of human grandeur. Atlantis and Lemuria had prospered for a full zodiacal era (2,160 years), when the great cataclysm destroyed their common world, at the end of the Pleistocene, some 11,600 years ago.

The scant survivors of the cataclysm that sunk Lemuria away were forced to flee their destroyed Paradise, moving first to India, the site of Atlantis, which had been spared in its northern, loftier portion. But the global catastrophe had also caused the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers caused huge floods of the rivers of Asia, rendering the region unfit for human habitation. These floods ravaged this remainder of Atlantis, already greatly destroyed by the original cataclysm, the giant conflagration of the Indonesian volcanoes and the huge tsunamis they caused, as well as by the plague that ravaged their country in their wake.

Again, this doomed people was obliged to flee, emigrating, along the ensuing millennia, to remote places such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, North Africa, Europe, North Asia, the Near Orient and even Oceania and the Americas. Some came on foot, in huge hordes like those of the Israelite exodus. Others came by ship, like Noah in his Ark or Aeneas with his fleet, to found the great civilizations of the ancient world.

The great civilizations that we know of, in the Indus Valley, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, Mexico and even the Americas were all Atlantean colonies founded by the survivors of the cataclysm that destroyed the twin Paradises of Atlantis and Lemuria. These colonists, of course, attempted to recreate their Eden in their new homeland.

The newcomers named each topographical feature after the archetypes of the pristine abode just as immigrants will do the same nowadays. Such is the reason why we keep finding vestiges of Atlantis everywhere, from Brazil and North America to Spain, Crete, and even Africa and North Europe. All these ancient civilizations spoke of Civilizing Heroes such as Manu, Noah, Aeneas, the Oannés, Hotu Matua, Quetzalcoatl, Kukulkan, Bochica and, of course, Atlas and Hercules, the omnipresent Twins that founded civilizations everywhere.

The Reality of the Civilizing Heroes

Interestingly enough, the only place so far unclaimed among the literally hundreds of sitings of Atlantis is Indonesia. Of course, no solid evidence of the existence of Atlantis and, even more so, of Lemuria, has ever been found. The reason for this absence is easy to explain: the experts have all been searching Atlantis in the wrong sides of the world.

The legends of all peoples tell of Civilizing Heroes, Angels, Gods, or even Demons and Monsters who were their civilizers and who taught them religion, law, agriculture, metallurgy and the alphabet. These are the Fallen Angels, the same all too human heroes who fell desperately in love with the beautiful native girls, the Daughters of Man (Gen. 6). These fallen gods were not Astronauts, nor Sprites, but saintly men who came as missionaries from Atlantis. How else could they mate with human females and breed children?

The mysterious "Sons of God" (ben Elohim) of Gen.6 are precisely the same ones identified by Plato with the Atlanteans. Their sin with the Daughters of Men and, more probably, the rejection and enslavenment of their hybrid offspring led to the Flood. This is indeed the mysterious Original Sin that resulted in the destruction of Paradise (Atlantis) and the Fall of Man. This sin is the one ritually "washed" by the Baptism, itself an allegory of the Flood, as St. Jerome and other Church Patriarchs explicitly acknowledge.

Plato quotes precisely this cause for the destruction of Atlantis by God (Zeus) in his (unfinished) dialogue on Atlantis, the Critias. And the same story, in allegorized form, is also told by Homer concerning the Phaeacian "Sons of God".