A SUBMERGED CONTINENT.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 199, 9 August 1911, Page 5

A SUBMERGED CONTINENT.

Professor Macmillan Brown> comments on the people of the Solomon Islands have brought into discussion many interesting particulars regarding the Polynesian Archipelagoes, which chorological facts, combined with numerous circumstances. suggest, tire the mountain peaks of what was once the great Continent of la nutria, now sunk brio's the '•ur’ticc of the Indian Ocean. This tast continent extended along the south <>i Asia as far taxi as I'urther India and the Suiida Islands, and west as far as Madagascar and the south-east shores of Africa. By assuming this emit inent to have been man’s primeval home, we have greatly increased facilities tor explanation of the geographical distribution of the human species by migration. It is recognised now by scientists, in a general consensus of opinion, that in pre-historic times this vast southern continent- existed where now the great Indian Ocean rolls its mighty waters, and the numerous islands which lie scattered therein arc simply the highest peaks of the mountains which once existed as part of that- continent. The geology of India shows that Ceylon and South India were formerly bounded by a considerable amount of sea. and formed part of this ancient continent. The affinities between the fossils of both animals and plants of South Africa and India are such as to suggest the former existence of land connection between the two areas. The plant beds of the Uitenhage group have furnished forms which have been identified with Indian plants. Cutch fossils are affinities of South African forms, and the crustacean fossils of the Umtafuni river in Natal are in the majority identical with species of Southern India. The close connection of Africa and India, including the tropical islands, finds ample testimony in the ascertained distribution of living animals, and the dose relationship of many of the fauna, such as the lion, hyena, jackal. leopard, antelope, gazelle, sand-grouse. Indian bustard, the scaly ant. and notably the lemur, from which tlm continent derived its ancient name of Lemuria. There are innumerable circumstances which suggest that the primeval abode of man was the continent- of Lemuria, and this enables us to arrive ethnologically at the origin of the Pacific Islanders There can be little doubt they are descendants—that is the indigenous people—from the remnants of those who were spared in the great Lemurian cataclysm, and that they migrated from spot to spot as Lemuria became eaten away by internal fires. After the disintegrating process of Lemuria began there was no cessation from the fiery activity of its subterraneous fires, and whether in one part of the continent or another, the volcanic action was incessant, while the invariable sequence was the subsidence and finally the total disappearance of the land. In the last davs of the existence of the lost continent, gigantic and far-reaching convulsions rent it apart ; earthquakes shook the land . and its numerous volcanoes belched forth storms of red-hot dust- and devastating clouds of steam The huge continent split up into great islands, and these in turn were rent by new convulsions, as floods of burning lava covered up the land. At last, some 700.000 years before the beginning of the Tertiary era. Lemuria, as such„ had disappeared in great explosions of steam, generated as fire warred with wmter amid roaring flames and surging billows. It sank into the whirlpools of the sea. leaving as its only record the multitude of scattered islands now called the Polynesian Archipelagos. The aggregate dry land in this boundless expanse of 11.000.000 square miles of ocean is now barely 170.000 square miles.