Nineteenth-century theosophists aggressively promoted the existence of Lemuria, a mythical sunken continent in the Indian and Pacific Oceans that supposedly served as the cradle of humanity.

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Nineteenth-century theosophists aggressively promoted the existence of Lemuria, a mythical sunken continent in the Indian and Pacific Oceans that supposedly served as the cradle of humanity. According to mystical texts written by Helena Blavatsky and her followers, the Lemurians were a race of fifteen-foot-tall, ape-like hermaphrodites who had four arms, eyes in the back of their heads, and reproduced by laying massive eggs. This wildly specific evolutionary lore was presented as absolute spiritual truth, despite sounding like the frantic ravings of a fantasy novelist who accidentally ingested far too much absinthe. People genuinely studied these texts as profound esoteric history, fully accepting that before we invented civilization and taxes, our spiritual ancestors were giant psychic swamp monsters awkwardly trying to incubate their enormous eggs on a continent that never actually existed