To be read along with Mu to Lemuria & Kumari-Kandam to Sumeria. (Part-1)
Part -2
The idea of Lemuria.
The idea of Lemuria was invented due to the influence of the then prevailing mood in the scientific community. Philip Sclator, who discovered Lemuria, was doing research on animals and their habitat. Greatly influenced by Darwin's Theory of Evolution, he was engaged in research in Madagascar Islands in the African shores of the Indian Ocean. While doing so, he discovered the similarities of the living beings there with those in India. His research was in fossils of animals in Madagascar. He found them not to have any relationship with those in nearby Africa; but related to those found in distant India. Therefore he concluded that including Madagascar, there should have been one large landscape of the Indian peninsula. On that basis he proposed the continent of Lemuria.
His theory was that the animals which lived in the same landscape got separated, during the Continental drift.
Such a separation affecting India could not have taken place in the recent thousands of years, but should have occurred Millions of years back, according to science. But seeing that old Tamil literature indicated the submerged lands of Kumari and Kollam of Thennan's (ancient Pandyan) country, the Tamilians started clinging to the Lemuria theory and are still holding on to it. Multi discipline scientific researches, however, indicate that such a large landscape could not have got submerged. If one land mass submerges, another will raise elsewhere. Examining the contours of Indian Ocean it is inferred that it would take hundreds of thousands of years for such a large landmass to get submerged.
Today Science has already discarded Lemuria theory as an improbable one. But Tamilians are still holding on to that theory. Perhaps, if they try to understand how Madagascar and India were connected, there could be a change of heart.
This place is called Mascarene Plateau and can be seen very near the submerged ridge running from Indian Ocean to Arabian Sea. In Indian texts it is called as Malaiya ridge. It continues as Western Ghats in South India. The ridge under water is also known as the Kumari ridge according to Tamil text Silappadhikaram. This text says that Kollam and Kumari peaks were submerged under the ocean. There is a place by name Kollam in Kerala close to the Western Ghats. So it is surmised that the extension of the Western Ghats into the Indian Ocean was called as Kumari range by ancient Tamils.
About six Thousand years ago the Pandyan king encountered the Second Cataclysm. People who escaped that upheaval reached Kumari Mountains or Malaiya ridge and had come upto present South India's south west shores. They set up their capital at a place called Kavaatam which is shown within the yellow circle in the above picture.
This city of Kavaatam was in existence during Ramayana period. We find a reference to it in the description of Shugreeva of the places in the south. (1) It was submerged during the 3rd Cataclysm about 3500 years BP.
However the memory of Kavaatam was carried by the survivors. Kavaataam was also referred to as Alavai (mouth of a serpent) in Tamil texts .Even today we have places with the same names close to that region. The survivors had re-established Alavai which became Alwaye (in Kerala, India) in due course. In recent years it further mutated to Aluva.
Even present Kollam has been named after the earlier Kollam that was submerged. During the 2nd Cataclysm, using Kumari Mountains as base, people had spread out upto Rajasthan via Western Ghats. In the picture below, Kumari mountain range starting from Macarene plateau and continuing as Western Ghats, is shown.