Kumari Kandam is the legendary sunken continent, according to many of the ancient extant Tamil literatures and some of the Sanskrit literatures. Almost 100 years back tamil nationalists came to identify and associate Kumari Kandam with Lemuria, a hypothetical “lost continent” posited in the 19th century to account for discontinuities in biogeography. Located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans but now sunken, this sunked continent is believed to be the connections between Africa to South India, through Madagascar.
Over the past few decades, explorers have found traces of lost cities submerged deep in waters that once stood witness to legendary epics like the Mahabharata.
With time, they found the lost city of Atlantis, and the city of Dwarka. But, only recently they found evidence of a huge land mass submerged towards the south of what is today’s Indian peninsula. The region extended from Kanyakumari in the North, to the far west as Madagascar and nearing the East Coast of Australia.
Over time, scientists have opinionated backing claims, on how humans evolved from Africa (before migrating out into the rest of the world), based on evidence gathered. But, going by the Kumari model, a result of the advanced study by A. R. Vasudevan, one would have to believe that humans never evolved in Africa. In fact, they originated on a continent in the Indian Ocean which was known as Kumari land.
The ‘model’ on human origins argues that the Kumari land was claimed by the sea around 14,000 years ago, which was a region so huge that it connected India to Africa and extending southwards into the Antarctic.
A. R. Vasudevan in his work ‘Aryans: Who are they?’ ascertains that the evolved species of humans migrated out of Kumari land and populated the rest of the world; taking two routes, one West into Africa and East into India.
And, those who kept voyaging into East, eventually moved out of India, settling in Europe and the rest of Asia. He claimed that the Indian origin of Europeans, in turn lend the credence for the Kumari model, citing significant proofs. Most of which is directed of the Genographic Project by National Geographic ,to trace how genes have moved around the world; further proving the evidence of Kumari model.
This lost land according to Vasudevan, was called Kumari or the Lemuria continent. It is believed that around the last leg of Ice age, earth’s temperature was on the rise, causing the large icy glaciers to melt; thus increasing the water levels.
According to Oceanographic Researchers, sea levels around the Indian peninsula have seen a stark rise over 100 meters in past 14,500 years. And, it is claimed that during this period the Dravidian peninsula was engulfed in waters.
And, these are not just tall claims made by these researchers; the proofs mentioned in the book, hint at three major episodes of sea level fluctuations, which further resulted in the submergence of Kumari Kandam.
According to him, a huge landmass around 7000 miles, from the tip of Kanyakumari was sunken into sea; splitting Kumari Kandam into 49 territories. Sadly, within a few years, the entire Kumari Kandam region was submerged in the Indian Ocean.
Speculations about the existence of a larger continent in the Indian Ocean surfaced when English geologist Philip Sclater found remains of lemur fossils in Madagascar and India but not in mainland Africa, and the Middle East.
His article ‘The Mammals of Madagascar’, published in 1864 proposed that Madagascar and India, both were once part of a larger continent, and named this missing landmass ‘Lemuria’. This theory found acknowledgment and support from the scientific community of that period, who agreed that lemurs could have migrated from Madagascar to India or vice versa in ancient times.