Below the waters, where the Pacific and Indian Oceans meet, lies the lost continent of Lemuria. A place where hopes and dreams of a race of beings arrived from foreign planets to give primitive mankind the gift of knowledge … Actually, No! There was not and is not such a place. What began as a Victorian-era scientific theory to explain the mystery of lemurs on Madagascar quickly got hijacked and became the evolutionary home of humankind, the cradle of spirituality, and then the source of cosmological wonders. Long abandoned by science as hokum, Lemuria morphed into a mystical locus filled with ancient advanced civilizations, hollowed-out mountains full of gold and crystals, moon-beings descending in baskets, underground evii creatures, and a breastfeeding Bigfoot. The history of Lemuria is populated with a dizzying array of people from early Darwinists to conspiracy-spouting congressmen, globetrotting madams, Rosicrucians, Hollow-Earthers, sci-fi writers, UFO contactees, sleeping prophets, New Age channelers, a "Mother God," and a tequila-swigging conspiracy theorist. Historian Justin McHenry provides a thoughtful exploration of how pseudo-science hijacked the gentle 19th Century concept of Lemuria and, in following decades, twisted it into an all-encompassing home for alternative ideas about race, spirituality, science, politics, and the paranormal.