Author Description

Leadbeater and Scott-Elliot provided much more detail than Blavatsky on the lives of the supposed Atlantean and Lemurian root races. Scott-Elliot located Lemuria in the Pacific ocean, claiming that it was a gigantic landmass that eventually sank, leaving only small islands. The Lemurians were around fifteen feet tall, with brown skins and flat faces, no foreheads and prominent jaws. They could see sideways like birds, and could walk backwards and forwards with equal ease. They reproduced with eggs, but interbred with animals to produce ape-like human ancestors. After the demise of Lemuria, new races emerged on Atlantis from the surviving ape-like creatures. This led to the Atlantean races, beginning with the black skinned "Rmoahal" and leading to the "copper coloured" Tlavatli, who were ancestor-worshippers, and then the "Toltecs," who had advanced technology including "airships." The Toltecs were succeeded by "First Turanians" and then "Original Semites." These later produced further sub-races, the Akkadians and Mongolians. A group of Akkadians migrated to Britain 100,000 years ago, where they built Stonehenge. The crudity of the design in contrast to Atlantean architecture is explained by the fact that "the rude simplicity of Stonehenge was intended as a protest against the extravagant ornament and over-decoration of the existing temples in Atlantis, where the debased worship of their own images was being carried on by the inhabitants." Scott-Elliot also claimed that Atlantis split into two linked islands, one called Daitya, and the other Ruta. Eventually only a remnant of Ruta remained, called Poseidonis, before that too disappeared. Scott-Elliot's ideas were mentioned by Rudolf Steiner in the essays later published as Atlantis and Lemuria (1904).