Mu (lost continent)

Mu
Map of Mu
Lost Continent of Mu Motherland of Men location
Creator	James Churchward
Genre	Pseudoscience
Type	Hypothetical continent

Mu is the name of a hypothetical continent that allegedly existed in one of Earth's oceans, but disappeared at the dawn of human history.

The concept and the name were proposed by 19th century traveler and writer Augustus Le Plongeon, who claimed that several ancient civilizations, such as those of Egypt and Mesoamerica, were created by refugees from Mu—which he located in the Atlantic Ocean.^[1] This concept was popularized and expanded by James Churchward, who asserted that Mu was once located in the Pacific.^[2]

The existence of Mu was disputed already in Le Plongeon's time. Today, scientists universally dismiss the concept of Mu (and of other lost continents like Lemuria) as physically impossible, since a continent can neither sink nor be destroyed in the short period of time required by this premise.^[3][4] Mu is today considered to be a fictional place.^[5][6]

History of the concept

Augustus Le Plongeon

The idea of Mu first appeared in the works of Augustus Le Plongeon (1825–1908), after his investigations of the Maya ruins in Yucatán.^[1] He claimed that he had translated the ancient Mayan writings, which supposedly showed that the Maya of Yucatán were older than the later civilizations of Greece and Egypt, and additionally told the story of an even older continent.

Le Plongeon actually got the name "Mu" from Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg who in 1864 mistranslated what was then called the Troano Codex using the de Landa alphabet. Brasseur believed that a word that he read as Mu referred to a land submerged by a catastrophe.^[7] Le Plongeon then identified this lost land with Atlantis, and turned it into a continent which had supposedly sunk into the Atlantic Ocean:

"In our journey westward across the Atlantic we shall pass in sight of that spot where once existed the pride and life of the ocean, the Land of Mu, which, at the epoch that we have been considering, had not yet been visited by the wrath of Humen, that lord of volcanic fires to whose fury it afterward fell a victim. The description of that land given to Solon by Sonchis, priest at Sais; its destruction by earthquakes, and submergence, recorded by Plato in his Timaeus, have been told and retold so many times that it is useless to encumber these pages with a repetition of it".^{[1]: ch. VI, p. 66}

Le Plongeon claimed that the civilization of ancient Egypt was founded by Queen Moo, a refugee from the land's demise. Other refugees supposedly fled to Central America and became the Mayans.^[4]

James Churchward

Mu, as a lost Pacific Ocean continent, was later popularised by James Churchward (1851–1936) in a series of books, beginning with Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Man (1926),^[2] re-edited later as The Lost Continent Mu (1931).^[8] Other popular books in the series are The Children of Mu (1931), and The Sacred Symbols of Mu (1933).

Churchward claimed that "more than fifty years ago," while he was a soldier in India, he befriended a high-ranking temple priest who showed him a set of ancient "sunburnt" clay tablets, supposedly in a long lost "Naga-Maya language" which only two other people in India could read. Having mastered the language himself, Churchward found out that they originated from "the place where [man] first appeared—Mu." The 1931 edition states that “all matter of science in this work are based on translations of two sets of ancient tablets:” the clay tables he read in India, and a collection 2,500 stone tablets that had been uncovered by William Niven in Mexico.^{[8]: p. 7}

Churchward gave a vivid description of Mu as the home of an advanced civilization, the Naacal, which flourished between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago, was dominated by a “white race,"^{[8]: p. 48} and was "superior in many respects to our own" ^{[8]: p. 17} At the time of its demise, about 12,000 years ago, Mu had 64,000,000 inhabitants and many large cities, and colonies in the other continents.

Churchward claimed that the landmass of Mu was located in the Pacific Ocean, and stretched east-west from the Marianas to Easter Island, and north-south from Hawaii to Mangaia. He claimed that according to the creation myth he read in the Indian tablets, Mu had been lifted above sea level by the expansion of underground volcanic gases. Eventually Mu “was completely obliterated in almost a single night”^{[8]: p. 44}: after a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, "the broken land fell into that great abyss of fire" and was covered by "fifty millions of square miles of water."^{[8]: p. 50}

Churchward claimed that Mu was the common origin of the great civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Central America, India, Burma and others, including Easter Island, and was in particular the source of ancient megalithic architecture. As evidence for his claims, he pointed to symbols from throughout the world, in which he saw common themes of birds, the relation of the Earth and the sky, and especially the Sun. Churchward claims the king of Mu was Ra and he relates this to the Egyptian god of the sun, Ra, and the Rapanui word for Sun, ra’a, which he incorrectly spells "raa."^{[8]: p. 48} He claimed to have found symbols of the Sun in “Egypt, Babylonia, Peru and all ancient lands and countries – it was a universal symbol.”^{[8]: p. 138}

Churchward attributed all megalithic art in Polynesia to the people of Mu. He claimed that symbols of the sun are found “depicted on stones of Polynesian ruins,” such as the stone hats (pukao) on top of the giant moai statues of Easter Island. Citing W.J. Johnson, Churchward describes the cylindrical hats as “spheres” that "seem to show red in the distance”, and asserts that they “represent the Sun as Ra.”^{[8]: p. 138} He also incorrectly claimed that some of them are made of "red sandstone" ^{[8]: p. 89} which does not occur in the island. The platforms on which the statues rest (ahu) are described by Churchward as being “platform-like accumulations of cut and dressed stone,” which were supposedly left in their current positions “awaiting shipment to some other part of the continent for the building of temples and palaces.”^{[8]: p. 89} He also cites the pillars “erected by the Māori of New Zealand” as an example of this lost civilization’s handiwork.^{[8]: p. 158} In Churchward's view, the present-day Polynesians are not descendants of the dominant members of the lost civilization of Mu, responsible for these great works, but survivors of the cataclysm that adopted “the first cannibalism and savagery” in the world.^{[8]: p. 54}

Underwater structures claimed to be remnants of Mu, near Yonaguni, Japan

Modern claims

James Bramwell and William Scott-Elliott claimed that the cataclysmic events on Mu began 800,000 years ago^{[9]: p. 194} and went on until the last catastrophe, which occurred precisely in 9564 BCE.^{[9]: p. 195}

In 1930s, Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic, was interested in Churchward's work and considered Mu as a possible location of the Turkish original homeland.^[10]

Masaaki Kimura has suggested that certain underwater features located off the coast of Yonaguni Island, Japan (popularly known as the Yonaguni Monument) are ruins of Mu ^[11][12] (or "ruins of the lost world of Muin" according to CNN ^[13]).

Criticisms

Geological arguments

Modern geological knowledge rules out "lost continents" of any significant size. According to the theory of plate tectonics, which has been extensively confirmed over the past 40 years, the Earth's crust consists of lighter "sial" rocks (rich in aluminum silicates) that float on heavier "sima" rocks (richer in magnesium silicates). The sial is generally absent or a few kilometres thick at the bottom of the oceans, while the continents are huge solid blocks tens of kilometers thick. Since continents float on the sima much like icebergs float on water, a continent cannot simply "sink" under the ocean.

It is true that continental drift and seafloor spreading can change the shape and position of continents and occasionally break a continent into two or more pieces (as happened to Pangaea). However, these are very slow processes that occur in geological time scales (hundreds of millions of years). Over the scale of history (tens of thousands of years), the sima under the continental crust can be considered solid, and the continents are basically anchored on it. It is all but certain that the continents and ocean floors have retained their present position and shape for the whole span of human existence.

There is also no conceivable event that could have "destroyed" a continent, since its huge mass of sial rocks would have to end up somewhere—and there is no trace of it at the bottom of the oceans. The Pacific Ocean islands are not part of a submerged landmass but rather the tips of isolated volcanoes.

Map of Easter Island showing locations of the ahu and moai

This is the case, in particular, of Easter Island, which is a recent volcanic peak surrounded by deep ocean (3,000 m deep at 30 km off the island). After visiting the island in the 1930s, Alfred Metraux observed that the moai platforms are concentrated along the current coast of the island, which implies that the island's shape has changed little since they were built. Moreover, the "Triumphal Road" that Pierre Loti had reported ran from the island to the submerged lands below, is actually a natural lava flow.^[14] Furthermore, while Churchward was correct in his claim that the island has no sandstone or sedimentary rocks, the point is moot because the pukao are all made of native volcanic scoria.

As a local catastrophe

The geological arguments that rule out "lost continents" do not rule out local catastrophes that may have changed the course of human history, such as the 80 m rise in the sea level over the last 12,000 years, the flooding of the Black Sea 7,600 years ago, and the eruption of Santorini 3,600 years ago.

Archaeological and genetic evidence

The historical details and implications of the Mu theory, which from the start were even more controversial than the physical ones, have been thoroughly discredited by archaeological and genetic research.^{[citation needed]}

The weight of evidence is that the civilizations of the Americas and the Old World developed independently of each other;^{[citation needed]} and, in fact, agriculture and urban societies probably first developed, after the end of the Ice Age, somewhere in the Levant some 10,000 years ago and gradually spread outwards from there to the rest of the Old World. The development of the oldest known cities, such as Çatalhöyük, can more easily be attributed to local and gradual evolution than to the coming of refugees from a "superior civilization".^{[citation needed]} Finally, genetic studies of the indigenous peoples of America, the Pacific Islanders, and the ancient peoples of the Old World are quite incompatible with the Mu theory.^{[citation needed]}

As for Easter Island, there is no evidence of human presence in the land before 300 AD; and the pukao on the moai are typically regarded as ceremonial headdress.^{[citation needed]}

In popular culture

• H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) featured the lost continent in his revision of Hazel Heald's short story "Out of the Aeons" (1935).^[15] Mu appears in numerous Cthulhu mythos stories, including many written by Lin Carter.^[16]
• Massimo De Vita: Topolino e l'enigma di Mu (Mickey Mouse and the Secret of Mu), comic strip, 1979.^[17] Mickey Mouse and Goofy discover the secret of Mu's civilization and its abrupt disappearance.
• Atragon (1963) and Super Atragon (1996), based on S. Oshikawa's 1902 novel The Undersea Battleship and Komatsuzaki's illustrated short story The Undersea Kingdom (Kaitei Okuku).^[18]
• In The Mysterious Cities of Gold, Tao, one of the young protagonists, is the last descendant of the Mu empire (although this was changed to Hiva in the English dub).
• The NES game DuckTales 2 features Mu as one of the stages.^[19]
• "Mu", a track on the 1967 album Atlantis by jazz musician Sun Ra.
• Robert Plant, of the rock group Led Zeppelin, claimed his symbol on the band's fourth album (a feather inside a circle) represents the Mu civilization.^[20]
• Planet Mu, a British electronic music label, has released albums titled The Sacred Symbols of Mu, The Cosmic Forces of Mu, Children of Mu and Amμnition.

See also

• Atlantis
• Lemuria (continent)
• Lost city
• Lost lands

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Le Plongeon, Augustus (1896). Queen Móo & The Egyptian Sphinx. The Author. pp. 277 pages. http://books.google.com/?id=x74RAAAAYAAJ. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Churchward, James (1926). The Lost Continent of Mu: Motherland of Man. 
3. ^ Haugton, Brian (2007). Hidden History. New Page Books. ISBN 978-1564148971,. http://books.google.com/?id=fSbRZunGbF4C&pg=PA59.  Page 60.
4. ^ ^{a b} De Camp, Lyon Sprague (1954; reprinted 1971). Lost Continents: Atlantis Theme in History, Science and Literature. Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0486226682. http://books.google.com/?id=3YHwFivT-ykC&pg=PA153. 
5. ^ Brennan, Louis A. (1959). No Stone Unturned: An Almanac of North American Pre-history. Random House.  Page 228.
6. ^ Witzel, Michael (2006). Garrett G. Fagan Routledge. ed. Archaeological Fantasies. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-30593-8. http://books.google.com/?id=oB7pBZ3s6dIC&pg=PA220.  Page 220.
7. ^ John Sladek, The New Apocrypha (New York: Stein and day, 1974) 65-66.
8. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Churchward, James (1931). The Lost Continent of Mu. Ives Washburn. pp. 335 pages. 
9. ^ ^{a b} Bramwell, James (1939). Lost Atlantis. 
10. ^ Kayıp Kıta Mu, presentation, Ege-Meta Yayınları, İzmir, 2000, ISBN 975-7089-20-6
11. ^ Kimura, Masaaki (1991). Mu tairiku wa Ryukyu ni atta (The Continent of Mu was in Ryukyu). Tokuma Shoten. 
12. ^ Schoch, Robert M.. "Ancient underwater pyramid structure off the coast of Yonaguni-jima". http://www.morien-institute.org/yonaguni_schoch1.html. 
13. ^ "Japan's Underwater Ruins (video)". CNN. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2007/08/24/vo.japan.underwater.ruins.reut. 
14. ^ Metraux, Alfred. Mysteries of Easter Island. http://www.davidmetraux.com/daniel/docs/alfred/alfred_metraux_mysteries_of_easter_island.pdf. 
15. ^ Lovecraft, Howard P. and Hazel Heald. "Out of the Aeons" (1935) in The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, S.T. Joshi (ed.), 1989. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House Publishers, Inc. ISBN 0-87054-040-8.
16. ^ Harms, Daniel. "Mu" in The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (2nd ed.), pp. 200–202. Chaosium, Inc., 1998. ISBN 1-56882-119-0.
17. ^ http://coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+1238-AP
18. ^ G-Fan #75. Daikaiju Enterprises Ltd. 2006. Pg.80
19. ^ "Duck Tales 2". http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004SVPB/retrogamingwi-20. Retrieved 16 September 2011. 
20. ^ (From the book Talking, by Dave Lewis.)