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Mu (lost continent)
Encyclopedia
Mu is the name of a hypothetical continent
that allegedly existed in one of Earth
's ocean
s, 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
. This concept was popularized and expanded by James Churchward
, who asserted that Mu was once located in the Pacific
.
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. Mu is today considered to be a fictional place.
ruins in Yucatán
. 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. Le Plongeon then identified this lost land with Atlantis
, and turned it into a continent which had supposedly sunk into the Atlantic Ocean:
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.
(1851–1936) in a series of books, beginning with Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Man (1926), re-edited later as The Lost Continent Mu (1931). 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
.
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," and was "superior in many respects to our own" 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”: 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."
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." He claimed to have found symbols of the Sun in “Egypt, Babylonia, Peru and all ancient lands and countries – it was a universal symbol.”
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.” He also incorrectly claimed that some of them are made of "red sandstone" 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.” He also cites the pillars “erected by the Māori of New Zealand
” as an example of this lost civilization’s handiwork. 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.
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
.
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 (or "ruins of the lost world of Muin" according to CNN
).
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 iceberg
s 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 volcano
es.
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. 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
.
7,600 years ago, and the eruption of Santorini
3,600 years ago.
The weight of evidence is that the civilizations of the Americas
and the Old World
developed independently of each other; 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". Finally, genetic studies
of the indigenous peoples of America, the Pacific Islander
s, and the ancient peoples of the Old World are quite incompatible with the Mu theory.
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.
Continent
A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents—they are : Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia.Plate tectonics is...
that allegedly existed in one of Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
's ocean
Ocean
An ocean is a major body of saline water, and a principal component of the hydrosphere. Approximately 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean, a continuous body of water that is customarily divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas.More than half of this area is over 3,000...
s, but disappeared at the dawn of human history.
The concept and the name were proposed by 19th century traveler and writer Augustus Le Plongeon
Augustus Le Plongeon
Augustus Le Plongeon was a photographer and antiquarian who studied the pre-Columbian ruins of America, particularly those of the Maya civilization on the northern Yucatán Peninsula. While his writings contain many eccentric notions that were discredited by later researchers, Le Plongeon left a...
, who claimed that several ancient civilizations, such as those of Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
and Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...
, were created by refugees from Mu—which he located in the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
. This concept was popularized and expanded by James Churchward
James Churchward
James Churchward is best known as a British born occult writer. However, he was also a patented inventor, engineer, and expert fisherman....
, who asserted that Mu was once located in the Pacific
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
.
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
Lemuria (continent)
Lemuria is the name of a hypothetical "lost land" variously located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The concept's 19th century origins lie in attempts to account for discontinuities in biogeography; however, the concept of Lemuria has been rendered obsolete by modern theories of plate tectonics...
) as physically impossible, since a continent can neither sink nor be destroyed in the short period of time required by this premise. Mu is today considered to be a fictional place.
Augustus Le Plongeon
The idea of Mu first appeared in the works of Augustus Le Plongeon (1825–1908), after his investigations of the MayaMaya civilization
The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...
ruins in Yucatán
Yucatán
Yucatán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Yucatán is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 106 municipalities and its capital city is Mérida....
. 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
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, and additionally told the story of an even older continent.
Le Plongeon actually got the name "Mu" from Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg
Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg
Abbé Charles-Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg was a noted French writer, ethnographer, historian and archaeologist...
who in 1864 mistranslated what was then called the Troano Codex using the de Landa alphabet
De Landa alphabet
The de Landa alphabet is the correspondence of Spanish letters and glyphs written in the pre-Columbian Maya script, which the 16th century Bishop of Yucatán, Fray Diego de Landa recorded as part of his documentation of the Maya civilization during his tenure there...
. Brasseur believed that a word that he read as Mu referred to a land submerged by a catastrophe. Le Plongeon then identified this lost land with Atlantis
Atlantis
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
, 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 SolonSolonSolon was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic Athens...
by SonchisSonchis of SaisSonchis of Sais was an Egyptian priest who is mentioned in Greek writings as relating the account of Atlantis. His status as a historical figure is a matter of debate....
, priest at SaisSAISSAIS can refer to:* Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, part of The Johns Hopkins University.* Sharjah American International School* Southern Association of Independent Schools...
; its destruction by earthquakeEarthquakeAn earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
s, and submergence, recorded by PlatoPlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
in his TimaeusTimaeus (dialogue)Timaeus is one of Plato's dialogues, mostly in the form of a long monologue given by the title character, written circa 360 BC. The work puts forward speculation on the nature of the physical world and human beings. It is followed by the dialogue Critias.Speakers of the dialogue are Socrates,...
, have been told and retold so many times that it is useless to encumber these pages with a repetition of it".
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.
James Churchward
Mu, as a lost Pacific Ocean continent, was later popularised by James ChurchwardJames Churchward
James Churchward is best known as a British born occult writer. However, he was also a patented inventor, engineer, and expert fisherman....
(1851–1936) in a series of books, beginning with Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Man (1926), re-edited later as The Lost Continent Mu (1931). 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
William Niven
William Niven was a mineralogist and archeologist noted for his discovery of the minerals yttrialite, thorogummite, aguilarite and nivenite , as well as a set of controversial tablets...
in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
.
Churchward gave a vivid description of Mu as the home of an advanced civilization, the Naacal
Naacal
Naacal is the name of an ancient people and civilization claimed to have existed by first Augustus Le Plongeon and later James Churchward. Though there is no scientific or archaeological evidence for the existence of the Naacals, various later fictional works have made use of them.-Augustus Le...
, which flourished between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago, was dominated by a “white race," and was "superior in many respects to our own" 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
Easter Island
Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...
, and north-south from Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
to Mangaia
Mangaia
Mangaia is the most southerly of the Cook Islands and the second largest, after Rarotonga.-Geography:...
. 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”: 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."
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
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
. Churchward claims the king of Mu was Ra and he relates this to the Egyptian god of the sun, Ra
Ra
Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god. By the Fifth Dynasty he had become a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the mid-day sun...
, and the Rapanui
Rapanui
The Rapa Nui or Rapanui are the native Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, in the Pacific Ocean. The easternmost Polynesian culture, the Rapa Nui people make up 60% of Easter Island's population, with some living also in mainland Chile...
word for Sun, ra’a, which he incorrectly spells "raa." He claimed to have found symbols of the Sun in “Egypt, Babylonia, Peru and all ancient lands and countries – it was a universal symbol.”
Churchward attributed all megalithic art in Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
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
Moai
Moai , or mo‘ai, are monolithic human figures carved from rock on the Chilean Polynesian island of Easter Island between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the...
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.” He also incorrectly claimed that some of them are made of "red sandstone" 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.” He also cites the pillars “erected by the Māori of New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
” as an example of this lost civilization’s handiwork. 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
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
and savagery” in the world.
Modern claims
James Bramwell and William Scott-Elliott claimed that the cataclysmic events on Mu began 800,000 years ago and went on until the last catastrophe, which occurred precisely in 9564 BCE.In 1930s, Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, was interested in Churchward's work and considered Mu as a possible location of the Turkish
Turkish people
Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...
original homeland
Urheimat
Urheimat is a linguistic term denoting the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language...
.
Masaaki Kimura
Masaaki Kimura
Masaaki Kimura is a Professor Emeritus from the Faculty of Science of the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan...
has suggested that certain underwater features located off the coast of Yonaguni Island
Yonaguni
is one of the Yaeyama Islands. It is the westernmost inhabited island of Japan and lies from the east coast of Taiwan, between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean proper....
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
(popularly known as the Yonaguni Monument
Yonaguni Monument
The Yonaguni Monument is a massive underwater rock formation off the coast of Yonaguni, the southernmost of the Ryukyu Islands, in Japan. There is a debate about whether the site is completely natural, is a natural site that has been modified, or is a manmade artifact.The site is variably referred...
) are ruins of Mu (or "ruins of the lost world of Muin" according to CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
).
Geological arguments
Modern geologicalGeology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
knowledge rules out "lost continents" of any significant size. According to the theory of plate tectonics
Plate tectonics
Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere...
, which has been extensively confirmed over the past 40 years, the Earth's crust consists of lighter "sial
Sial
In geology, the sial is the upper layer of the Earth's crust made of rocks rich in silicates and aluminium minerals. It is sometimes equated with the continental crust because it is absent in the wide oceanic basins, but "sial" is a geochemical term rather than a plate tectonic term.Geologists...
" rocks (rich in aluminum silicates) that float on heavier "sima
Sima (geology)
Sima is the name for the lower layer of the Earth's crust. This layer is made of rocks rich in magnesium silicate minerals. Typically when the sima comes to the surface it is basalt, so sometimes this layer is called the 'basalt layer' of the crust. The sima layer is also called the 'basal crust'...
" rocks (richer in magnesium
Magnesium
Magnesium is a chemical element with the symbol Mg, atomic number 12, and common oxidation number +2. It is an alkaline earth metal and the eighth most abundant element in the Earth's crust and ninth in the known universe as a whole...
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 iceberg
Iceberg
An iceberg is a large piece of ice from freshwater that has broken off from a snow-formed glacier or ice shelf and is floating in open water. It may subsequently become frozen into pack ice...
s float on water, a continent cannot simply "sink" under the ocean.
It is true that continental drift
Continental drift
Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other. The hypothesis that continents 'drift' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 and was fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912...
and seafloor spreading
Seafloor spreading
Seafloor spreading is a process that occurs at mid-ocean ridges, where new oceanic crust is formed through volcanic activity and then gradually moves away from the ridge. Seafloor spreading helps explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics....
can change the shape and position of continents and occasionally break a continent into two or more pieces (as happened to Pangaea
Pangaea
Pangaea, Pangæa, or Pangea is hypothesized as a supercontinent that existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras about 250 million years ago, before the component continents were separated into their current configuration....
). 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
Oceania
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...
are not part of a submerged landmass but rather the tips of isolated volcano
Volcano
2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...
es.
Easter Island
Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...
, 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
Alfred Metraux
Alfred Métraux was a Swiss anthropologist and human rights leader.-Early life:Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Metraux spent much of his childhood in Argentina where his father was a well known surgeon resident in Mendoza. His mother was a Georgian from Tbilisi...
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
Pierre Loti
Pierre Loti was a French novelist and naval officer.-Biography:Loti's education began in his birthplace, Rochefort, Charente-Maritime. At the age of seventeen he entered the naval school in Brest and studied at Le Borda. He gradually rose in his profession, attaining the rank of captain in 1906...
had reported ran from the island to the submerged lands below, is actually a natural lava flow. 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
Scoria
Scoria is a volcanic rock containing many holes or vesicles. It is most generally dark in color , and basaltic or andesitic in composition. Scoria is relatively low in mass as a result of its numerous macroscopic ellipsoidal vesicles, but in contrast to pumice, all scoria has a specific gravity...
.
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 SeaBlack Sea deluge theory
The Black Sea deluge is a hypothesized catastrophic rise in the level of the Black Sea circa 5600 BC due to waters from the Mediterranean Sea breaching a sill in the Bosporus Strait. The hypothesis made headlines when The New York Times published it in December 1996, shortly before it was published...
7,600 years ago, and the eruption of Santorini
Santorini
Santorini , officially Thira , is an island located in the southern Aegean Sea, about southeast from Greece's mainland. It is the largest island of a small, circular archipelago which bears the same name and is the remnant of a volcanic caldera...
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.The weight of evidence is that the civilizations of the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
and the Old World
Old World
The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....
developed independently of each other; and, in fact, agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
and urban societies probably first developed, after the end of the Ice Age
Ice age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
, somewhere in the Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
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
Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BCE to 5700 BCE...
, can more easily be attributed to local and gradual evolution than to the coming of refugees from a "superior civilization". Finally, genetic studies
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
of the indigenous peoples of America, the Pacific Islander
Pacific Islander
Pacific Islander , is a geographic term to describe the indigenous inhabitants of any of the three major sub-regions of Oceania: Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia.According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, these three regions, together with their islands consist of:Polynesia:...
s, and the ancient peoples of the Old World are quite incompatible with the Mu theory.
As for Easter Island, there is no evidence of human presence in the land before 300 AD; and the pukao on the moai
Moai
Moai , or mo‘ai, are monolithic human figures carved from rock on the Chilean Polynesian island of Easter Island between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the...
are typically regarded as ceremonial headdress.
In popular culture
- H. P. LovecraftH. P. LovecraftHoward Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
(1890–1937) featured the lost continent in his revision of Hazel Heald's short storyShort storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
"Out of the Aeons" (19351935 in literatureThe year 1935 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* June 15 - W. H. Auden enters a marriage of convenience with Erika Mann.* July 30 - Allen Lane founds Penguin Books to publish the first mass market paperbacks in Britain....
). Mu appears in numerous CthulhuCthulhuCthulhu is a fictional character that first appeared in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. The character was created by writer H. P...
mythos stories, including many written by Lin CarterLin CarterLinwood Vrooman Carter was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an editor and critic. He usually wrote as Lin Carter; known pseudonyms include H. P. Lowcraft and Grail Undwin.-Life:Carter was born in St. Petersburg, Florida...
. - Massimo De Vita: Topolino e l'enigma di Mu (Mickey MouseMickey MouseMickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
and the Secret of Mu), comic strip, 1979. Mickey Mouse and Goofy discover the secret of Mu's civilization and its abrupt disappearance. - AtragonAtragonAtragon, released in Japan as , is a 1963 Toho tokusatsu film based on a series of juvenile adventure novels under the banner Kaitei Gunkan by Shunrō Oshikawa and the illustrated story Kaitei Okoku by illustrator Shigeru Komatsuzaki, serialized in a monthly magazine for boys...
(1963) and Super Atragon (1996), based on S. OshikawaShunro Oshikawa, was a Japanese author, journalist and editor, best known as a pioneer of science fiction.-Education and early career:While studying law at Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō at the turn of the century, Oshikawa published Kaitō Bōken Kidan: Kaitei Gunkan , the story of an armoured, ram-armed submarine in a...
's 1902 novel The Undersea Battleship and Komatsuzaki's illustrated short story The Undersea Kingdom (Kaitei Okuku). - In The Mysterious Cities of GoldThe Mysterious Cities of Goldabbreviated MCoG, is a Japanese-French animated series co-produced by DiC Entertainment and Studio Pierrot. The series premiered in Japan on NHK on May 1, 1982 and ran weekly for 39 episodes until its conclusion on February 5, 1983...
, 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 NESNintendo Entertainment SystemThe Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
game DuckTales 2DuckTales 2DuckTales 2 is a 1993 video game produced by Capcom, based on the TV Series DuckTales, and is a sequel to the original DuckTales game.-Plot:...
features Mu as one of the stages. - "Mu", a track on the 1967 album AtlantisAtlantisAtlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
by jazz musician Sun RaSun RaSun Ra was a prolific jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama...
. - Robert PlantRobert PlantRobert Anthony Plant, CBE is an English singer and songwriter best known as the vocalist and lyricist of the iconic rock band Led Zeppelin. He has also had a successful solo career...
, of the rock group Led ZeppelinLed ZeppelinLed Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
, claimed his symbol on the band's fourth albumLed Zeppelin IVThe fourth album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin was released on 8 November 1971. No title is printed on the album, so it is generally referred to as Led Zeppelin IV, following the naming standard used by the band's first three studio albums...
(a feather inside a circle) represents the Mu civilization. - Planet MuPlanet MuPlanet Mu is an electronic music record label run by Mike Paradinas . It was based in Worcester until March 2007, then moved to London and has recently relocated to Broadstairs, Kent...
, a British electronic music label, has released albums titled The Sacred Symbols of Mu, The Cosmic Forces of Mu, Children of Mu and Amμnition.