The Lost Continent of Mu: A Hypothetical Civilization

Mu is a hypothetical “lost continent” whose existence was first suggested by antiquarian Augustus Le Plongeon (1826-1908) in the late nineteenth century. The concept was derived in part from translations of Mayan manuscripts made by archaeologist and Catholic cleric Charles-Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814-1874), and it was subsequently popularized by inventor James Churchward (1851-1936) in a series of books published in the 1920s and 1930s.

Le Plongeon spent more than a decade photographing and documenting Mayan ruins in Yucatan, where he developed the theory that Mayan adepts, or “Naacals,” had carried their civilization and symbols to Egypt via another hypothetical lost continent—Atlantis—in the Atlantic Ocean. He also posited cultural connections between the Mayans and the Pacific Islanders.

Although Le Plongeon’s theories were rejected as faulty even in his lifetime, some were taken up by James Churchward, who may have met the antiquarian in the 1890s. Churchward had managed tea plantations in Ceylon (today known as Sri Lanka), and he claimed to have befriended a priest in India who helped him decipher fragments of ancient tablets written in the so-called Naacal language. Churchward believed (or so he said) that an enormous vanished continent named Mu had been the site of the Garden of Eden, that a highly advanced Naacal civilization had developed on Mu, and that other ancient civilizations—including the Mayan, Indian, and Egyptian—were its colonies. Unlike Le Plongeon, he placed his lost continent in the Pacific Ocean and wrote that it had sunk as a result of a terrible explosion more than 10,000 years ago, resulting in the death of its sixty-three million inhabitants.

Churchward laid out his theories in The Lost Continent of Mu, Motherland of Man in 1926 and went on to deliver a lengthy exposition of them to the American Society for Psychical Research in New York in 1931. He republished his book in a revised version as The Lost Continent of Mu the same year and followed it in short order with The Children of Mu (1931), The Sacred Symbols of Mu (1933), Cosmic Forces of Mu (1934), and The Second Book of Cosmic Forces of Mu (1935).

Churchward’s writings are a melange of occult lore and pseudohistory, and their fanciful nature suggests that the author may well have been entertaining himself with a kind of elaborate daydream. Nevertheless, his ideas gained credence with readers who had little grasp of the geological, historical, and archaeological issues involved. Mu has since been featured in more books of pseudo-scientific speculation and in several works of speculative fiction.

FURTHER READING: Churchward, James. 1931. The Lost Continent of Mu. New York: Washburn.

De Camp, L. Sprague. 1964. Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Desmond, Lawrence Gustave and Phyllis Mauch Messenger. 1988. A Dream of Maya: Augustus and Alice Le Plongeon in Nineteenth Century Yucatan. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Griffith, Percy Tate. 2004. My Friend Churchey and His Sunken Island of Mu: Biography of Colonel James Churchward. Sandy Springs, SC: Dick Lowdermilk.