The Lost Continent of Mu
9 August 2022 07:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_novel_heroIn 1864, French ethnographer Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg translated a Spanish copy of the Mayan “Troano Codex”, asserting that there was a one-to-one correspondence between the glyphs and the Spanish alphabet. Anyone with even the barest of knowledge about languages, even in the 19th Century, should have immediately recognized that it simply couldn’t work this way. Nevertheless, British-American antiquarian Augustus Le Plongeon took that mistranslation and the bad technique of that mistranslation, to translate the Mayan Popol Vuh. It is from this mistranslation of a mistranslation of a questionable transcription that we first got the story of Queen Móo of Atlantis escaping the sinking continent and founding the Egyptian civilization, while other refugees settled in Yucatan to found the Mayan empire. (Oh, and the Masons, too.)
I should like to review Le Plongeon’s claim of a connection to Atlantis but I don’t have a copy of “Queen Móo and the Egyptian Sphinx” (1896). What I do have on my bookshelf, though, is a copy of “The Lost Continent of Mu, The Motherland of Men” by James Churchward, specifically the 1931 revised edition of the original 1926 publication. “Lost Continent” was the first of Churchward’s books on the subject, producing four additional books, numerous revisions over the course of a decade with two additional books published posthumously.
Now, you might think that, given 30 years to expand on Le Plongeon’s ideas, plus a decade on top of that for revisions, that Churchward’s evidence would be pretty well substantiated, or at least thorough and extensive. And you would be wrong. From the very outset.
The frontispiece illustration, page 2, is captioned “A Relic of Mu. This is believed to be the oldest jar ever uncovered. It is made of bronze, inlaid with gold symbols, and was taken from one of Mu’s submerged cities. It is estimated to be over 12,500 years old.”
I have questions.
Which submerged city? Where is it located? Was it excavated recently, and so with archaeological context within stratigraphy? How was this bronze object created 5,000 years before all other known bronze artifacts? Why do the “inlaid gold symbols” look like Sanskrit, and how are they 10,000 years older than the invention of Sanskrit? And, finally, why don’t you answer any of these questions? No, really, having read the rest of the book, there are absolutely no details of this or other Muian artifacts. It may be that those things are covered in his other, later books and appear in this book because it is a revised edition without a whole lot of revision.
That would be a generous interpretation.
Once we get into the actual text of the book he sets out the foundation of his claim for there having been an antediluvian civilization occupying a lost continent that once occupied nearly the entirety of the Pacific Ocean: “Some guy told me.”
The story Churchward tells is that he was in India doing relief work during a famine where he met a high priest of a college temple who was one of only three in all of India who had access to secret documents from the dawn of mankind. Churchward was, after years of work, able to convince the priest to allow him access to these secret writings which even the priest was unable to decipher.
And, like the artifact in the frontpiece, he gives no details. When was he in India? What city? Which college? What was the high priest’s name? Any photographs or illustrations of the documents? With none of those details or citations, we are left with only Churchward’s word that the events he describes actually happened. “Some guy told me” is not convincing, no matter how many times you repeat it. With a foundation as flimsy as that, what follows, no matter how may chapters, doesn’t deserve a point-by-point refutation, even if there was any actual data contained therin to challenge. Ridiculous ideas are deserving of ridicule. And yet, because I’m me, I’m going to do just that for at least a few points.
In Chapter Two “we learn how the mystery of the White Races in the South Sea Islands may be solved.” Churchward’s assertion is that there were seven father races on the continent of Mu but that, of course, the white race were the rightful rulers. I assume that “the mystery” of white people being on south seas islands is that they were the survivors of the sinking of the continent. He never comes out and says that, and so never solves the mystery he said he was going to solve, while at the same time ignoring that white sailors arrived in the South Pacific islands in the 1500s. He also never explains why the other five father races weren’t among the island survivors.
He also refers to the South Sea Islanders in “their present savage and semi-savage state” and seems to delight in the number of cannibals. Ultra-difusianists love to highlight how far humanity has fallen from it’s Golden Age.
Churchward states outright. “Plato’s ‘Timaeus’ says that this Mexican pyramid is an exact model of the Sacred Hill of Atlantis on which was built the Temple of Poseidon.” First off, while Atlantis is mentioned in ‘Timaeus’, the bulk of the Atlantis narrative is in the second book ‘Critias’, and, for what should be obvious reasons, Mexico isn’t mentioned. Neither is Atlantis covered in any sort of detail because, to do so would reveal too obviously that the story of Mu is cribbed from the story of Atlantis and, even then, not the Atlantis of Plato but the story built by Atlantitsists over centuries and the Ignatius Donnally bandwagon that Chruchward appears to have hitched his wagon.
Churchward asks, “When were the mountains that succeeded the great Magnetic Cataclysm raised? If we believe the myths of geology. . . . “ Apparently he believes that mountains didn’t exist before 42,000 years ago. Granted, in the 1920s when Churchward was first writing, the understanding that continents moved, as confirmed with things like the mid-Atlantic ridge, trans-oceanic fossil beds and geological strata, and the way that South America and Africa obviously fit together hadn’t yet developed into the theory of plate tectonics but, yes, even at that time geology understood many of the mechanisms of mountain formation and, with confidence, understood that mountains were older that 42,000 years old. But here is were we start to see the conspiracy theory side of all these claims. Somehow, this person with zero founding in geology has discovered that the entire scientific discipline is wrong, must know it is wrong, and therefore must have some nefarious purpose to establish this falsehood over literally generations of deceit.
“Both Atlantis and the land of Mu were destroyed by volcanic eruptions and submerged. Science has proved that beyond the shadow of a doubt.” And I might give Churchward some credit if he ever provided evidence. Even bad evidence. Apparently, the claim IS the proof.
“The height of the Uighur Empire, a colony of Mu that extended from China to the Balkans and from Siberia to Tibet, was 17,000 years ago. . . . The Uighur was the principal colonial empire belonging to Mu at the time of the biblical ‘Flood,’ which destroyed its eastern half. . . . The history of the Uighurs is the history of the Aryans.”
Nazis. Fucking Nazis. Oh, sure, Churchward wasn’t an actual Nazi (as far as I know) but this is exactly the thread that Himmler and his Ahnenerbe organization latched on to. In that case, it was Hyperboria and Thule in the north which was the wellspring of the Master Race, that after the flood became the Aryans, moved out of German lands, invaded India to found the Indo-European languages, moved back to Germany and the north, and so on, Thousand Year Reich, final solution, bullet in the head, Proud Boys. Yea. Ignatius Donnelly had Atlantis, the Ayrians, Egypt, India, pick up from there. Helania Blavatsky had the Hollow Earth, Ayrians, India, pick up from there. Churchward had Mu, the Uighur, Ayrians, India, pick up from there. White supremacists have all the same pattern, even if the starting point varies.
Jack E. Churchward, grandson of James, asserts on his website that stands as a defense of his grandfather’s word, that “The Lost Continent of Mu” was a work of fiction, which seems somewhat naive. I have read plenty of fiction; fiction presented as if it were truth, true stories presented as fiction, and (a common trope in Victorian fiction) scientific ideas wrapped within a fictional narrative. The Lost Continent reads like none of these. It lacks a fictional narrative. It is strong on truth assertions. At best, it might be a fiction presented as truth specifically to conceal its fictional foundations. In short; a grift.
I believe that Churchward actually believed the things that he wrote. There were things I am pretty sure he knew were wrong and perhaps even a few things he lied about (like his access to secret original Mu writings in India) but he was able to justify those outright lies because he believed the underlying hypothesis. The grift becomes a matter of scale in how much did he know was untrue, while presenting it as true to further his career as an author and lecturer. I place Erich von Däniken, Zacharia Sitchin, and Graham Hancock on this grifter spectrum, though more towards the “know they are lying about things” end.
Ancient alien “theorists” have aliens, Atlantis (or Lemuria, or Mu), India, pick up from there.
I should like to review Le Plongeon’s claim of a connection to Atlantis but I don’t have a copy of “Queen Móo and the Egyptian Sphinx” (1896). What I do have on my bookshelf, though, is a copy of “The Lost Continent of Mu, The Motherland of Men” by James Churchward, specifically the 1931 revised edition of the original 1926 publication. “Lost Continent” was the first of Churchward’s books on the subject, producing four additional books, numerous revisions over the course of a decade with two additional books published posthumously.
Now, you might think that, given 30 years to expand on Le Plongeon’s ideas, plus a decade on top of that for revisions, that Churchward’s evidence would be pretty well substantiated, or at least thorough and extensive. And you would be wrong. From the very outset.
The frontispiece illustration, page 2, is captioned “A Relic of Mu. This is believed to be the oldest jar ever uncovered. It is made of bronze, inlaid with gold symbols, and was taken from one of Mu’s submerged cities. It is estimated to be over 12,500 years old.”
I have questions.
Which submerged city? Where is it located? Was it excavated recently, and so with archaeological context within stratigraphy? How was this bronze object created 5,000 years before all other known bronze artifacts? Why do the “inlaid gold symbols” look like Sanskrit, and how are they 10,000 years older than the invention of Sanskrit? And, finally, why don’t you answer any of these questions? No, really, having read the rest of the book, there are absolutely no details of this or other Muian artifacts. It may be that those things are covered in his other, later books and appear in this book because it is a revised edition without a whole lot of revision.
That would be a generous interpretation.
Once we get into the actual text of the book he sets out the foundation of his claim for there having been an antediluvian civilization occupying a lost continent that once occupied nearly the entirety of the Pacific Ocean: “Some guy told me.”
The story Churchward tells is that he was in India doing relief work during a famine where he met a high priest of a college temple who was one of only three in all of India who had access to secret documents from the dawn of mankind. Churchward was, after years of work, able to convince the priest to allow him access to these secret writings which even the priest was unable to decipher.
And, like the artifact in the frontpiece, he gives no details. When was he in India? What city? Which college? What was the high priest’s name? Any photographs or illustrations of the documents? With none of those details or citations, we are left with only Churchward’s word that the events he describes actually happened. “Some guy told me” is not convincing, no matter how many times you repeat it. With a foundation as flimsy as that, what follows, no matter how may chapters, doesn’t deserve a point-by-point refutation, even if there was any actual data contained therin to challenge. Ridiculous ideas are deserving of ridicule. And yet, because I’m me, I’m going to do just that for at least a few points.
In Chapter Two “we learn how the mystery of the White Races in the South Sea Islands may be solved.” Churchward’s assertion is that there were seven father races on the continent of Mu but that, of course, the white race were the rightful rulers. I assume that “the mystery” of white people being on south seas islands is that they were the survivors of the sinking of the continent. He never comes out and says that, and so never solves the mystery he said he was going to solve, while at the same time ignoring that white sailors arrived in the South Pacific islands in the 1500s. He also never explains why the other five father races weren’t among the island survivors.
He also refers to the South Sea Islanders in “their present savage and semi-savage state” and seems to delight in the number of cannibals. Ultra-difusianists love to highlight how far humanity has fallen from it’s Golden Age.
Churchward states outright. “Plato’s ‘Timaeus’ says that this Mexican pyramid is an exact model of the Sacred Hill of Atlantis on which was built the Temple of Poseidon.” First off, while Atlantis is mentioned in ‘Timaeus’, the bulk of the Atlantis narrative is in the second book ‘Critias’, and, for what should be obvious reasons, Mexico isn’t mentioned. Neither is Atlantis covered in any sort of detail because, to do so would reveal too obviously that the story of Mu is cribbed from the story of Atlantis and, even then, not the Atlantis of Plato but the story built by Atlantitsists over centuries and the Ignatius Donnally bandwagon that Chruchward appears to have hitched his wagon.
Churchward asks, “When were the mountains that succeeded the great Magnetic Cataclysm raised? If we believe the myths of geology. . . . “ Apparently he believes that mountains didn’t exist before 42,000 years ago. Granted, in the 1920s when Churchward was first writing, the understanding that continents moved, as confirmed with things like the mid-Atlantic ridge, trans-oceanic fossil beds and geological strata, and the way that South America and Africa obviously fit together hadn’t yet developed into the theory of plate tectonics but, yes, even at that time geology understood many of the mechanisms of mountain formation and, with confidence, understood that mountains were older that 42,000 years old. But here is were we start to see the conspiracy theory side of all these claims. Somehow, this person with zero founding in geology has discovered that the entire scientific discipline is wrong, must know it is wrong, and therefore must have some nefarious purpose to establish this falsehood over literally generations of deceit.
“Both Atlantis and the land of Mu were destroyed by volcanic eruptions and submerged. Science has proved that beyond the shadow of a doubt.” And I might give Churchward some credit if he ever provided evidence. Even bad evidence. Apparently, the claim IS the proof.
“The height of the Uighur Empire, a colony of Mu that extended from China to the Balkans and from Siberia to Tibet, was 17,000 years ago. . . . The Uighur was the principal colonial empire belonging to Mu at the time of the biblical ‘Flood,’ which destroyed its eastern half. . . . The history of the Uighurs is the history of the Aryans.”
Nazis. Fucking Nazis. Oh, sure, Churchward wasn’t an actual Nazi (as far as I know) but this is exactly the thread that Himmler and his Ahnenerbe organization latched on to. In that case, it was Hyperboria and Thule in the north which was the wellspring of the Master Race, that after the flood became the Aryans, moved out of German lands, invaded India to found the Indo-European languages, moved back to Germany and the north, and so on, Thousand Year Reich, final solution, bullet in the head, Proud Boys. Yea. Ignatius Donnelly had Atlantis, the Ayrians, Egypt, India, pick up from there. Helania Blavatsky had the Hollow Earth, Ayrians, India, pick up from there. Churchward had Mu, the Uighur, Ayrians, India, pick up from there. White supremacists have all the same pattern, even if the starting point varies.
Jack E. Churchward, grandson of James, asserts on his website that stands as a defense of his grandfather’s word, that “The Lost Continent of Mu” was a work of fiction, which seems somewhat naive. I have read plenty of fiction; fiction presented as if it were truth, true stories presented as fiction, and (a common trope in Victorian fiction) scientific ideas wrapped within a fictional narrative. The Lost Continent reads like none of these. It lacks a fictional narrative. It is strong on truth assertions. At best, it might be a fiction presented as truth specifically to conceal its fictional foundations. In short; a grift.
I believe that Churchward actually believed the things that he wrote. There were things I am pretty sure he knew were wrong and perhaps even a few things he lied about (like his access to secret original Mu writings in India) but he was able to justify those outright lies because he believed the underlying hypothesis. The grift becomes a matter of scale in how much did he know was untrue, while presenting it as true to further his career as an author and lecturer. I place Erich von Däniken, Zacharia Sitchin, and Graham Hancock on this grifter spectrum, though more towards the “know they are lying about things” end.
Ancient alien “theorists” have aliens, Atlantis (or Lemuria, or Mu), India, pick up from there.
