Lost Civilization of Mu
The Lost Civilization of Mu
Lost Civilization of Mu
The lost continent of Mu is one of many so called “lost civilizations” located in the Atlantic Ocean. This civilization has many similarities to other more famous locations such as Atlantis and Lemuria. It has even been said that these civilizations are one in the same. The civilization is said to have links to various other cultures as well including the Mayan, Egyptian, Greek and many other cultures all around the world. However, these “lost civilizations” including Mu are a work of pseudo archaeological findings that have no real proof behind them and an unrealistic tendency to just vanish into the oceans never to be seen again.
Augustus de Plongeon
The narrative of the lost civilization of Mu originates from the work to decipher ancient mayan writings by a proclaimed archaeologist Augustus de Plongeon. De Plongeon was born in Jersey on May 4, 1826 and began traveling at the young age of 19. After his initial explorations he began to learn photography which he later used when he explored sites to help document artifacts and structures. However, as an archaeologist he had many differing opinions compared to that of his peers. He believed that the origin of civilizations had roots in the New World rather than the Old World. This led into his theories about Mu and how it had influenced many societies throughout the world. De Plongeon first “discovered” Mu through translations of the Mayans writings using previous translations by Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg. These translations however were flawed but included a reference to the lost civilization of Mu. This reference spiked Plongeon’s interest and so he began work on researching this civilization. Plongeon’s beliefs on the society include the hyper diffusion of their culture to other civilizations before their inevitable downfall as a “lost civilization”. Part of his ideology on the ordeal was that the ancient Mu people brought their culture around the world to explain the similarities in the cultural architecture of the ancient Mayan and Egyptian people. This includes the fleeing of the people to both Central America for the Mayans and their supposed Queen Moo who fled to Egypt to start their culture. Plongeon’s bold claims of hyperdiffusion led his other peers to scrutinize his ideas of Mu and the mistakes in both his lack of proof and ideology.
James Churchward
After Plongeon’s time another man named James Churchward picked up the mantle of research on Mu. Churchward, although of similar ideologies to Plongeon, was not an archaeologist; rather he was an engineer without much archaeological background. His research was found similarly to Plongeon, through ancient scripts in an ancient language with little to no native speakers. Through these scripts Churchward proclaimed that the ancient civilization was located in the Pacific Ocean which opposed the previous findings by Plongeon that they were located in the Atlantic Ocean. Churchward inevitably faced much backlash from the scientific community as his claims had absolutely no scientific proof and the scripts, tablets, and texts he supposedly translated were not able to be confirmed due to the lack of people able to read the ancient language. Churchward still continued to expand the mythos of Mu despite the lack of support and has since become the face of Mu research.
Psuedoarcheological Narrative
The existence of “lost continents” has never been proved through actual scientific means, in fact just the existence of the actual continents themselves have been proven to be highly unlikely. With an increase in human technological abilities throughout time new methods of data gathering have shown that there is very little geological evidence for a whole continent to just disappear into the ocean. The research into the plate tectonics of the ocean floor also known as seafloor spreading, a process in which the moving tectonic plates allow for magma to surface from beneath the seafloor and cool to become a new part of the Earth’s crust, lessens the idea that a lost continent would have existed in the time period that it was said to. The proof provided by Plongeon and Churchward was also flawed in that it had little to no scientific backing. Plongeon’s initial claims of Mu were from flawed translations of Mayan texts and similarities of architecture throughout the world. He generalized the similarities between the Mayan and Egyptian cultures both having similarities in their architecture by claiming that the similarities were caused by diffusion from Mu to these other civilizations.