Mu

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

History of Mu
The concept and the name were proposed by 19th century traveler and writer Augustus Le Plongeon, who claimed that several ancient civilizations were created by refugees from Mu—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 already disputed 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.

The idea of Mu first appeared in the works of Augustus Le Plongeon, after his investigations of the Maya 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.

Popular Theories
Mu, as a lost Pacific Ocean continent, was popularized by James Churchward. 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 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 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. He claimed to have found symbols of the Sun in “Egypt, Babylonia, Peru and all ancient lands and countries – it was a universal symbol.”

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 ocean floor is a few kilometers thick, while the continents are huge solid blocks tens of kilometers thick. Since continents float on the floor much like icebergs float on water, a continent cannot simply "sink" under the ocean.

Other Research
Other researchers who have tried to use the de Landa alphabet have reported it produces only gibberish. Recent research into the Mayan ‘alphabet’ has shown it to not consist of letters but pictograms. Recent translations of the Troano Codex have shown it to be treaties on astrology.