Mu (lost continent)

Mu, the continent of Mu or the lost continent of Mu, is the name of a lost continent whose concept and name were proposed by the 19th century writer and traveler Augusto Le Plongeon, who claimed that various ancient civilizations, such as those of Egypt and Mesoamerica, were created by refugees from Mu, which was located in the Pacific Ocean. To formulate such statements, he relied on the Spanish translation (later discarded as fanciful ^{[ citation needed ]} ) of the Mayan codex known as Tro-Cortesian Codex made by Brasseur de Bourbourg. He located it in the Pacific Ocean and maintained that this lost civilization thousands of years ago spread its advanced technology throughout the world; which would have allowed the construction of the great pyramids that are scattered on different continents. He also maintained that, like Atlantis, this continent would have been destroyed 12,000 years ago by the gods as punishment for being a decadent civilization.

Later this concept was popularized and disseminated by James Churchward, but unlike the previous authors he maintained that Mu was located in the Pacific Ocean.^{[citation needed]}

The existence of Mu was already in question at the time of Le Plongeon.^{[citation needed]} Scientists currently dismiss the concept of Mu (and other presumed lost continents, such as Lemuria) as physically impossible^{[citation needed]}, since the advancement of science has demonstrated the impossibility of this fact by the evidence offered by plate tectonics, which rules out the existence of a lost continent, arguing that a continent can neither sink nor be destroyed in as short a period as its supporters claim. Claims to the existence of Mu are now considered to be without foundation.

In addition, archaeologists reject the relationship between the Native American cultures and those of the Mediterranean basin, the Middle East or India, as suggested by the defenders of Mu.^{[citation needed]}

Another possible explanation for the origin of this legend is that in prehistoric times the Earth was covered with ice in a large part of its surface due to the last ice age, this caused the sea level to be 100 meters below of the current level and consequently many coastal lands that are now submerged, in those times were above sea level. This means that when the ice age ended 12,000 years ago, many coastal towns were submerged, which is the most likely origin of the legend of the universal flood.

Currently, the belief in the existence of this supposed continent is only supported by occultist or New Age groups, who base their claims on some discoveries, such as that of Yonaguni.^{[citation required]}

Legend

Submarine structures, mistakenly identified as remains of Mu, near Yonaguni, Japan.

According to supporters of the existence of Mu, references supposedly found by Churchward to a land beyond the great eastern sea, the Pacific Ocean, homeland of a great solar civilization, cradle of the ancient Indus Valley culture, are became an important discovery for Mu added to that of Le Plongeon; and Churchward's hypothesis would be confirmed, since the hieroglyphics of the Indus culture were strikingly similar to those of Easter Island, close to the best known location of Mu.^{[citation needed ]}.

It is also said that a large number of Buddhist texts have been found that mention a land that, it seems, was located in the Pacific Ocean.^{[citation needed]}.

A reference is made to the existence of quite strong evidence^{[citation required]}. It seems to be the series of indications of a supposed massive emigration that occurred thousands of years ago from the eastern part of the Pacific, near the South American coast. Early settlement theory.

These indications (which were isolated events) would suggest that several ancient civilizations had a common origin on Mu. These are ancient Egypt, Assyria, the Indus Valley civilization, pre-Incan Peru, Easter Island and, to a lesser extent measure, the pre-Mayan cultures. They would share artistic, architectural and linguistic similarities (all of them used a hieroglyphic writing system), common beliefs (of a solar type), and Egypt, Assyria and the native Easter Islanders would preserve a fairly similar legend: in Egypt and Assyria it was the original myth of Atlantis, and at Easter there is the memory of an ancient homeland called Hiva, which sank in a cataclysm, leading to emigration to Easter Island.^{[citation needed]}.

The testimony of the Aymaras of Peru and Bolivia constitutes another evidence of this common memory, since they also refer to this lost land and in the same location, although in this case the island-continent is called Atl- Antis (ancient land), of whose name the enormous resemblance to Atlantis cannot be denied. Which does not make sense, since Mu and Atlantis are two different continents.

The defenders of this theory affirm that further south in the American continent, the legends about the disappeared ancestral land are enhanced in the mythology of the Mapuche indigenous people of southern Chile (and currently also in Argentine Patagonia), who would even mention being descendants of a race that came from a land swallowed by the waters, which precisely according to their history would bear the name of Mu..^{[citation required]}. They argue that this tradition could also be seen in the legend of Ten Ten and Cai Cai, who fight representing good and evil for the existence of the "people of the earth" (Mapuche). According to the Mapuches, long ago there were two snakes, called Ten ten Vilu and Cai cai Vilu, Ca Cai was the one that dominated the waters and Ten Ten the one that dominated the fire. One day Cai Cai got angry and with his tail (which was like that of a fish) he began to hit the waters, which flooded the entire region. As the population and the animals were desperate, since there was almost no land left without water and the waters continued to rise, they desperately invoked the help of Ten Ten, who came to their aid and raised everyone (humans and animals) on his back and carrying them towards the mountains and high places, saving them from drowning. The waters subsided and everyone continued their quiet life, but nevertheless, the waters did not completely return to their original place, and this reason is given to the existence of many small islands (which make Chiloé a large archipelago); and because of the same rise in water, there were many people who were not able to be saved by Ten Ten Vilu, so they were dragged by the waters, but according to the myth, instead of drowning, they turned into bottlenose dolphins and sea lions (species of the area). Until this time it was Ten Ten who got angry and all the volcanoes began to erupt and the population had to move to other safer places. However, within the legends and myths that make up Mapuche mythology there is no mention of an ancestral land that has been swallowed by the waters, much less that its name was Mu, nor that its people came from such a non-existent land.

The sinking of these lands, however, appears to have been caused by the imminent collision of this island with the South American plate, which is continually sliding across the Pacific Ocean floor, causing Mu to sink beneath the crust and form of the Bolivian altiplano, of fairly recent formation.^{[citation required]}. However, since the appearance of Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago in Africa to the present, the Nazca subplate has slipped only 500 meters under the American continent (at a rate of 2.5 cm per year), which invalidates this theory^{[ citation required]}.

Michel Desmarquet in his book Thiaoouba Prophecy (1993) reports that Mu (Lamar) was colonized 250,000 years ago by extraterrestrials, who would be ancestors of the current Polynesian race, brought the dog, the armadillo and the pig. They were very spiritually and technologically advanced, they founded 19 cities, 7 of them sacred and in the capital Savanasa they built a pyramid 3 times bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza. 200,000 years ago they spread through New Guinea and Southeast Asia (western Mu), also in Central and South America not far from Lake Titicaca). In Tiahuanaco a huge port was built, at that time there was an inland sea (now Brazil) that connected with the Atlantic Ocean. They arrived in Atlantis 30,000 years ago and in Europe 17,000 years ago. They influenced the Greeks (the Greek alphabet is the same as Mu), in North Africa they gave material and spiritual knowledge to the Arabs (Arabic numerals come from the Mayan-Atlanteans of Mu), they built the Great Pyramid in Egypt (every Every time they considered that a new colony had the potential to be great, both spiritually and materially speaking, they would build a pyramid). Then some 14,500 years ago a volcanic cataclysm, in which mountains are created throughout the Americas, destroyed the continent of Mu. The splendor of this civilization was never seen again.

All the similarities of cultures and legends argued to support this hypothesis are compatible with the theory of the Arrival of man to America through the Beringian Bridge during an ice age, whose fusion gives rise to the legends of the continental collapse in the cultures on both sides of the Bering Strait.

History

The existence of the continent of Mu was first proposed as a possibility by Colonel James Churchward, a British Army officer in India. It all started when he befriended a high priest of a Hindu temple who had in his possession some clay tablets that had been kept and forgotten over the years by Hindu priests. Over time, Churchward and the Hindu priest were deciphering the existence of a mother civilization that had grown, flourished and suddenly declined. Churchward continued to collect data from this enormous puzzle, the result of which was an extensive image of Mu narrated in the book Mu the Lost Continent.^{[citation needed]}

However, another version of the story, much more skeptical, says the following: That everything would have been caused by a translation error.^{[citation required]}

In 1864, Abbe Brasseur was attempting to translate a Mayan codex using an “alphabet” compiled by conquistador Diego de Landa.

Now, the Mayan writing was somewhat similar to the Japanese or Egyptian, since it used ideograms that also had phonetic value: therefore it lacked an alphabet. What the Spaniard had found was a set of symbols that, read aloud, sounded like the letters of the Spanish alphabet.^{[citation required]}

Brasseur understood that the codex narrated a volcanic catastrophe that had destroyed an entire continent. His name was expressed in two symbols that corresponded to the letters "M" and "U". He was born Mu.

Just four years later, Colonel James Churchward appeared on the scene. Churchward claimed to have discovered in the vaults of a Hindu temple a whole library of tablets written in an unknown language. In them he had managed to decipher all the history, science and philosophy of Mu.

Subsequently, Churchward would write a dozen books about Mu. In them he would convert Mu into Atlantis of the Pacific, attributing an antiquity ranging between 25,000 and 20,000 years. Mu displaced Atlantis as the origin of all known civilizations, from the Egyptians to the Mayans, including the Atlanteans as well. In the wisdom of Mu had originated both the Bible and the principles of Freemasonry. Its inhabitants had gone so far as to make revelations about Jesus Christ, who was just to be born many millennia later.

Churchward's books continue to be republished and offered online today. In some "energy tourism" pages, Lemuria and Mu appear embodying "the spirit of Hawaii".

Appearances in other media

• There is currently a role play (MMORPG) which takes place on this continent called Mu Online.
• Mu is popular among pseudoscience followers in Japan. The most influential journal of this current has the name of Mu.
• Hwee-Yong Jang tells in his book The Gaia Project that Mu, the first consciousness of the universe, unites society called Lemuria, an ethereal society more than material, in which communication was made via telepathy.
• Mu is also the title of a comic by the character Corto Maltés in which he and his companions go in search of Mu.
• Mu also appeared in the anime series Rahxephon as alien invaders, whose race was practically extinct.
• Mu also coincides with the character who embodies the constellation of Aries in the manga series and subsequently anime Saint Seiya/The Knights of the Zodiac of Masami Kurumada.
• It appears mentioned in several accounts of American writer H.P. Lovecraft as the place of origin of some of the alien gods of their myths. This is the case of the god Ghatanothoa, who suffers his captivity trapped in an ancient mountain of this continent, now submerged.
• On the popular sleeve Shaman KingMu is the place where the last part of the story develops.
• A stage of Super Nintendo video game Illusion of Gaia (Illusion of time in Europe), it develops on the lost continent of Mu.
• Mu is also mentioned in the anime Ryuusei No Rockman Tribe as a lost civilization from where the Ooparts described in the series come from.
• In the video game Terranigma Super Nintendo, is an optional continent to be reborn, along with Polynesia. It only unlocks after rebirth the other five continents.

In Swedish Symphonic Metal Band Therion's Song "Lemuria", mention is made of the "Land Of MU" comparing it in turn with the City of El Dorado.