Name: Churchward's Lost Continent of Mu
Author: James Churchward

Ex Carta

Churchward’s book contains several maps visualising, for example, the former location and form of the continent in the Pacific Ocean; the scattered vestiges – ‘prehistoric stone remains’ – to be found on the South Sea Islands; and a remarkably precise map of the extent of the ‘Uighur’ empire belonging to Mu ‘at the time of the biblical “flood”’. The archive gives unusual insight into the preparation of these images, preserving manuscript and watercolour versions of maps and diagrams later associated with The Lost Continent of Mu. These include ‘The Land of Mu’, with four pages of explanation; ‘Position Mu occupied in the Pacific Ocean’, signed by Churchward and dated 1920; ‘Troano MS. Map of Mu’, an ink and grey wash drawing signed and dated 1925; and ‘South Sea Islands on which records of Mu are found’, another signed watercolour map from 1920. Other surviving maps, including ‘The probable conditions that underlay Mu’ and ‘The Pacific Ocean today, showing the various gas-belts’, relate to Churchward’s geological explanation of Mu’s destruction by subterranean gas chambers. Taken together, these materials show how foundational cartography was to Churchward’s development of his theory, giving it an appearance of geological and historical authenticity. Presented in keeping with the cartographic conventions of the period, the maps lend even his most imaginative claims a persuasive scientific authority.

 

By the 1960s, however, scientific investigation into continental drift, seafloor spreading, and plate tectonics had established beyond serious dispute that existing land masses had split apart over aeons of time, and that the structure of the ocean basins ruled out the existence of any ‘missing’ continents on the scale imagined by Churchward. Although pseudo-historians such as Graham Hancock (1950–) could still pursue their own versions of the ‘lost mother culture’ theme, identifying such a culture with a vanished land mass had become almost impossibly implausible. Just as the charting of the Earth’s surface had led fictional Lost World narratives to be transplanted beyond it, in the form of 

, so some of Churchward’s heirs had to turn to the stars to find a home for their ancient mother cultures. Chariots of the Gods? (1968), by Erich von Däniken (1935–2026), uses many of the diffusionist and spiritualist tropes of lost-continent discourse, but instead of the ancient mystical civilisation of Mu, it offers mysterious preternatural beings from outer space.


James Churchward’s book contains several maps visualising, for example, the former location and form of the continent in the Pacific Ocean; the scattered vestiges – ‘prehistoric stone remains’ – to be found on the South Sea Islands; and a remarkably precise map of the extent of the ‘Uighur’ empire belonging to Mu ‘at the time of the biblical “flood”’.

Born in Devon, James Churchward (1851–1936) led an enterprising and unusually varied life, taking in tea planting, engineering, invention, and writing. Immigrating to the United States in the 1890s, his success in patenting a steel alloy used in the armour plating of warships during the First World War allowed him to retire to a ranch in Connecticut. It was here that he turned his focus to researching and writing his book 

The Lost Continent of Mu: Motherland of Man

, published in 1926 when Churchward was 75 years old. In his 1954 study 

 (also in Ex Carta), author L. Sprague de Camp (1907–2000) presents Churchward in a less than flattering light, describing him as a ‘small, wraithlike Anglo-American’ and raising an eyebrow at his adoption of the title ‘Colonel’ and his claim to have ‘travelled widely in Asia and Central America’ and to have been ‘attacked by a flying snake’ (De Camp, 1954).

Churchward could never be accused of reticence in his presentation of his theory in 

. Indeed, he sets it all out in his preface. His initial claim is that the information on Mu was gleaned from ‘Naacal’ tablets he gained access to while in India. These fragmentary clay tablets, held in a secret temple archive, ‘indubitably’ established that ‘at one time the earth had an incalculably ancient civilisation which was, in many respects, superior to our own, and far in advance of us in some important essentials that the modern world is just beginning to have cognisance of.’ Churchward goes on to inform us of ‘the amazing fact that the civilisations of India, Babylonia, Persia, Egypt and Yucatan were but the dying embers of this great past civilisation.’

Details about the exact location of Churchward’s ‘Naacal tablets’ were never forthcoming and De Camp gives the following example of Churchward’s approach to gleaning his evidence for Mu from various ancient cultures:

Churchward asserted that the rectangle stood for the letter M in the Muvian alphabet, and therefore for Mu itself. As the ordinary brick is entirely bounded by rectangles, you can see that he had no trouble in deriving everybody and everything from Mu. 

This neatly demonstrates the problem with one of the core ideas of ‘lost continent’ theory: the notion of cultural diffusion, in which later civilisations contain vestiges of an extinct ‘mother culture’, usually spiritually and/or technologically superior to those that followed. Implicit in this is the suggestion that the history of humanity is one of declinism – a conviction that had worrying entanglements with other ideas popular at the time of Churchward’s book, most troublingly eugenics.

Despite the eccentricity of Churchward’s claims, his lost continent of Mu took on a life of its own, gripping the imagination of various occultists, mystics, and pseudo historians. As de Camp complained, ‘no fervent believer in Mu, it seems, will give up his belief merely for the sake of a few facts’ (1954).

It also presented the writers for the pulp magazines with a ready-made lost civilisation to draw upon. H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) soon absorbed Churchward’s ‘Naacal’ language into his own mythos in ‘Through the Gates of the Silver Key’, written with E. Hoffmann Price (1898–1988) and published in 

 in 1934. In ‘Out of the Aeons’ (1935) Lovecraft imbues antediluvian Mu with his brand of weird horror, explicitly citing Theosophical and associated literature in doing so, referring to ‘theosophical lore’ and ‘the speculations of such writers as Colonel Churchward and Lewis Spence concerning lost continents and primal forgotten civilisations’ (Lovecraft, 2011). The story concerns a mummy retrieved from the depths of the Pacific Ocean and its origins in the strange culture and gods of ancient Mu.

(1971), the second of the Corto Maltese comic series by Hugo Pratt (1927–1995), begins with Maltese becoming entangled with the family of the late Professor Bantam, who left an archive of documents to his son concerning his researches into the ‘mysterious kingdom’ of Mu. This precipitates a series of adventures in which, exciting as they are, Mu remains frustratingly lost. When Pratt resolved to conclude the saga of Corto Maltese, it seemed fitting that in his closing adventure, 

 (1988–89), Maltese should finally realise his ambition of finding Mu. Pratt uses Mu as an oneiric, almost abstract story space in which many of the major characters of the series return to oversee Maltese’s final, yet cyclical journey through the regions of myth.

Ex Carta contains not only the first edition of Churchward’s book, but a unique archive of papers related to its development and early circulation. In 1924, the Seattle chemist and industrialist Gottwerth Lebrecht Tanzer (1863–1927) published 

, a short monograph challenging the accepted scientific understanding of the Sun as an incandescent body. Churchward received a copy and began corresponding with Tanzer, recognising a fellow dissenter from scientific orthodoxy. He subsequently sent Tanzer illustrated manuscript drafts of lectures and papers relating to Mu, including early versions of maps and illustrations later reworked for the published book. These materials document not only the development of Churchward’s all-encompassing theory, but also the practical difficulties of bringing 

 into print with William Edwin Rudge. When Churchward encountered financial obstacles, Tanzer offered support, helping him guarantee copies of the book; the printed dedication records Churchward’s gratitude to ‘G. L. Tanzer of Seattle, Washington’, praising ‘his broad mind, his high ideals, and his great love of nature and humanity.’ The archive therefore reveals Mu not simply as the product of one man’s eccentric beliefs, but as emerging from a wider context of speculative thought and dissent from scientific orthodoxy.

Map showing the geographical position of Mu

Portrait of James Churchward and title page for 'The Lost Continent of Mu' (1926)

Legend of symbols of and vignetts found on Naacal Tablets

Map of Mu - The Lands of the West from the Egyptian Book of the Dead

Map illustrating the distribution of Prehistoric stone remains on the South Sea Islands in the Pacific

Map of the Great Uighur Empire in Europe and Asia

Map illustrating the Colorado River and its tributaries

Two maps illustrating the possible position of underwater gas chambers under Mu before her submersion, and the present gas belts across the Pacific Ocean

Churchward’s book contains several maps visualising, for example, the former location and form of the continent in the Pacific Ocean; the scattered vestiges – ‘prehistoric stone remains’ – to be found on the South Sea Islands; and a remarkably precise map of the extent of the ‘Uighur’ empire belonging to Mu ‘at the time of the biblical “flood”’.

The archive gives unusual insight into the preparation of these images, preserving manuscript and watercolour versions of maps and diagrams later associated with 

. These include ‘The Land of Mu’, with four pages of explanation; ‘Position Mu occupied in the Pacific Ocean’, signed by Churchward and dated 1920; ‘Troano MS. Map of Mu’, an ink and grey wash drawing signed and dated 1925; and ‘South Sea Islands on which records of Mu are found’, another signed watercolour map from 1920. Other surviving maps, including ‘The probable conditions that underlay Mu’ and ‘The Pacific Ocean today, showing the various gas-belts’, relate to Churchward’s geological explanation of Mu’s destruction by subterranean gas chambers.

Taken together, these materials show how foundational cartography was to Churchward’s development of his theory, giving it an appearance of geological and historical authenticity. Presented in keeping with the cartographic conventions of the period, the maps lend even his most imaginative claims a persuasive scientific authority.

By the 1960s, however, scientific investigation into continental drift, seafloor spreading, and plate tectonics had established beyond serious dispute that existing land masses had split apart over aeons of time, and that the structure of the ocean basins ruled out the existence of any ‘missing’ continents on the scale imagined by Churchward. Although pseudo-historians such as Graham Hancock (1950–) could still pursue their own versions of the ‘lost mother culture’ theme, identifying such a culture with a vanished land mass had become almost impossibly implausible. Just as the charting of the Earth’s surface had led fictional Lost World narratives to be transplanted beyond it, in the form of Planetary Romance, so some of Churchward’s heirs had to turn to the stars to find a home for their ancient mother cultures. 

 (1968), by Erich von Däniken (1935–2026), uses many of the diffusionist and spiritualist tropes of lost-continent discourse, but instead of the ancient mystical civilisation of Mu, it offers mysterious preternatural beings from outer space.