Mu (lost continent)
Mu is a legendary continent that have located in the Pacific, but should be similar to Atlantis disappeared during a recent period of the earth into the sea floods. The extension to this supposed land mass, there are different ideas. It was generally assumed by supporters of this hypothesis, Mu had to extend the time of its greatest expansion in the west of the waters adjacent to the present-day East China Sea, extending to the western Pacific in, and in the south to Easter Island. From today's geology, the former existence of such a compact, continental land mass in the Pacific Ocean is, however, denies decided.
History of Ideas
The idea that there was a sunken continent called Mu, goes back to the work of the French historian, ethnologist and archaeologist Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg in the 19th century, but which related to Plato's Atlantis, which he situate in the western Atlantic. The term ' Mu ' he thought he could see ancient texts and the Quiché Maya. A katastrophistisches scenario to the demise of the putative continent Brasseur delivered only in his last publication, a paper entitled Chronology of Mexicains historique (1872 ). In it, he identified with reference to the Aztec Codex Chimalpopoca four periods of global cataclysms that should have started around 10,500 BC, and which he attributed to shifts in the Earth's axis.
A little later, the photographer, writer and self-taught archaeologist Augustus Le Plongeon took up the idea of a sunken in the Atlantic Mu. Le Plongeon, who studied the Mayan ruins of Yucatan and in 1875 together with his wife Alice Dixon Le Plongeon performed the first systematic excavations of the remains of Chichén Itzá, said that based on the - extremely dubious - language research by Diego de Landa and with the help to have the also based Landas misinterpretations works Brewers, ancient Mayan records, a portion of the Codex Tro-Cortesianus decrypted, in which the sunken Mu was the speech. These records allegedly showed out that the Mayan civilization which has a much higher age than those of the Egyptians. Been established it is by survivors of the sinking of the suspected him of the continent.
The British inventor, engineer, writer and adventurer James Churchward, a younger contemporary and friend Le Plongeon, however, the first author who in various papers and books ( see References ) presented the idea of a Pacific Mu and made popular. Hawaii, as well as all of today's Pacific Islands are so Churchward, former mountain peaks and remains of this sunken continent of about 50,000 to 25,000 years ago in the course of repeated cataclysmic, including caused by the collapse of massive underground caves, was broken up and sunk earthquake. In the largest of these disasters around 64 million people will be killed. In this alleged, by Churchward, referred to as ' Naacal ' primitive culture Le Plongeon had already moved ahead of him. Like him, also claimed Churchward (1926 ), the civilization of ancient Egypt descended ultimately from the from Naacal. He explained, for example, the name of the Egyptian sun god Ra was a term from the supposed Nacaal language, have in which ' context ' for both ' sun ' stood as was also the name of their god and ruler.
Although Church Wards publications and ideas on the topic of ' Mu ' - as before, the Le Plongeon - in scientific circles met with rejection or indifference and only in esoteric authors found completely uncritical approval, the idea of the Pacific sunken land masses and a sure -based primitive culture remained popular. As early as 1924 had the Scottish- New Zealand University Professor John Macmillan Brown, a philologist, suspected, the megalithic structures on many Pacific islands represented a clear indication of the former existence of an ancient civilization and a very late sunken land mass is, at home on which this culture had been. In the late thirties of the 20th century, was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, are conducting intensive research to Mu, as published in some Turkish publications. The aim of Atatürk was to determine the reasons for the parallels between the culture of origin of the Turkic people, the Uyghur, with the countless Native American cultures, such as the Aztecs and Mayans in the Americas.
From the later followers of Mu hypothesis - or the assumption of large-scale, submerged stretches of land in the Pacific and it indigenous to age-old cultures - for example, will pointed out that the Book of the Hopi statement, there was once such a continent located in the Pacific, the name the North American Hopi Kasskara. Nikolai Zhirov mentioned with reference to Thor Heyerdahl a legend of the Easter Island inhabitants, according to a giant named Uwoke have caused the downfall of a great continent in a fit of rage, the remnant were the Easter Island. In addition to such mythological clues are also used to support this hypothesis, but - as noted by Macmillan Brown - submitted linguistic arguments, and it is also on the discovery of approximately 9000-7000 -year-old traces of some intensive agriculture referenced with extensive canal systems in the highlands of New Guinea. Impetus in the Mu - hypothesis at the beginning of the 1990s by the publications of the marine geologist Masaaki Kimura to the so-called Yonaguni Monument, a millennia flooded - probably naturally formed, but formerly handled by humans and used - rock structure before today's seacoast of Japanese Yonaguni Island.
Literary and cinematic adaptations
The theme of the lost continent Mu is taken up in the Japanese science fiction film U 2000 - dive with the horror of Honda Ishiro, in which the still living on the seabed inhabitants of Mu try to conquer the above-water world. Also in James Rollins novel in the triangle of the dragon emerge Mu and its inhabitants, the continent, however, there is sunk into the sea long ago.
In the Cthulhu Mythos Mu plays a certain role as one of the first civilizations of the various cosmic " gods " ruled. This is portrayed in different stories of HP Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.
In pop culture, the name of the legendary continent also occasionally plays a role: Approximately in Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, in video games, such as the Super Nintendo games Terranigma, where it appears as an island, and Illusion of Time, as well as the texts of the English musician The KLF, or Sweden Therion.
The Disney artist Massimo DeVita wrote the 63-page story, the mysterious continent of Mu, published in The Jolly Paperback No. 141 (Book Title: The Tiger of Masalia ).
Hugo Pratt processed the myth Mu in his comic book series Corto Maltese under the title The Empire Mu ( Carlsen Comics in 1997, out of print, colored remake cult Editions, 2008).
In the anime Rahxephon there are also the people of Mu
In 2006, Spirou and Fantasio - special band Les géants pétrifiés ( Yoann / Vehlmann, 58 pages, dt The stone giants), in which the search for Mu is described as a race between two warring groups of archaeologists. Appears The people of Mu are reminiscent of the mosasaur Camperi fish lizards, Mu itself a gigantic sacred burial ground of the creatures.
The figure Tao, the French- Japanese TV series " The Mysterious Cities of Gold " is the last descendant of the people of Mu