Modern Objects as Ancient Evidence: The Example of the Relic of Mu

2/7/2016

I don't know much (yet) about the origin and history of ideas about Mu and other "lost continents" in the Pacific. I went a little way down the rabbit hole last night, reading a bit online and watching YouTube videos between the time when I got the kids to bed and when I couldn't keep my eyes open. It's fascinating stuff. I owe a thanks to Jack Churchward, grandson of famous Mu proponent James Churchward (1851-1936), for prodding my interest. You can find Jack Churchward's website about Mu here.

To me, the most interesting aspect of the "Mu" stories is how they were/are used to explain human diversity. This is something I'll have to pick apart historically, but it appears that Mu/Lemuria/Pan advocates (including today's Faithist followers of Oahspe) connect population dispersals from a lost continent in the Pacific to the characteristics and geographic distribution of modern human "races." It surprised me to learn that the polygenist ideas of Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), famous racist anthropologist and inspiration to Nazis everywhere, were tied to the hypothesized existence of Lemuria. If that's not an interesting historical tie between science and pseudoscience, I don't know what is.

For today, however, I just wanted to point you to a short video by Jack Churchward discussing the "relic of Mu" that appeared in his grandfather's (1931) book The Lost Continent of Mu. The "relic" is a bronze vessel that was said to be 12,500 years old and, therefore, evidence of an advanced civilization pre-dating. The video explains that the vessel dates the 17th-18th century and was manufactured in India.

There are some important parallels between the case of the "relic of Mu" and the debacle of the "Roman sword from Nova Scotia" through which we are still slogging (Woo Alert: J. Hutton Pulitzer's 200-page document on the sword is reportedly coming very soon). In both cases, we have: (1) an object that is familiar enough to be recognizable but unfamiliar enough to seem strange and foreign; (2) an object with no credible provenience; (3) a tautological tie between the object and its explanation (the vessel is evidence of Mu and Mu provides the reason why the vessel should exist); (4) a retreat to the cry of "conspiracy" when the object is shown to be something other than what it is claimed.

Jonathan Feinstein

2/7/2016 07:46:45 am

I am always amazed that in a day when the study of Plate Tectonics conclusively demonstrates why "Lost Continents" like Mu could not possibly have existed as recently as a dozen millennia ago. In fact they seem fairly conclusive they could never have existed although I suppose a land mass of some size might have existed say back in the Permian and then slid under a subduction zone (I suspect fossil-climatology might disprove that notion too, but I haven't even knowledge to say that with any data to back myself up with) as Pangaea broke up.

Certainly there is no sign of subsidence in any oceanic basin to account for the disappearance of whole continents like Mu and Lemuria and one would think something like that that was merely yesterday in geologic time would leave a mark.

No, this might have sounded reasonable in the 19th Century (even without the manufactured (or misidentified?) evidence, but frankly I find the concept of plate tectonics and the amazing way the shape of the world actually can be shown to have changed to be far more interesting than Mu or the like.

Peter Geuzen

2/7/2016 08:01:04 am

What are the chances that moments before the release time of the JHP report, there will be an announcement of a side by side comparative metallurgical analysis done by a reputable institution or lab of the Nova Scotia, the Florida, the Italian eBay, the California, and any other swords that care to play?

KaBoom

Eric

2/7/2016 08:01:19 am

The 1920's and '30s is a weird time for archaeology/anthropology in terms of the Pacific/Asia in popular culture. King Kong and Lost Horizon are huge hits at the box office and the whole Mu thing is an offshoot of that wider public interest. Part of it is traceable to the aftereffects of the First World War, where Western culture has a longing for pre-industrial society, a "lost" Elysium as it were after the traumatic war of 1914-1918.

A more serious aftereffect of the war lies in the increasing ideologically driven efforts of both the left and the right in all disciplines of academia and even science. People remember the SS Ahnenerbe thanks to Indiana Jones, but there were various Socialist, Marxist, and Communist academics eager to mine history, archaeology, anthropology, and ethnography for postwar political agendas. While academics cannot completely remove their studies into a vacuum without becoming irrelevant, the 1920 to 1939 period was particularly toxic.

Greg Little

2/7/2016 08:19:49 am

Holy moley! The Oahspe is a genuine rabbit hole. I have a chapter on the Oahspe that I wrote strictly covering its focus on fire-ships visiting Earth in ancient times. It also covers how the "angels" in the fire-ships (meaning physical beings traveling in space ships) came to Earth in remote times and performed some sort of genetic manipulation that resulted in modern man. I started studying it in the 1970s because it was produced by a sort of automatic writing, more accurately it's automatic typewriting. The sort of thing psychologists love to investigate. I knew one person who produced a book from automatic typewriting and actually watched as it was done. It was a clinical psychologist. He didn't want his book edited because it was channeled from God. I asked him why God made so many typographical errors? He didn't have an answer.

Andy White

2/7/2016 12:38:27 pm

I had never heard of it before last night. Fascinating stuff. I wonder why some of these indigenous American religions found a following and grew while others disappeared or just continue to trickle along. I can't answer that question.

Terri

11/11/2018 07:46:40 pm

Can you give me the name of the book you're talking about? Was it published?? Thanks.

Cort

2/7/2016 10:52:36 am

All of the myths of Mu and Lemuria have been applied to Mt. Shasta here in California. It only takes a few hours of research to trace the origins of the entire application of this mythology to the Rosicrucian Order or at least specific members of it. The first book in this genre was channeled information from "Philo the Tibetan." From here we see the Shasta Water Co. building tunnels to extract spring water leading to the City of Telos being located beneath the mountain in myth. To me it is interesting to see how folklore created all of these things. In the process we see myths and legends being applied to places of talismanic importance such as where land was claimed from. This is what Oak Island is and why all the speculation. The same phenomena is present at Rennes le Chateau, The Cyclic Cross of Hendaye, and Newport Tower. All of these places ultimately are Christian mysteries coupled with the concept of Maritime law in claiming "newly discovered" lands. Ultimately it is a Norman tradition tied to the "Man in the Mountain" myths of Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa, and Frederick II. There is in fact a community of German immigrants adjacent to Oak Island from the time of Prince Edward. There is also a great deal of evidence to suggest that initiatory activity was another reason for these quest like legends that resemble treasure hunts w/ associated "Pirates Maps."

Andy White

2/7/2016 12:36:21 pm

I find it fascinating that the concept of Lemuria started as a scientific one, serving as the basis for what could be considered at least some reasonable hypotheses about the geographic distribution of animals, the lack of a human fossil record, etc. While science discarded Lemuria when it was shown to be impossible, however, pseudoscience picked up the ball and ran with it. And apparently retained many of the racist ideas that were originally developed around the "lost continent" idea.

nali

2/7/2016 12:51:11 pm

I made a quite similar research about the "Dorchester Pot", supposed to be 100.000 or 600 millions years old.
You may be interested about what I discovered about it.
The origin of the Dorchester and those pots may even be the same ... :)

http://irna.lautre.net/OOPArt-The-Dorchester-Pot.html

Killbuck

2/7/2016 02:30:36 pm

Nali-

Quite a wonderful comparison to the saga of our Roman Sword. With some good old fashioned gumshoe investigation, near to and identical objects of more modern manufacture appear and blossom like poppies.

Hookahgate!!!

Pablo

2/8/2016 12:01:12 pm

In my days dealing with people who believe in Pseudoscience, I learned that "fallen angels" came to earth and mated with women (why is it never the other way around? who said that angels are "male"); and the result of this were the giants (which "proves" that the Bible mention of giants, it's true). These giants were white, and they are the origin of the white race. As opposed to the rest of us who came out of Africa.

E.P. Grondine

3/7/2016 04:01:52 pm

Hi Andy -

You may enjoy my three part piece on modern Theosophist pseudo-science:

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He%20Walked%20Among%20Us%20Part%201.pdf

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He%20Walked%20Among%20Us%20Part%202.pdf

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He%20Walked%20Among%20Us%20Part%203.pdf

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Modern Objects as Ancient Evidence: The Example of the Relic of Mu

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