The Lost Continent of Mu

James Churchward (February 27, 1851 – January 4, 1936) was a British occult writer, inventor, engineer, and fisherman.

Churchward is most notable for proposing the existence of a lost continent, called Mu, in the Pacific Ocean. His writings on Mu are considered to be pseudoscience.

James was born in Bridestow, Okehampton, Devon at Stone House to Henry and Matilda (née Gould) Churchward. James had four brothers, George Gould (1839–1924), Matthew Henry (1841–1915), William Gould (1844–1913), and Albert (1852–1925), and four sisters, Matilda (b. 1846), Elizabeth (1849-?), Eleanor Steed (1847–1881), Heroine Roey(1854–1946). In November 1854, James' father died and the family moved to Matilda's parent's home Northcotts Cottage, in the hamlet of Kigbear, near Okehampton, Devon. Census records indicate the family next moved to London when James was 18 years of age after his grandfather George Gould died.

He was the elder brother of the Masonic author Albert Churchward (1852–1925.) He was a tea planter in Sri Lanka before coming to the US in the 1890s. In James' biography entitled My Friend Churchey and His Sunken Continent, he discussed Mu with Augustus Le Plongeon and his wife in the 1890s. He patented NCV Steel, armor plating to protect ships during World War I, and other steel alloys. After a patent-infringement settlement in 1914, James retired to his 7+ acre estate on Lake Wononskopomuc in Lakeville, Connecticut, to answer the questions from his Pacific travels. In 1926, at the age of 75, he published The Lost Continent of Mu: Motherland of Man, which he claimed proved the existence of a lost continent, called Mu, in the Pacific Ocean.

According to Churchward, Mu "extended from somewhere north of Hawaii to the south as far as the Fijis and Easter Island." He claimed Mu was the site of the Garden of Eden and the home of 64,000,000 inhabitants - known as the Naacals. Its civilization, which flourished 50,000 years before Churchward's day, was technologically more advanced than his own, and the ancient civilizations of India, Babylon, Persia, Egypt and the Mayas were merely the decayed remnants of its colonies.

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