Some of you might have read this already and some of you (including me) havent, enjoy: The Lost Continent of Mu: "Stories of Mu and its people became known only in the nineteenth century. They started when Bishop Diego de Landa of Yucatan published an alphabet that could be used to translate Mayan hieroglyphics into English. The alphabet was discovered by Abbe Charles-Etienne Brasseur in 1864. Brasseur used the alphabet to translate the three surviving Mayan codices. He claimed they told of a volcanic destruction of a land called Mu... "Augustus Le Plongeon also used de Landa's alphabet to translate his own version of the codices. He provided much more detail on Mu... He placed the continent to the East of Central America. Experts now agree that de Landa's Mayan alphabet was wrong, and that therefore both Le Plongeon and Brasseur were wrong in their 'translations.' It turns out that the Troano Codex is really a book about astrology. "Author James Churchward was the man who really moved Mu to the Pacific. He published a number of books, beginning with The Lost Continent of Mu in 1926. His information supposedly came from ancient tablets found in a Tibetan temple. Churchward called them the 'Naacal Tablets,' and said that after he befriended the priest at the temple, the priest taught him how to read the tablets, and showed him where additional tablets were stored. Judging solely from his writings, it is difficult to assess whether Churchward really believed what he said about Mu, or whether he was knowingly writing fiction. Regardless, insight can be gained from the fact that Churchward felt he could understand the meaning of a page of symbols by merely staring at it. Extracted from ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HOAXES by Gordon Stein (1993)