Churchward's map showing how he thought Mu refugees spread out after the
cataclysm through South America, along the shores of Atlantis and into Africa.

Anglo-American explorer, James Churchward was a close friend of Auguste and Alice Le Plongeon. James Churchward, in books such as The Lost Continent of Mu (1931), wrote that the Motherland stretched from the Hawaiian Islands to Fiji and from Easter Island to the Marianas.

Churchward wanted an ancient civilization of his own, and using Le Plongeon's doubtful methodology set about 'discovering' one. His findings were set down in the five main volumes of the Mu series published in from 1926 - 1931. The basic premise was by studying various ancient texts Churchward had discovered the existence of a long lost continent with an advanced civilization that approximately 60,000 years earlier had sunk below the Pacific Ocean after a cataclysmic earthquake. Sixty-four million people allegedly died. The Hawaiian Islands and the Pacific Islands are the remaining mountain peaks of the lost continent.