Even with the most advanced technologies the world has ever seen and millions of scientists and researchers working constantly to understand our planet and its rich history, there are still many mysteries that humans can’t seem to figure out.

In the late 1800s, a British-American travel writer by the name of Augustus Le Plongeon declared that he believed in a lost continent that once sat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The Popol Vuh is a text recounting the mythology and history of the K’iche’ people of Guatemala, a group that was part of the Maya people. The Maya established the foundational sacred narrative long before the Spanish conquest.

The researcher explained that, through his translation of the Popol Vuh, he was able to deduce that the people who once lived on the continent of Mu were not only the original ancestors of the Maya but also the Egyptians.

Not everyone agreed with Le Plongeon’s theory. However, his friend James Churchward, a writer from Scotland, was absolutely convinced. Churchward became obsessed with the lost land of Mu and went on to write a series of books throughout the 1920s and 1930s on the subject.

On one of his many expeditions, Churchward befriended a high-ranking priest in India. This priest showed Churchward a set of ancient clay tablets with visible text that only three people in the entire country could read.

After painstakingly translating the tablets, Churchward announced that he had concrete evidence that Mu absolutely existed.

Churchward explained that the lost continent of Mu, sometimes called Lemuria, was a giant landmass that sat in the middle of what is now the Pacific Ocean somewhere between 12,000 and 50,000 years ago.

According to the tablets, they were inscribed by a person living in “the place where [man] first appeared—Mu.” The text also explained that at its height, around 64 million people were living on the giant island.

After hearing about Mu’s enormous size and extremely large population, the next question will always be: What happened to the continent of Mu?

According to Churchward, the island of Mu was mostly made of granite, so when extensive volcanic eruptions sent explosive gasses into the honeycomb-style structure of the rock, the entire continent crumbled below and sank to the bottom of the sea.

While incredibly interesting, the so-called evidence that both Le Plongeon and Churchward have presented is circumstantial at best. So far, no tangible evidence of the lost continent of Mu has been found.

Although some people have completely dismissed the theory of the lost continent of Mu, others believe that Churchward and Le Plongeon were right and have now dedicated themselves to finding the evidence to prove it.

Rumors of the lost continent of Lemuria plunging deep into the depths of the sea after a cataclysmic event near the end of the Ice Age might remind you of another fabled lost civilization: Atlantis.

While no evidence of Mu has been found on the ocean floor, devotees to the Mu theory believe that a tiny remnant of Nascaal culture can still be found today.

One legend states that “master builders” mysteriously appeared and used a magical power to lift the blocks into place, making them seem as if they could levitate.

However, there could be evidence that supports the theory of Mu’s existence. In a study published in the journal “Nature Communications,” researchers found samples of volcanic rock zircon that date back to 3 billion years ago.

Researchers of the study found zircon in solid rock, countering criticism of the initial research that suggested the mineral might have washed ashore from an existing continent.

Scientists believe that cooling lava from undersea volcanoes formed Mauritius, located about 1,200 miles off the coast of Africa. They concluded that older minerals originated from a landmass that vanished long ago. However, tiny bits were dragged up to the surface during the formation of Mauritius.

Jamtveit and his colleagues suggested that the lost microcontinent, which they dubbed Mauritia, was about a quarter of the size of Madagascar. Their study also suggested that the microcontinent may have been part of a much larger “supercontinent.”

Mauritia eventually suffered a death that echos Mu’s demise. Natural disasters caused India to break apart from Madagascar about 85 million years ago. Waves eventually consumed the microcontinent.

Scientists have long suspected that volcanic islands might contain evidence of lost continents. Jamtveit and his team decided to test this hypothesis in Mauritius as part of a longer research trip in 1999.

The scientists extracted 20 zircon samples and successfully dated 8 of them by measuring the rate at which the uranium and thorium elements within the samples gradually decay into lead.

Jamtveit explained that finding zircon older than nine million years on Mauritius would provide strong evidence of the presence of buried continental material.