User:Cjordan89/Naacal Tablets

The Naacal tablets are a collection of tablets reportedly found in Mexico by miner, explorer, and antiquities dealer William Niven. They are widely regarded by archaeologists to have been a hoax associated with assertions about the supposed lost land of Mu.

=History= In 1921, William Niven, a miner and excavator, claimed to have discovered over 2,600 inscribed tablets while digging at an archaeological site in the Valley of Mexico.

Niven's discovery led James Churchward, a tea planter in Sri Lanka, to claim in his book, The Lost Continent of Mu (1926) to have found tablets of the same type some 50 years earlier when he was living in India. Churchward claims that the tablets originated in a lost continent called Mu and were written by an ancient people named the Naacals who were the original inhabitants of the Earth. Churchward claimed his tablets were transferred to Burma, then to India, then Egypt, where they were dispersed around the globe, including to where Niven unearthed them in Mexico.

Neither Niven nor Churchward nor any other source have provides information about where the tablets are from or how they came to be where they are. They are widely regarded by archaeologists as a hoax.

William Niven's Discovery
William Niven was a mineralogist turned excavator who began by promoting Arizona's mining interest, but eventually became interested in excavating the American Southwest and Mexico. In October 1921, Niven was digging at Santiago Ahuizoctla when he came across an unusual andesite tablet with unrecognizable markings that was fourteen feet from the surface. The tablets ranged in height from just a few inches to thirty inches with lines filled with red, yellow, and green coloring. Some of the tablets had recognizable markings, such as human heads, animals, plants, crosses, solar signs, and temple plans, but many of them possessed markings that were unidentifiable, even to Sylvanus Morley, an expert on Maya epigraphy. Morley was skeptical about the authenticity of Nevin's discovery because the tablets looked too crude and the paint seemed to be applied recently. In 1923, Morley visited Niven's excavation on his way to Chichén Itzá. . He saw a large, partly excavated slab that with the same red and yellow pigment from the tablets. Morley did not believe this could be a hoax because he thought it would be impossible to pull off. Niven began digging in a hole right next to figure and unearthed an andesite tablet with the same coloring of the other tablets that had inscriptions. Morley is said to have been persuaded by this that the tablets were authentic.

The tablets were found in the latter years of Niven’s life, but he tirelessly searched for their meaning and origin. Considering the difficulty in deciphering the tablets, numerous controversial explanations were given, such as that they were Scandinavian petroglyphs or from lost contients. The tablets were never deciphered. Niven spent a considerable amount of time selling the tablets, which ultimately caused them to be lost during a shipment from Mexico to the United States. The only traces of the tablets are photographs and rubbings.

Correspondence between Nevin and Churchward
Niven learned of Churchward's book from a friend and was intrigued by his theories, but knew that scientists would be skeptical. Niven said about Churchward's work:

His wonderful imagination in the accumulation of evidence from any source to prove his pet belief in the destruction of Mu...and his reckless extravagance in computing dates, must make the judicious grieve. Notwithstanding, some of my friends think that he may have paved the way for the correct deciphering of my tablets.

Churchward's Claims
Churchward writes that he met a high priest in India who helped him to learn a language that only three people in all of India knew that was claimed to have been the original language of humankind. This priest told Churchward about the tablets. Churchward claims it took him six months to gain access to the tablets and begin translating the story of a people known as the Naacals and the lost continent of Mu. He claims there are thousands of tablets that explain the history of the Naacals and the creation of the Earth.

The Lost Continent of Mu
According to Churchward, Mu and its civilization dated to before the ancient Greeks, Chaldeans, Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, and Hindus but were far more advanced than any of them. In fact, he claimed it was more advanced than our own civilization. The continent of Mu existed 50,000 years ago and had 64,000 inhabitants, some of whom migrated to India, then Egypt, then Sinai, and it follows the story of the Bible after that. The boundaries of the continent Mu stretched from Hawaii to Fiji and Easter Island, also known as the Pacific Rim.

The writings on the tablets, according to Churchward, confirmed the creation of Earth and humans, which had originated on the lost continent of Mu. Churchward claims Mu was destroyed by massive natural disasters and cataclysmic events, which caused it to vanish in a vortex of water and fire 12,000 years ago.

Tablet's Series
The tablets were separated into several series, or chapters rather, that tell the story of the creation and destruction of Mu.

Tablets :


 * Series one: Shows the origin of the world and the waiting of the expected arrival of man.


 * Series two: Shows the creation of mountains by rising gases.


 * Series three: Describes the creation of the great forces throughout the universe and how they work.


 * Series four: Explains the differentiation of the two divisions of Earth’s primary force.


 * Series five: Depicts the creation and workings of Earth’s atomic force.


 * Series six: Shows the creation of the force that creates and sustains life and how it works.


 * Series seven: Describes the beginning of life and shows what that means, as well as the different, changing forms of life.


 * Series eight: The creation of man takes place and the tablets show how the life form of man differentiates from all else.


 * Series nine: Says that man first appeared on “the Motherland of Man”, or Mu.


 * Series ten: Were much larger than the tablets in the preceding series. These tablets were used as a key to understand the previous tablets and the glyphs, symbols, and hidden messages that are written as the story of the creation of Mu.

Churchward believed these to be the beginning of thousands of more tablets that portray the entire ancient history of the Naacal people and their original habitation of the Earth.

=Criticisms= [Since the existence of the tablets has been questioned and there is a good possibility that they are a hoax, you need to include comments on criticisms of Niven and Churchward's claims.]

=References=