I think the Polynesians, Incas, and Aztecs having potential access to horses, cows, steel, gunpower, artillery, and arquebuses through trade with East Asia would change colonization quite drastically. Plus the expaded trade could lead to the Ming dynasty maintaining their trade fleet and not isolating themselves.
The ancient Aztecs and maybe the Inca might have had access to horses if they hadn't gone extinct in North America about 15,000 years ago. I wonder if climate effects due to Mu would have prevented that.
I think they would still get conquered, but North America, US and Canada would demographically look more like Central and South America. The population would be less white and more mixed. With the North American Natives not being wiped out by disease, they would control more land, forcing the settlers to work with the locals instead of displacing them. So less racial diversity in the US(pretending it still exists) would change our entire history. And cultures and religions would blend as well. It may also cause the US to be much less powerful, as it may be stuck in New England and other countries take it's place in the rest of North America.
Exactly, it'd be more akin to trying to colonize Japan with 300 Conquistodors. These people also would've been just as robust towards Old World diseases as the Europeans, so unless they launched a formal military campaign I just don't see anything but the coast being colonized until the 19th century.
@@majinjason Actually I feel like the end result would be somewhere between Mexico and India. I mean minor casualties because if disease and being technologically much further ahead would make a lightning conquest like the spanish ones in our time pretty much impossible in meso-america and the andes as well as making any conquests in other areas a lot harder as well. I would assume the spanish taking over many islands and coastal strongholds but aside from that there being a lot more trade and missionary work, probably not always restricted to amicable means but going hand in hand with a slow more diplomatic takeover/subjegation instead of an outright conquest of the developed areas. In the meantime colonizers would probably continue to carve up the more tribal areas with their increasing tech advantage. In the end the meso american and andean civilisations would probably get fully occupied for a few generations but probably keeping large parts if not most of their culture and religion into the modern age. Also I feel like settler colonization wouldn't really happen in the core parts of american civilisation, meaning there would hardly be much influx from european ethnicity but I could see african slaves beeing imported maybe along with rich white people setting up plantations as well as taking over many important parts of the local economy over time...
"Water levels will rise and change everything!" If we can add a continent, we can remove an equal volume of water. I think that's an allowable handwave for this scenario. EDIT: The whole evolution of life on Earth would change so no humans would exist. There, discussion finished.
But another thing is the loss of the equatorial Pacific current, which drives El Niño and La Niña events. And would change weather patterns and climate all around the world
Sure, and you could put Earth in the orbit of Mars too, but generally, you want to handwave as few things as possible. One way to keep the sea level similar without changing the rest of the planetary geophysics is to deepen the ocean basin and increase the cryosphere and inland seas or lakes and aquifers.
@@jakeaurod I think if you made Antarctica larger to have more ice it could be a similar water level. But there’s still the current thing to worry about
There is a sub continent under New Zealand that they recently discovered. Apparently, the mountains of New Zealand are the highest point of the continent.
I can see Mu being a serious contender on the world stage, because being on that trade route would make them UNIMAGINABLY wealthy. Since the climate is so consistent, societies would have an easier time spreading over large distances, so you've got the potential for centralization and empire. The real juice to inject would be a couple fictional invasions by an Indian or Chinese power to spread the good word of our lord and savior The Horse to Mu, and things snowball from there. With the large central plains of the continent to really thrive in, horses would make linking up West and East overland truly feasible. It'd take a while to actually take off, sure, but after hanging out and chilling and hunting megasloths for a thousand years, suddenly the plains nomads have horses--and maybe more importantly, the places just bordering the plains nomads now have horses. All it takes is one Cyrus from a plains-adjacent backwater city-state to sweep in toward that wealthy west coast with horse archers and light cavalry, conquer that peninsula and get the supercharge from the triangular trade, and you've got a real son of a bitch of an empire on your hands. By the Common Era, I could see the friction in that region creating a second Mediterranean pressure cooker environment out there, and then all bets are off. You've got Chinese dynasties in Mu, Munese dynasties in China, religious wars between the blend of weird Hindu-Inca syncretized East and a newly converted Muslim West, shit's wild.
This- massive biologically rich landscape bordered by Japanese and Chinese empires? You’d better beleive there would be at least one imperial power here!!
I’d honestly kinda view Europe as a backwater part of the world in this scenario. Spanish gold and silver plundered from the Americas fueled European economies and allowed Europe to advance. The Atlantic would no longer be the primary economic power for the past 500 years but probably mainly Asia-Mu
That sounds like a bodyslam by the Americans. Japanese heavily lacked mobility whereas the Americans were the most mobile combatant of WW2. The environment of the Pacific restricted epxloitation of this. But who knows, maybe the existence of this continent makes the Japanese military change their doctrine and focus more on heavy armor and mobility.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 If the us owned the entire northern half of the continent, the Japanese might not have even attacked. That's a lot of extra real estate, which means an even higher us population.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 "That sounds like a bodyslam by the Americans. Japanese heavily lacked mobility whereas the Americans were the most mobile combatant of WW2." One phrase: Kasserine pass. USAs military started WWII in absolutely dreadful shape. The mobility came later, and USA never truly mastered desert warfare. It's easy to win when you have over 10 times more troops and closer to a THOUSAND times more supplies. But early in the Pacific? Before USA started learning lessons?
@@pola5392 What friendship? As various officials of USA has openly said, USA does not have friends, it has interests. Which BTW, is one of absolute dumbest things i've ever heard from actual officials of any nation.
When I was a child, around 12-14, I used to imagine these kinds of things, I've written a few books/stories throughout my childhood and one of them was about a civilization in a massive island between Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Obviously I didn't have enough knowledge and study to imagine a realistic climate, fauna, flora and more, like you did, but it was a really fun project.
Instead of mu rising sea levels, why not assume there is less water? I mean you are assuming a lot more land, why does it displace water rather than replace water? Both are reasonable assumptions since, you know, they are totally made up. Would be interesting video. And easier to conceive the consequences of MU
True, this is all hypothetical. But there's a marginally-better argument for assuming a consistent volume of water on earth given the processes involved. But obviously that also has FAR greater impact on world history. I'm guessing that's why he didn't assume any change in sea levels for most of the video 😋 Edit: we can also assume the added land mass came from changes to the geography of Earth's crust, rather than any 'new' mass being added
Less water changes a lot more than just the sea level. That could change the entire Earth's gravity if you consider the differences between the Mass and said water. Edit: This works for either A: If Mu is a true continent and as such wasn't just placed onto Earth, as removing water would reduce the Earth's mass, as well as B: if Mu appeared out of thin air replacing the water, as we cannot assume its exact mass.
It's actually really interesting to think about the idea of two Polynesian civilizations, one maybe Chinese-inspired and one Inca-inspired, having vastly different religious and cultural ideals and clashing over them, while still speaking a somewhat mutually intelligible language and sharing lots of basic culture with each other. Imagine what those wars would look like. This is fascinating to think about even if the dude who invented Mu was bonkers.
Their culture would be awsome tbh , I'd love to see how a revealed religion (Like buddism,christianity,islam,confucianism) by the Mu-pepole would look like , This essentially creates another great civilization
I think China wouldn't exist, not as in today, having MU smack in the center would change a lot more than what was imagined. I think MU would have the possibility of being the center of the civilized world, who has to say even Europe as today existed. The possibiliies are endless and this video really shows how egocentrical we can be in the sense of, we think that we matter, while the truth is, we don't and most likely no country that exists today would exist in that timeline
Why is Polynesian culture not interesting enough for you in it’s own right? Why you wanna bastardise our proud and ancient culture? Austronesians are the most expansive civilisation in ancient history. From Taiwan to Papua to Hawaii to Rapanui to New Zealand to Madagascar the the largest civilisational area on earth
No, the meta physical acrcheologists have been absorbed by them. I follow a couple on RUclips because I like hearing their theories, whether I gree with them or not.
I think that the Megafauna would probably survive in Mu, purely due to how big it is. Yet I can imagine that they'd be incredibly endangered and wouldn't be that numerous, with them surviving where the humans were less numerous.
@@evanlee4289 maybe set in the Atlantic, there's an small stretch between Europe/ africa and south America where there's no landmass. the first hour will be in brazil and the last hour in cabo verde (maybe)
I know you like to keep your alternate histories grounded and logical, but I do enjoy when you go the extra step of complete fictional wild speculation
A non topic but still interesting thing to learn about here (since you were talking about this on twitter i did my own research about the pacific) The eastern Pacific region, which extends southward from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, is relatively narrow and is associated with the American cordilleran system of almost unbroken mountain chains, the coastal ranges of which rise steeply from the western shores of North and South America. The continental shelf, which runs parallel to it, is narrow, while the adjacent continental slope is very steep. Significant oceanic trenches in this region are the Middle America Trench in the North Pacific and the Peru-Chile Trench in the South Pacific.
I love how self aware this channel is when making all of this high effort stuff. The acknowledgement that the city states looked like Europe made me laugh my ass off. All to say, such great and well researched work and keep it up!
I’d argue MU would have more likely been settled by the ancestors of Native Australians rather than the Polynesians. The ancestors of indigenous Australians arrived there when sea levels were low and nearly connected Asia to Australia. Depending on Mu’s geography it may have also been connected and allowed for human migration tens of thousands of years ago
@The Philosoraptor I mean there’s a chance Mu wouldn’t have been connected to Sunda and Sahul but, it it was it likely would have been settled by humans 70,000+ years ago when the Australian aboriginals arrived in Australia
Australia was never connected to Asia, the gap was just smaller; the ancestors of Native Australians (and Papuans) would still have needed to boat between several islands to get from Sunda (a southeast Asian peninsula that existed during the ice age) to Sahul (the then geographically united Australian continent, containing Australia and New Guinea). You may be right about people from Australia (the continent, not the country) being the first to reach Mu though; early Papuans also island hopped across Melanesia, which would bridge the gap between Mu and New Guinea (as well as partly being included in Mu), well before the Polynesian migrations.
I think so too. In my head, I theorised that Australia practically repelled my Austronesian, Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian ancestors from ever outright settling on the continent owing to its desert climate and the sheer vast expanse of the continent. Maybe, in this alternate universe, perhaps my ancestors would have settled on Australia's humid western and northern coasts, while the ancestors of Australian Aborigines would have settled in the desert regions of the south and east?
I thought that as well but seeing as how new guinea wasn't populated until ~3,000 BC due to no land bridge I find it very unlikely there would somehow be one connecting Mu.
I disagree. It looks like a rip off of New Guinea, and it even looks dumber when you can see New Guinea just next door to it on a map like as if there is a mini version of Mu right next to it. It’s stupid.
According to the New Age people. They all existed at some point and they tell tall tales about Atlantis going to war with the Lemurians and using the equivalent of an ancient weapon to create massive waves and drown the continent of Lemuria.
21:18. Omg, The Road to El Dorado Goldposting. I knew I recognized that meme template anywhere. I use to make memes for that page on Facebook. Lot of fun, really hope you're a member there Cody!
I disagree with the ending statements that Mu would eventually be cut up by European Powers. It’s underestimating just how much Mu would positively impact oceanic cultures, and overestimating the power of European nations. A main reason why Oceanic / Native American cultures couldn’t really defend against European conquest was almost exclusively because they simply didn’t have enough resources and communication / organization. They were stuck in tiny, habitation-poor islands with thousands of miles of ocean between each other. Colonial powers could easily island hop, conquering one small island after the other. With Mu existence though, these Oceanic cultures suddenly have complete access to a massive continent, fit for large scale habitation and civilization. And with their connection to Asia, they would likely be right behind the two other continents in technology and industry. At worst, I could easily see civilizations on Mu being capable of resisting widespread European colonialism in a similar way to Asia; where although marked by colonialism, the continent still retains it’s cultural independence and becomes a large power at the turn of the century. At best, Mu could probably be an active and viable threat to Europe, being a peer to peer rival.
I disagree with you, no power on earth of the era could resist the Era of European dominance, Asia didn't really do well, Japan was the only exception, everyone else was humiliated or out right conquered. Lets look at that track record: The subcontinent of India wasn't united as rule and most of the history of the subcontinent shows that, to China couldn't resist the empires of the era, Thailand had to give up land to the French and British as a buffer state, Burma, Vietnam, the sultans of the western half of indo-pasific where all conquered dispute having comparable technology. The sultans even had ottoman cannons. Part of their fall to Spain and the Dutch was the economic collapse that occurred when the Ming Chinese isolated themselves they weakened the states around them as China was the center of the world's trade at the time. Looking at how far east and along the equator Mu is, it is next to the eastern, less develop half of the indo-pasific, the Philippines, Australia, New Guinea, & New Zealand where all by and large tribal and in spite of being settled for far far longer then Mu they possessed no big civilizations that even approach the larger states of Asia. Unlike that region, with both the distance and short time frame, domestication would take far far to long, that means no draft animals to build large civilizations with. It doesn't matter if they have a lot of rivers and river deltas good for city states and kingdoms, so did the eastern half of the indo-pasific. The city of cahokia is a good example of what they are more likely to look like, more then any of the city states of central America. 2000 years is not enough time for a strong civilization to form that wouldn't anything more then an irrigation society like that of Mesopotamia or the Aztecs, and that is being generous given the large size of the seas between the Philippines, Australia, New Guinea, & New Zealand and then overcome the tribes that continually raid into these civilizations even before the horse was domesticated. An that bit he had with a mediterranean of the pacific sound funny to me when considering new the waters around Austrialia, New Guinea, & New Zealand are very rough, and that the sea would be much larger then the Mediterranean Sea by far. That leaves them with, in the best of cases, city states, and the jungles also present another issue as the inability to burn down the forest leave them in the best of cases like the central American city states. This region was also hit hard by the old world plagues a little later then those of the new world. Contact with the Spanish will see their population cut by 90% and from that they will never recover just as the new world tribes didn't. This is what really determines the battles with the 16th-19th century maritime empires. Even if they did the Spanish conquests of the new world and the Philippines, as well as the Dutch conquests of west indo-pasific like Java and the spice islands, who did resist, show Mu's own low development and tribal nature would ensure their control is limited to insight of the coast for both these early empires, just as the Spanish struggled to push north into the Americas and were limited to forts in California and Texas, the Dutch didn't even have a proper fort on New Guinea or Australia, it's just not profitable for the effort necessary. It's the later British and Americans that could take the continent with their settlers. The French would have issues projecting power and enforcing claims but nothing is out of the cards. With the plagues of Europe coming, the native have the same issues as those of the new world, whose population never recovered even centuries after the plagues sweep through. It doesn't matter if they have a lot of rivers and river deltas good for city states and kingdoms, so did the eastern half of the indo-pasific. It doesn't matter if they have a lot of rivers and river deltas good for city states and kingdoms, so did the eastern half of the indo-pasific. A new British settler colony is made, and the Americans settle the better northern half as early as the 1880s Japan get nothing and would have to fight these to powers and their settled populations, and just as Hawaii was seen as integral by that time, so to would the Americans so the norther holding of Mu. The British and Dutch would be exhausted and loose it all as without india and Jave their Empires where unsuitable, while the US would be at the height of it's power, it's keeping the northern half as it's manifest destiny would have never ended in 1890s. This is a timeline with a massive US power, and a second Australia.
@@nicholasrocha2414 You aren’t actually considering the fact that Mu *is an actual continent off the coast of Asia*. Your still thinking that this is the same Polynesians as in our own history. You assume that Mu wouldn’t be settled until Polynesian started sailing, and so there would only be 2,000 year of development. Yet this is faulty logic, since if Mu actually existed, it would’ve absolutely had humans settling around the same time as Australia, some 50,000 years ago. You assume that Mu would be decimated by old world plagues, but fail to realize that Mu would have constant and consistent contact with Asia, and by extension, Europe, and have immunities. You apparently don’t realize that the tribal nations of oceanic were hampered by their lack of suitable terrain, terrain that would be found in Mu. You say that the vanguard asian nations fell due to a lack of trading power, but don’t realize that in this world, Mu would become as much of an economic power as China. You say that the jungles of Mu would stop progress, yet the massive inner heartland, ripe for farmland. You aren’t comprehending that Mu is an actual continent onpar with all of the same advantages that Europe would have.
@@nicholasrocha2414 "Japan was the only exception" *_Conveniently forgets about Thailand and how it dodged European Colonialism by using European advisors and contacts to reach a technological and cultural level that would have made the European powers uncomfortable with "civilizing" an already-civilized country._*
I'm just wondering why the people on Mu would have been relatively weak enough for the Spanish to basically bully land out of them, with their own continent and traving with Asia, they would likely have the metals and technology to keep a good hold on their land
I feel like the video runs into some determinism issues, i.e. "well, no non-European power was able to hold off European colonisation in our timeline, sooooo..." Nevermind that a trade network like mentioned in the video would very likely shift dynamics a LOT. For example, an actual trade route stretching from East Asia all the way to the Americas would mean native tribes and empires could have likely gotten access to gunpowder, which would have made initial contact with Europeans... less one-sided.
I agree especially since while they wouldn't get Asian trade nothing says they couldn't receive trade from European nations which would then trickle to North and South America Honestly Spain conquered the Aztecs because they got all the native tribes to rise up against then and then disease began wiping them out They would've been far more advanced in metallurgy and animal husbandry if that continent in the middle traded with them
Completely agree. A continent that big would probably mean stable systems the colonisers would have found hard to squash. Heck, this is a fantasy scenario. I vote that the civilization from this continent will be even better than the whites at colonising OTHER continents and in this timeline all maps are Mu-centrific.
@@Midorikonokami agreed, they would have most likely been able to conquer parts of spain and the Americas, as well sa Africa although they'd hit a limit as i dont think they'd be able to take to much beyond the coastlines, the real question is whether they would side with the muslim caliphate or Christian kingdoms as well as what religion would be dominant there. its such an interesting conundrum especially since almost everyone in europe especially the greeks would consider this new continent to be atlantis
@@Memelord-md5hs exactly. It may even have been called that on 'western' maps for a while, and which political system they would have had too! Olygarchy? Monarchy? Diarchy? Dare I dream, democracy?? Or maybe something in between like Venice had, which brought stability for decades. Or even even, the beautiful system that the Native Americans had that the 'american' Europeans -stole- ahem, adopted. How THAT would have effected the world politics and how it would be different or the same today... And whether they had a lot of natural resources or few, and how they would have - in this scenario - probably stomped the British into the mud they came from.
@@that1worldcitizen152 ahhh ok. Sorry about that. That makes a lot more sense. But it's RUclips comment section so I never know what I'm running across. 😋
If you went with the premise, that Mu would be settled only around 1500 BC there would be a very very high chance, that the east coast would still be completely unsettled/unknown to make any difference for the Americas. Polynesians only settled the pacific so fast, because distances between islands are so large. With a giant continent people wouldn't travel hundreds of miles to settle new lands. They would go out and find the next best place a few dozen miles away maybe. No need to skip thousands of miles. The settlement of this continent would thus be much much slower than the settlement of the pacific islands.
Actually, that’s another possible cultural and geopolitical shift for Asia and Oceania: What does the presence of a frontier end up doing? A space that is open for population movement from what has been historically one of the most developed areas of the world?
People are curious and often do set out for new lands. The distance from islands and even mainland would be so small, you'd literally be able to at least see a glimpse of it depending on the atmosphere conditions of the time. This alone would set off people's curiosity enough to want to go explore. It actually would've been settled long before that simply because of that fact, to the point we'd literally be finding cousin ancestors fossils there. It would def change the entire world and our history.
dont u think that the presence of mega fauna and a lack of competing humans would spark a population boost and there for increase settlement of the continent? look at all the other continents, humas are every where. i personally would be VERY interested in japanese samurai culture finding mu, since they are so cough, cough, friendly, cough. i could see japanese culture doing its thing on there if the other asians dont beat them to it.
There already is one. It's called New Zealand. Wrongly described in the past as an island, in fact, New Zealand is a part of the large and mostly submerged continent of Zealandia.
yess i dont know why more people dont talk about the one that talked into the austraua for the one that is my one word and the sayed the gogo and the car and cat dog with the rootbear convertible.
@@CJ-mk3nf well yes the because of the one that the dog for the world and my one to be one leaves for could the one because swear to remember it you because of the all too why me? so yes it is because we lost in too much tore it there all too well.
i flew intercontinental several times as a young one, and I remember sitting window seat and looking out at the ocean expanse for miles for long moments spanning several minutes at a time, and thinking how easy it would be to hide something out there. So much space, we don't really process it most of the time. You could absolutely land a space ship the size of a small country in the middle of the water and -if you knew the plane paths and could avoid being in them -there's no WAY anyone would ever find you out there. I also remember picturing sea creatures as big as I could see. They could totally exist out there and there would be literally no way to detect them. Crazy how much of the earth is undiscovered by humans.
Um... you do realize that radar and satellites exist, right? You couldn't land a spaceship anywhere on Earth undetected. What year do you think this is?
The Milanesians, and Micronesians would play a large role along with the Polynesians. These are three very distinct cultures and I understand in this video "Polynesian" is a standin for all three, but it's worth considering how different these three are today, and what that could have looked like in this alternative history. For example, the mountainous regions (highlands) of PNG (Milanesian) bear more similarity to how they lived 300 years ago vs how westerners live today. It's a similar geography to western Mu, and I couldn't foresee these folks being subjugated by colonialism (the highlands of PNG are... wild, by any measure).
I was waiting for some mention of how the geography of the Marianas Trench would affect the peninsula civilization. Like are the Chamorros separated by a massive mountain chain (if the ocean floor was inverted) or if they had a Marianas River Valley civilization but I guess he didn’t know that the “Ladrones” islands on the Mu map are actually the Marianas.
The “Lost Continent” story motif has been around, and usually is romanticized with colonial ideas. Yet, these fictitious continents (or locations) pose fascinating settings for alternative stories and ways that create history. I’ve followed your channel for many years, and this content is just as intriguing as the next. Mu might be a cool concept to create many stories!
Like the real Zealandia thats an actual continent right where the guy says it is? You guys don’t want to admit you’re wrong so bad you just act like things don’t even exist.
@MrPaytonw34 what the fuck are you saying? Zealandia wasn't even in the exact spot that the creator of Mu said it was. It was next to Australia, also it was not even an island or continent, it depends on your opinion of what defines an island or continent is. Zealandia was smaller than Australia but bigger than Greenland, so it might be the biggest island or the smallest continent or the 2nd biggest island. And again, what. the. fuck. WERE YOU SAYING! That's why Zealandia is named after NEW ZEALAND. It was named after the mountains that survived the flood that the continent/island fell to and was on, New Caledonia also survived
@@MrPaytonw34 the real submerged continent is Sundaland in Indonesia and Malaysia, scientific research and evidence suggests that came from this continent, submerged in 10,000 years ago
@@MrPaytonw34 are you referring to the original commenter or what , cause no one is pretending Zealandia doesn't exist , its been proven by scientists for years
The rise of Europe had a lot to do with geography, and I see that possibly Mu could have all the qualifications to rival the Europeans. As said, their continent would be horizontal, leading to a climate that is relatively the same. Second of all, it's skinny enough that 2 civilizations on opposite sides of the continent could sail around to trade with each other with relatively good speed, sparking more exchange of goods and ideas. These ideas would lead to massive technological advancements not seen in Polynesian history in our timeline. And, this leads into my last point which is that a substitute for the horse or cow could evolve to make trading/farming easier, leading to the possibility of massive centralized empires built around agriculture, trade and production. This could lead to an empire similar to Rome, which straddled the Mediterranean, except this empire would instead be straddled by the ocean, but the idea is basically the same. Trade by the sea is everything, and agriculture and probably slavery is the backbone of the empire. Slaves might be taken from the New World, but over time American empires will import the same animals the Mu people had, leading to them also rising. In this timeline, when the Vikings came to America they might see civilizations near equal to their own, and Europeans would probably not be able to subdue the people of the New World. A funny change I think would happen is that instead of East and West being divided through the Pacific Ocean, it would probably be divided through the Atlantic Ocean instead due to cultural similarities between the Mu and other Asian people, and the fact that if you divided down the Pacific it would cut through the continent. In this timeline, the New World would probably be considered the far east, and Europe and Africa would be the far west.
If they were trading with East Asia they would definitely get cows, pigs, chickens, and horses as they are all native to that area and that's not even considering potential native domesticable animals on Mu.
Western Mu would have strong links with China, which means gunpowder could easily reach them. This could lead to a state on the Mu peninsular that would be capable of, at the bare minimum, fending off European colonisers. Furthermore if Eurasian dieseases reached the Americas via Mu, the Spanish would struggle to conquer the Amiercas. I would imagine the Aztec empire becoming a vassal of Spain which would eventually revolt, while the Incan empire would likely never fall due to its mountainous terrain and the Spanish being tied down by rebellions in Mexico. Contact with Europe would mean these two empires would eventually also gain access to guns, horses and European-style ships, so eastern Mu might become a battle ground between the Incan, Aztec and West Mu empires.
Nah, that huge peninsula sticking out to Asia like a sore thumb would be a constant battlefield between Japan, the Ming dinisty trading fleet, and the Polynesian
Wouldn't Mu's existence lead to the possibility of its own Empire, ala the Chinese, Indian, and Japanese? If it's near such a wealthy area and has such consistent climate, a decent river valley is a great place for an empire, and a pressure cooker of various competing places could easily make a strong one. Depending on its strength, it might be the one doing the colonizing.
I agree, but there's a couple barriers that they'd have to break through first. The ones that immediately pop into my mind are how they're in a tropical environment and how that's horrible for diseases. The other thing that popped to mind is what kind of crops would they have? Would it be like how the Maori farmed? Since they're connected into this whole trade network with East Asia, I'd imagine that Rice Farming coupled with their climate would lead to quite a bit of Mu Rice being cultivated. Rice farming comes with different issues that need solving, if they do flood irrigation than they need to have a much more centralized government to maintain their flood canals, and with China being so close they'd definitely pull a lot of inspiration from the Chinese. What I can assume is that due to the combination of their climate and local trading partners, they'd be a relatively Authoritarian country/countries on that Western Coast. I guess much of it does depend on Geography, if the interior is highly mountainous, then it'd be rather difficult to form a single Political entity that unites them early on, whereas if it's a flat plain than that would become significantly easier. Heck, going off of an extension of the Geography question, what the heck is happening with nonrenewable resources? I'd imagine that there'd be whole new reserves of Oil and Gas due such a massive change in Tectonic activity over the past couple million years. Anyway, it'd be possible but there's a lot of factors that we'd need to know in order to discuss that potentiality in any significant level of detail.
@@intelligencecube6752 well an entirely unique staple crop could evolve on the continent that the mu people could use. Tropical climates havent really hindered empires, as shown by many indian empires of the past. The mughals were even the richest empire on the planet at one point On the contrary a tropical climate is better as its easier to grow crops
Of course the 1963 film "Atragon" Has a depiction of Mu which might be accurate even if the continent isn't on the surface and just submerged underwater.
I’m curious how times zones would work on this continent. Cuz the international date line cuts it in half. Imagine walking to your house and it’s 20 hours behind
I'd have to imagine the date line would get moved (either east or west) and some extra deviation put in it so it doesn't cross land. Perhaps running it between Mu and the Americas?
They already redrew it just to accommodate a tiny but very widespread island country; I have to think they would either do the same here or realign the grid so the IDL runs through the Atlantic.
I believe that if Mu existed, it would have been the pacific empire, maybe not as advanced as Europe, but definitely very advanced, as there is just so many trade to be had, that ideas would spread fast enough for naval type ideas or something like that would have exploded
Wonder if, especially if theres any trade with eastern China, the Mesoamericans would not just be better protected against Old World disease, but also better armed; After all, china did invent gunpowder many centuries prior to the Age of Discovery. And such a trade network of a Western Pacific Triangle and an Eastern Mu Triangle would create remarkable wealth, but also spur conflict that might drive acceleration of arms development; Even if they never quite hit an industrial revolution, theyd be better armed and protected against Spanish conquistadors and with fewer deaths from plague, have the armies and economies in reserve to defend themselves better; Not to mention, potential allies in the Muvian countries they trade with.
The trade zones in Asia would be immense meaning they’d probably close in on the US and become the second largest or largest economy. The benefits of trading by sea is a lot, and considering this nation would also probably have to have a lot of water, Considering it’s entire basis was On islands, it’s waterways would help with geography and they could also just easily build canals. The pacific empire would probably have high HDI too
Lucas B 1) trade volume (and thus rate of information exchange and cultural competition) isn't just about proximity but also the terrain. Europe became more advanced than the rest of the world partially due to how easy trade could connect due to the abnormal number of navigable rivers and the abnormal number of natural harbours. Its why Europe developed faster than other areas along trade routes (and its why coastal Europe, ie Western and Southern Europe, developed faster than Eastern Europe). So Mu's development would also depend on how good their coastlines are for trade volume. The more peninsulas the better, not just proximity. 2) trade isn't the only driveing force of techology. The biggest driveing force is military competition (and other local competition). Europe's large number of rivers and mountains helps create inteneral competition, but it's lack of natural barriers to the east also allows new players to shake things up (the almost continuous phases of steppe invasions from the Indo-Europeans to the mongol successors and thousands of others), despite otherwise good terrain the reason China often stagnated is its good natural borders meaning internal stability could last longer before being shaken up. Mu being a separate continent gives it even better natural borders than China, and thus even if its internal geography is similar to Europe/China, its geography would make its tech development more like China, but dialed up (ie likely even longer peroids of stability and stagnation). Its defensability and centre of trade would likely also give it an arrogance similar to irl China which further agrivated its periods of stagnation. Irl China went through periods of massive tech advancement (due to being located well for trade and good internal terrain) and periods of massive staganaiton. Mu would be similar but even more exteme of its internal geography is good. 3) in adition to good rivers and coastlines for large volume of trade, and plenty of natural intneral divsions, the tiger things that allowed Europe and China to advance faster than average is a good temperate climate. Hotter and colder climates reduce tech and societal advancement. Mu would not have a temperate climate. Its most northerally point is tropical. Assuming no other change to the world's climate (see no4) it would be most arrid desert. Its centre and west specifically. Its east would likely be hot and humid like the amazon, West africa or Indonesia. This means its societies would be hamstrung. Its East and centre would be dry and very under populated, very poor for trade and human habitation. This would also affect trade heading to the eastern part from Asia (as trade has to cross an ocean and then sail past a massive desert). The eastern part would be thick tropical rainforest and jungle, and similar have populations and deseases, likely very decentralised and staganent. It would be like a worse south east Asia. Hot and humid with lots of tropical deseases but even further from the temperate centres of tech development, separated by an ocean and a vast desert. 4) ofcaurse its existance would affect all of the earth's geography, but espeically the Pacific coasts. The whole world would be dryier, espeically the Pacific coasts. This so due to less evaporation from smaller oceans.its also because there is disrupted Pacific currents. Europe wpudl probably be more like China irl (still mostly temporate but with even more cold and arrid Western Europe, creating a large natural border like China irl), China would have a narrower temperate zone, and mu would be even more desert. This would likely result in mu being isolated. 5) If antartica (as a continent, and is instead a bunch of frozen islands) doesn't exist in this altensitve world then you would have a mu similar to no3, but China and the americas would be different. Due to the change in ocean currents, etc. Mu's very existance woudk alter climate everywhere, but espeically the irl Pacific coasts. Which affects their trajectory and thus their affect on mu. But in all scenarios Mu is rather poor for civilisation even if its coasts and rivers were good.
If Mu started Human contact around 1500 bc, why wouldn't horses eventually be traded for goods ,that makes Mu easier to traverse and accelerates its human advancement
Fun fact: the entire story of The Mysterious Cities of Gold is based on James Churchward books on Mu. And honestly the fantasy world of this series is interesting and well made, when they explained the fall of Mu and Atlantis that was so cool ngl
Mu might also mean that Trans Atlantic Slave trade as we know it wouldn't exist. Due to a surviving native population immune to their diseases, Europeans wouldn't need to import African slaves to tend to their cash crops, resulting in a different ethnic makeup for the new world and a different Africa as well
Things might have played out similar to our timeline on the east coast, but a surviving native population on the west coast would mean that westward expansion would be a far longer and bloodier (to both sides) full on war of conquest instead of a bunch of sporadic battles aided by disease and railroad-sponsored outpopulation.
I think the Trans Atlantic Slave trade would have still happened anyway. (Even if only amongst the Portuguese between modern day Nigeria, Angola, and Brazil) The natives would have died out regardless, not from disease, but from poor working conditions on the plantations (eg. sugar or silver) as per the very short life expectancy on a Brazilian sugar plantation in our own real timeline.
@@AlxndrHQ That's true, though I wonder how plausible the plantations would be if the native population was more resistant to diseases and how much that would effect native resistance. The Pequod wiped out a lot of settler populations
@@maseoembry4165 unfortunately, I think no matter how we look at it, the Americas (and Africa) would be colonized; even if it’s delayed by a couple hundred years relative to our timeline. Main reason being: the Silk Road, and Guns. Unless the empires in the Americas can establish trade with Chinese gunpowder merchants by sea before Europeans do so via the Silk Road; they would be no match for machine guns, and thus would be colonized. (Assuming Europeans still found a way to industrialize without the colonies) However I think this arms race would have sent enslavement into overdrive. There likely would be people/war captives purchased/enslaved from South/Southeast Asian, Mu, and African slavers. There would also likely be a triangular slave trade on both sides of the Americas.
Slight correction: continental drift never really got accepted as a popular theory. It wasn't until plate tectonics was theorized in the 1960s that it actually became accepted as science fact, helped largely by the discovery of seafloor spreading.
"Sometimes we don't have to be realistic, lets just say there's a continent in there and it doesn't effect global climate too much." "Anyway... lets reflect on how sea levels are effected, no coastal civilizations would exist as we know them."
If wasn't just the sea levels, even if they were the same just the fact of something like a trade network from the Americas to Europe being possible would butterfly everything
As an Eastern Polynesian (New Zealand Māori and British) I do find these ideas fascinating. I've posed questions to an A.I app, asking how Māori culture would have developed if Zealandia had remained above the sea. It actually came to quite a few of the conclusions you came to.
🤫🤫🤫they pretend that Zelandia doesn’t exist their very hush-hush on it. Even going to the extreme where they make fun of it like in this video even though it’s real. If they admit it then they look like idiots and sense archeologists and archaeologists dick riders like this guy don’t wanna look like idiots, they just act like it doesn’t exist.
I play a lot of civilization 6 and there are continents and areas with names that I have never heard of before. Quite frankly watching your videos over the last couple years has allowed me to understand where the names of these continents come from. Some from history, some from old civilizations and others from books. I always found it a bit of a coincidence and that I enjoyed.
Even if it makes even less sense in regards to plate tectonics, I'd love to see a scenario with both Mu and Atlantis. Then you could have a westwards extention of the silk road running from Europe to Atlantis to the Americas, and from there to Eastern Mu where it links up with the eastern end of the road. One massive trade route encircling the globe.
I kind of wonder what It’d look like I’d you had all the geography videos together as one map Like Green Sahara Green Antarctica Zealandia Mu America and Parias Atlantis Shit would be Crazy and it’d be interesting to see how that stacks
@@rokamayonoh3rt362 it’d be fun potential for a fantasy series Perhaps “Atlantis” is a larger landmass but possesses a California esque island adjacent to it and Mu could be another random land
Alternate ideas: Chinese-writing, Buddhist Western Mu would have powerful enough civilizations for the Spanish language to never really take hold, and colonial holdings be fairly modest until later colonialism and the widespread use of the steam engine, resulting in a colonial experience somewhere inbetween that of Africa and East Asia, not the complete erasure that much of the Americas experienced. You could have "Muan Thailands" existing, countries that were never properly colonized, but instead became protectorates, or allied with one colonizer against others, getting preferential treatment. Hell, imagine a Muan Japanese-style modernization!
That might depend on how the mountains and valleys lined up on the Muan coast (and perhaps the interior). If I recall correctly from my poli-sci studies, a lot of cultural divides in South East Asia align with river valleys and can be dramatically different from those on the other side of the dividing ridge. Heck, cultures and ethnicities can be dramatically different between those who live on the valley slopes, those who live in the valley floor, and those who live on homes with stilts on the riverbank and floodplain.
@@jakeaurod Oh, absolutely. Papua is the most linguistically diverse region in the world, for example. These are all just ideas that I think would be neat.
Another consequence is that for sure America north of Amazon, south of Texas, west of Andes and the Caribbean would probably know how to make Iron weapons. By the time of Columbus arrival it'd probably be around 800-1000 year old set of skills they learned from traders of Mu.
Even though it is located in the South India Ocean, it would appear having something like the Kerguelen Plateau above water would likely be more grounded and possibly less disruptive (to the currents, etc) as despite being a microcontinent about 3 times the size of Japan recall it being estimated in one or more AH TLs potentially being capable of supporting a population roughly the size of New Zealand.
Also corn, potatoes, peppers. etc might move westward from Americas, into Mu and into Eurasian much much sooner. This could have great effect on the food supplies of the ancient world. High populations and more stable crops would massively change things.
Honestly? I expected to watch about 5 minutes of this video, and then click away because it was completely stupid, but instead it was one of the most entertaining and fun videos I've seen in quite some time. Very well thought out, and very fun speculation. Thank you for this video! Sharing with all my friends.
I feel like you're giving Mu too little credit to stand own its own. With a large continent that can easily allow trade from the east and New World, I feel like it might prosper and advance technologically exponentially faster than the Polynesians/Incas of our time. It could easily be a global superpower and a major trading hub with access to vast resources and imports to the point that it derails our euro-centric idea of colonialism. Though I would expect it to be more trade-oriented like Carthage was, it would still be entirely possible for it to be more militaristic. Also I'm imagining it will be a heaven for pirates as the trade routes would be easy pickings. I very much also like the idea of Japan trying to invade a part of it at the western peninsular too eventually which would vastly influence the culture of the continent even more.
The problem Mu would have is the lack of population. Being only colonized by the Polynesians as late as 1500 BC the population would be very small relative to other population centers.
@@evancombs5159 the problem with that is its unlikely to take that long given the distance is actually pretty short. Chances are people on mainland Asia would be able to at least glimpse this mysterious world during certain atmosphere conditions, which would spark curiosity, and have them traveling much sooner. We are too curious of creatures.
I think an interesting thought experiment would be to create an Alternate History Hub video from the perspective of an alternate world where a real continent like South America didn't exist, and imagine a world where it did exist without the context of actual history to see how close you could get to reality without making assumptions. That would put new light onto the "missing continent" alternate history takes.
You should check out "DBWI (Double-blind what if)", which is when someone creates an alternate timeline from the perspective of someone living in that alternate world. For example "What if Reagan was never assassinated?" made by someone living in a world where Ronald Reagan assassination attempt succeeded..
Another possibility could’ve been the Manihiki Plateau (Manihiki Atoll) being above sea level. Although this wouldn’t be continent sized or smack dab in the middle of the ocean (more towards Australia and New Zealand). But Mu is still fascinating and fun to think about too.
Some insight regarding the German settlements on Mu: It all started with a small land purchased by a merchant from Oldenburg, Georg Friedrich Schinderhannes, in the south-eastern part of the continent in 1888. The now well-known city build on that spot of land was later named after the merchant, Schinderhannesstätt. It became Germany's single most important economic center in the pacific and the de facto capital of the beautifully named colony "Deutsch-Südost-Muh". .... A special German dialect also developed within said colony, Schinderhannesstättlerdeutsch, as well as a special pidgin called Mühemannisch (a unique mix of German, Lower German, Frisian, French and dozens of indiginous languages). Unfortunately, both are now considered nearly extinct due to the fact that Deutsch-Südost-Muh was later annexed by the Entente after WWI. ... At least one thing remains: After gaining independence, the inhabitants of the former colony, the Atanakamariwa, Kukumacha and Hatatawarika, decided to adopt the animal once intended to be depicted on the Colonial Coat of Arms of Deutsch-Südost-Muh as their own national animal: the Cow. 🐄💚💛💜
I was kinda hoping to hear how we’d arrive to modern day with Mu if sea levels weren’t effected but it still had an impact on world history before colonization. Either way, this was quite the fantastic video! Very interesting idea, and I love the attention to detail with how Mu would affect/ be affected by both East Asia and the Americas. Not even to mention the visuals, some of your best videography yet!
The idea of such continent sized islands having once existed, but which sank beneath the sea did not seem as crazy to the average person 150 years ago as the notion that the continents floated around on lava crashing into each other. It's only because we grew up in a time that plate tectonics was an accepted theory with a ton of evidence backing it up that we think it's a reasonable idea and Mu was ridiculous. BTW, I'm just talking the geography of Mu here, not the metaphysical psychic woo-woo BS.
@@peteynutt4104 Zealandia has been almost entirely underwater for the past 79million years+. Even at the ocean level minimum during the ice ages, only 10-11% of Zealandia was above sea level. That's down to about 7% today.
Cody is held back by the ridiculous dogma historians still cling to. -Sea levels were 400ft lower as recently as 13,000 BC -Even as glacial maximums receeded, ocean levels didn't near modern levels until around 6,000 BC -Google underwater roads off Japan and Florida to see how pathetic historians denying the existence of lost seafaring cultures is. -Göbekli Tepe in Turkey has already forced dogmatic historians to (very reluctantantly) double civilizations age. -Carbon dating put a 30k yr old age on a South American dig almost 2 decades ago but cost the anthropologist any further grants for the rest of her life. Cro-mag-style spearheads are found all over North America. - The is weathered by deluge of rainwater consistent with a rainforest that hasn't existed in Egypt for over 12,000 years. There are stone megaliths and pyramids around the globes equator. Considering the glaciers that started receding 15,000 years ago would have scraped away pyramids further north... That tell you anything? -Anthropologists have been proving historians to be nothing but dogmatic obtuse asshats for decades now.
I liked that he mentioned AML, its also a really fun mod for hoi4 that really does spice up the pacific gameplay. Cant wait for him to explain the continent of Lemuria next.
This is what I love about your channel. You have so much fun with things but you put a lot of thought into them. Because you make them feel real... it gets the brain juices pumping. Amazing work as always.
Aah, i was so hyped when i've seen the post that teases this video, i couldn't wait xD I love the fact there would be austronesian civilisations trading with east-asian cultures, and in the same time trading with Meso-American cultures. That would be so fun having the silk road spanning from Europe to South/Central America
If it's fine to add so much land in the earth I'd assume it would also be fine to remove some water as well. Also without the natives dying from plagues, it would be interesting to see how different American societies would be, since they would probably keep much more native characteristics. And another thing with a bridge between the old and new world, possibly animals and technologies would exchange, leading for one, possibly the creation of nomadic empires in the Americas and putting them in a much more even playing field with the Europeans
The Americas lost around 90% of their population due to disease when colonial nations landed. Imagine Caesar in Gaul compared to one hundred Spanish conquistadors taking the entire Incan Empire.
Are you saying that when when the Europeans arrives in the American plains they could meet a society that greatly resembles a kind or "American Mongols"? Due to them possibly getting horses early.
@@MilloSpiegel According to numerous American Generals of the time, many of the Native Americans who lived in the American plains were the most adept Light Horsemen they had ever seen. Whether they were actually good compared to the Mongols is another debate, but in our time line even with a limited time with horses, they became extremely adept.
Honestly, maybe I’m just an optimist, but I feel like Mu being so close to China (the inventor of gunpowder) would give the natives of Mu a leg up on the colonizers. Due to trade, they and the natives in the americas may have developed weaponry that natives in the americas never had the opportunity to develop without trade routes. I think just like with the disease immunity idea, access to other civilizations and more extensive trade routes in general (which might have helped develop alliances too) would’ve been extremely helpful in deterring potential colonizers.
Le Plungeon is a classic example of a highly intelligent person who goes down a rabbit hole of error because of failure to self-critique. Scout mindset is so important … don’t believe things just because you want to, believe them because they’re supported by evidence.
I love alternate history hub, and in case anyone is interested in knowing, the pushies are on point! I've got a couple of a couple, and it has both come through and been of high quality :)
Honestly, the Mu world where the coasts are underwater sounds really cool. I’d love to see people explore it, maybe even have some speculative evolution for the plants an animals that exist on Mu
Mu would have some really weird native wildlife, depending on when it broke off from Australia. If that happened before 50 million years ago, Mu would entirely lack marsupials, which originally migrated from South America through Antarctica to reach Australia. There probably wouldn't be placental mammals in Mu either, aside from bats and marine mammals. What would Mu have instead? There could be a great diversity of monotremes, flightless birds, and maybe other kinds of mammals that have become extinct in our world, like the egg-laying Gondwanatheria.
Perhaps in such a scenario, the existence of Mu ends up leading to different civilizations rising to power. Maybe they aren't colonized at all but are in fact the colonizers.
Given the sweet potato becoming popular in Asia a couple centuries before Europeans got there.. I’d say the Polynesian trade with the Americas had some significant impact in our timeline!
Le Plongeon died in 1908, but the baton was soon picked up James Churchward, a British writer, inventor and engineer, who ran with it, publishing several books including Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Man (1926), The Lost Continent of Mu (1931), The Children of Mu (1931) and The Sacred Symbols of Mu (1933). Unlike Le Plongeon, however, Churchward focused his research in India where, he claimed, he had found ancient clay tablets kept by a high-ranking priest, containing writings in a lost language that only he and two other people could read.
It is worth noting that in this representation, you give Mu basically the same degree of technology as the Americas. Which may simply not be the case. Let us imagine that the east and western parts of Mu led to two empires which, for whatever reason started having conflicts. By the 1500s, they would likely be starting to use cannons on their ships (or at least, WEST Mu would), due to the fact that both Korea and Japan (though Japan was mostly using guns while Korea focused on ship-mounted weapons) were both making lots of firearms in the 1500s and the general fervor to adopt these weapons would likely extend to West Mu as well. In fact, there is a possibility that Japan would have invaded Mu with their advanced firearms instead of Korea, if they were still going to invade SOMEONE during that time (again, assuming that Mu being there didn't change Japanese history too much up to that point, and that they still unified with Nobunaga, and then invaded someone in the mid 1500s). If there is a trade triangle, the Japanese may well have better ships by this time too than they did when they invaded Korea, perhaps even making use of more ship to ship weapons themselves, like the Koreans did at the time (the superior range and tactics of Admiral Yi being basically the invention of modern naval combat with emphasis on destroying enemy ships with cannonfire instead of boarding, and being the reason Korea survived). As such, Mu could either have a fairly modern navy for the time, OR the most western tip of it could actually be in the midst of losing to a Japanese invasion by the time Spain tried to actually do anything. The result would be either Spain going to war with Japan, or Spain getting their ships rebuffed by one or more of the naval forces belonging to Mu (since it is a lot harder to send a fighting force halfway around the world at this point in time whereas Mu would literally be defending their own land). Put simply, you don't give Mu itself enough credit, and you also don't give the trade triangle you mention enough credit. The triangle which would likely result in increased rates of development in some aspects of the surrounding areas to the west (i.e. China, Japan, Korea, etc).
Being populated around 1500BC, it is unlikely that the Eastern part even got populated, and this also would mean that the continent would have a tiny population, which could not stand up to Spanish or Portuguese armies. Also, Japan didn't have firearms until 1543, when the Portuguese gave them some, so how would they give Mu firearms when they don't have them themselves? Mu would most likely just be a large extension of the Spanish Empire, connecting the Philippines with the rest of the possessions. This could result in a 16/1700s Panama Canal being built and could even make a difference in the Napoleonic and Spanish American wars, possibly making the Spanish Empire as strong as the British Empire in this alternate timeline.
I'd presume he avoided dealing with that because if you did note the changes, even with ignorance of how geologically it changes human history, the relation of this massive continent spanning two sides of an ocean and the history that could evolve from there with a Phillipine Sea Trade Triangle and the empires that could spawn from it would likely have the chance to already change so much in wider world history, let alone in just East Asia or even the Americas. As he said, if he did consider it changed world history in dramatic ways, he'd basically be making stuff up, and if he didn't, and the tech and development was largely the same as it was for Polynesian OTL, it would likely just end in European colonization of some form. I could certainly see there being a potentially difficult empire to break into on the continent, especially the likely far more developed western peninsula where those technologies from trade and overall larger population would likely make it difficult to colonize. In such a case though, at best for the European powers, it would just be a bit tougher to colonize than some of the other colonies, and at worst for them, they'd probably still have some trade concessions and ports like China or early India colonization. It's all difficult to tell though, given the amount of butterflies that would or could come with such a place and how soon you run into just pure speculation based on speculation.
the simple issue is that going into any serious depth on this potential reality would make a several hour long video, a very cool historic fiction video but a bloody long one and those take ages to edit
He ignores all the archaeological evidence and advancements of Nan-Madol and Easter Island, sadly that's just the beginning. Mu was catastrophically gone by the time your theory catches up. ✌️
Likely, trade with Asia for centuries would have probably meant that they had gunpowder weaponry, so I don't think that the continent would have been steamrolled by the Europeans. Not saying there wouldn't have been wars, but it's hard to say what really would have happened.
As well as asian technology it would probably end up with a lot of asian people via migration. It might start off as Polynesian but would probably become quite mixed before long. God, what am I doing actually thinking about this..
@@DinoCism yup. I can easily see it being an east Asian,Southeast Asian & Polynesian mixed on the western side of Mu while on the eastern side it'll be Polynesians & indigenous Americans. In the middle it'll be Polynesian nomads who just wants to be left alone.
@@XXXTENTAClON227 Not in the same way though. Asia had the situation where their governments fell and control of Asian countries fell to European empires. Not like the Americas and Australia where steel and germs wiped out the populations to such a degree that Europeans were just walking onto free land and started setting up house. Also, not EVERY Asian country fell, just the ones that were weak with infighting already, making them easy pickings.
If there had been a huge continent across the pacific I think that contact between the new and old worlds would have been established so long ago that we wouldn't have historical records for it. Any population experiencing demographic collapse due to infectious diseases would have been long gone in the forgotten past. Domesticated animals would have spread so long ago we might not know that they hadn't always been everywhere.
Since I was a about twelve I’ve had the concept of a fantasy novel set on a fictional pacific continent that is basically like a Middle Earth Tolkien kind of Historical Fantasy of the peoples, wars, languages ect. Before slowly splitting and sinking like Atlantis due to immense short term volcanic eruptions and spasms in continental drift I’m glad Cody has thought about this too This video has inspired my to get back into writing the book series I always wanted to make
That sounds really interesting and intriguing, I’m also planning out my own book series which will be a novella collection series that I titled Mysteriarch Mythos anthology. The series will be a esoteric occult sci-fi, supernatural/cosmic horror, parallel/alternative universe/history and dark mystery series. The world that the series takes place in is on a continent in the North Pacific and arctic/sub arctic during the preflood era, before the era of myth in the protozoic era. That’s when the pacific was mostly called the great Yehnèisian Sea. The main provincial territory in the series is Hyrumund territory. Which was originally within the far distant future TimeFractal of the great river of time, however in the year 2230 a event called the time fracture/great sundering occurred. That resulted in the entirety of the future TimeFractal being teleported to the far distant ancient preflood/PreMyth era of the past. Over time the fallen and lost future TimeFractal slowly molded with the past and became one with it, as did the other TimeFractals. The timelines of the alternative/parallel world of Terragartha were fused into one. The society of my books world is still futuristic for the most part with advanced technology and small traces of hyper advanced technology. There’s a societal balance between all the sciences ( both higher and lower), technology, spirituality and the mystic arts.
This is really interesting. You played with some real fun stuff at the beginning. Early immigrations and weather and biomes and all that fun jazz. Kinda disappointed it ended with a slap of modern European centric history over top, but that can't really be helped. Did make me chuckle because of the thought, instead of Columbus misnaming the west indies, it would been west Mu. If anything they would have thought the Americas were Mu.
I think an interesting possibility is the introduction of gunpowder and metalworking to Mu through their trade with Asia, which also would affect Australia and possibly even South America. I imagine that the interior of Mu would be a lot like the interior of Africa or South America where exotic species and isolated tribes could be found.
Seeing yet another alternate history get conquered by colonization really makes me wonder what it would take for there to be an alternate history where colonization failed. Not necessarily all of colonization but for at least one civilization to exist that when Europeans try to colonize it they just can't. For it to have the resources and war experience needed to be able to defeat the Europeans. I thought Mu might be the one to defeat colonization since it's trade access to China would give it both access to gunpowder and experience with plague. As well as Mu's massive size allowing it to both have plenty of natural resources, and multiple nations that could conflict with each other thus raising their overall proficiency at war.
IMO I think the reason is because he ignored the fact that Mu would get access to Chinese weapons and a harder colonization of the americas makes Mu even harder to be taken over
US military losing to Tecumseh or the Spanish losing to Moctezuma comes up often for me. 100% possible but never came to pass. Closest we have is Sentinel Island.
@@board-qu9iu Yeah its weird that he got bent up on the sealevel thing but handwaved away the fact it wouldn't be just diseases being traded. Centuries before a European set foot in the Americas they would have been exposed to: -Proper livestock, which is sort of the bedrock for any advanced society. Livestock is absolutely critical for moving up the production-efficiency ladder, which frees up more people from having to work in food-related roles and instead work in more complex professions. -Horses. Huge understated reason for the early spectacular successes of Europeans. It wasn't guns that let Cortez overcome 100-to-1 odds it was all the dudes in steel armor on horseback that might as well been invulnerable to the native armies. Also incredibly important for travel and transportation over land. -Ironworking, similar to above. Naturally ironworking is also vital to industrialization down the road. -Gunpowder, I think this is actually the least important one. The Chinese basically did nothing with gunpowder after discovering it and most cultures that interacted with it did not majorly improve it, until it got to the Middle-East and then Europe. Its possible the Mu or (Native) Americans could have broken this mold but I doubt it. -Philosophy: the wildcard, its really impossible to predict what the exchange of *ideas* would do. Just think about religions: What would China be like if Buddhism was not exported there? Whats Africa like if Islam did not proselytize past the Sahara through trade? What does a modern Zoroastrian Persia look like? etc etc. Thats just religions. Hell, its entirely possible that northwest Mu gets sucked into China's orbit of Confucian/Buddhist imitation states. Could keep going on and on but just with the above you could easily make a more interesting scenario compared to "CORTEZ DOES IT AGAIN, HOW DOES HE KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS?"
First the video about Atlantis, then Lemuria and now Mu, now I feel complete! Thank you for presenting this legendary geographical trinity! I really love when they give it more of a speculative realism approach!
@@Soul-cry1 True, there are many who point to that but answer me this why Lemuria is only in the indian ocean while Mu is in the pacific ocean? It reminds me a lot of how the location of Atlantis changed throughout the ages.
@@juanisol8275 people often get it's location confused because they go by different names but Mu is another name for Lemuria which was in the Pacific, that doesn't mean there wasn't some other land mass in the Indian ocean with a civilization unto itself.
I thought they had found a 'lost' continent that sunk that new zealand is a mountain range on. It was on a geography channel i watched like 3 years ago, I'm gonna have to track that video down again... It was interesting and apparently the sinking process had something to do with the type of new lava being created having a different buoyancy on the mantle if i recall. Going from basaltic rock to a more mud-like rock, the same reason that the marinara's trench is so deep,
There is a mod for hoi4 that actually adds Mu into the game. I like that Mu better because it’s smaller than this mu but probably still big enough to be considered a continent. I’d also be curious to see what would happen if Hyrule was real and Termina was in the North Pacific.
I'd expect that the presence of this Pacific continent would either cause much earlier circumnavigate (around 1000, like Viking expeditions), or even completely prevent the rise of European powers. Having a trade route east out of Asia would be talked about all along the Eurasian trade routes, and in some cases may significantly reduce trade in that direction.
I think the Polynesians, Incas, and Aztecs having potential access to horses, cows, steel, gunpower, artillery, and arquebuses through trade with East Asia would change colonization quite drastically. Plus the expaded trade could lead to the Ming dynasty maintaining their trade fleet and not isolating themselves.
The ancient Aztecs and maybe the Inca might have had access to horses if they hadn't gone extinct in North America about 15,000 years ago. I wonder if climate effects due to Mu would have prevented that.
Hell, we might've even gotten a Sunset Invasion scenario
I think they would still get conquered, but North America, US and Canada would demographically look more like Central and South America. The population would be less white and more mixed. With the North American Natives not being wiped out by disease, they would control more land, forcing the settlers to work with the locals instead of displacing them.
So less racial diversity in the US(pretending it still exists) would change our entire history. And cultures and religions would blend as well. It may also cause the US to be much less powerful, as it may be stuck in New England and other countries take it's place in the rest of North America.
Exactly, it'd be more akin to trying to colonize Japan with 300 Conquistodors. These people also would've been just as robust towards Old World diseases as the Europeans, so unless they launched a formal military campaign I just don't see anything but the coast being colonized until the 19th century.
@@majinjason Actually I feel like the end result would be somewhere between Mexico and India. I mean minor casualties because if disease and being technologically much further ahead would make a lightning conquest like the spanish ones in our time pretty much impossible in meso-america and the andes as well as making any conquests in other areas a lot harder as well. I would assume the spanish taking over many islands and coastal strongholds but aside from that there being a lot more trade and missionary work, probably not always restricted to amicable means but going hand in hand with a slow more diplomatic takeover/subjegation instead of an outright conquest of the developed areas. In the meantime colonizers would probably continue to carve up the more tribal areas with their increasing tech advantage. In the end the meso american and andean civilisations would probably get fully occupied for a few generations but probably keeping large parts if not most of their culture and religion into the modern age. Also I feel like settler colonization wouldn't really happen in the core parts of american civilisation, meaning there would hardly be much influx from european ethnicity but I could see african slaves beeing imported maybe along with rich white people setting up plantations as well as taking over many important parts of the local economy over time...
Somewhere in the Mu Continent universe, Cody is making a video that asks "What if Mu never existed and there were only islands in the Pacific?"
what a crazy world it would be without Mu 🤣
Cody wouldn't exist in such universe
@@Tyulenin why
@@Nemenis in short: butterfly effect and america
The Muniverse
"Water levels will rise and change everything!" If we can add a continent, we can remove an equal volume of water. I think that's an allowable handwave for this scenario.
EDIT: The whole evolution of life on Earth would change so no humans would exist. There, discussion finished.
Ye
but where do we put the water?
But another thing is the loss of the equatorial Pacific current, which drives El Niño and La Niña events. And would change weather patterns and climate all around the world
Sure, and you could put Earth in the orbit of Mars too, but generally, you want to handwave as few things as possible. One way to keep the sea level similar without changing the rest of the planetary geophysics is to deepen the ocean basin and increase the cryosphere and inland seas or lakes and aquifers.
@@jakeaurod I think if you made Antarctica larger to have more ice it could be a similar water level. But there’s still the current thing to worry about
There is a sub continent under New Zealand that they recently discovered. Apparently, the mountains of New Zealand are the highest point of the continent.
Isn't that cool? It was called Sundaland.
@@fwMMVIIit’s actually zealandia! Sundaland is the subcontinent of south east Asia
Yeah usually the highest point of a continent is a mountain
No dis but pretty sure this has been common knowledge for 10 years now…
@@beestings22 Oh, sorry! You're right!
I can see Mu being a serious contender on the world stage, because being on that trade route would make them UNIMAGINABLY wealthy. Since the climate is so consistent, societies would have an easier time spreading over large distances, so you've got the potential for centralization and empire. The real juice to inject would be a couple fictional invasions by an Indian or Chinese power to spread the good word of our lord and savior The Horse to Mu, and things snowball from there.
With the large central plains of the continent to really thrive in, horses would make linking up West and East overland truly feasible. It'd take a while to actually take off, sure, but after hanging out and chilling and hunting megasloths for a thousand years, suddenly the plains nomads have horses--and maybe more importantly, the places just bordering the plains nomads now have horses. All it takes is one Cyrus from a plains-adjacent backwater city-state to sweep in toward that wealthy west coast with horse archers and light cavalry, conquer that peninsula and get the supercharge from the triangular trade, and you've got a real son of a bitch of an empire on your hands.
By the Common Era, I could see the friction in that region creating a second Mediterranean pressure cooker environment out there, and then all bets are off. You've got Chinese dynasties in Mu, Munese dynasties in China, religious wars between the blend of weird Hindu-Inca syncretized East and a newly converted Muslim West, shit's wild.
Awesome this is a great theory
This- massive biologically rich landscape bordered by Japanese and Chinese empires? You’d better beleive there would be at least one imperial power here!!
Damn what an awsome theory
I’d honestly kinda view Europe as a backwater part of the world in this scenario. Spanish gold and silver plundered from the Americas fueled European economies and allowed Europe to advance. The Atlantic would no longer be the primary economic power for the past 500 years but probably mainly Asia-Mu
Parts of Mu might be captured by the CCP and live under Com-Muism.
A great follow up idea to this is: the Americans vs the Japanese in the deserts of Mu, happening simultaneously with the North African campaign.
That sounds like a bodyslam by the Americans. Japanese heavily lacked mobility whereas the Americans were the most mobile combatant of WW2. The environment of the Pacific restricted epxloitation of this. But who knows, maybe the existence of this continent makes the Japanese military change their doctrine and focus more on heavy armor and mobility.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 If the us owned the entire northern half of the continent, the Japanese might not have even attacked. That's a lot of extra real estate, which means an even higher us population.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 "That sounds like a bodyslam by the Americans. Japanese heavily lacked mobility whereas the Americans were the most mobile combatant of WW2."
One phrase: Kasserine pass.
USAs military started WWII in absolutely dreadful shape. The mobility came later, and USA never truly mastered desert warfare. It's easy to win when you have over 10 times more troops and closer to a THOUSAND times more supplies. But early in the Pacific? Before USA started learning lessons?
@@DIREWOLFx75 I'm sure they'd win with the power of friendship
@@pola5392 What friendship?
As various officials of USA has openly said, USA does not have friends, it has interests.
Which BTW, is one of absolute dumbest things i've ever heard from actual officials of any nation.
whenever I hear more about pseudo-archeologists and their worldbuilding theories they remind me more and more of an evil version of JRR Tolkien
@im calling saul ratio
@@troll-bf4uo damn you ratioed him hard
@im sacred I fucking fell for it, how can I be so naïve
Evil version of JRR Tolkien, so H.P Lovecraft? The only thing in the Pacific is R’lyeh?
It makes me want to sit down and write a D&D campaign 😂
When I was a child, around 12-14, I used to imagine these kinds of things, I've written a few books/stories throughout my childhood and one of them was about a civilization in a massive island between Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Obviously I didn't have enough knowledge and study to imagine a realistic climate, fauna, flora and more, like you did, but it was a really fun project.
Is that just straight up Thule?
Instead of mu rising sea levels, why not assume there is less water? I mean you are assuming a lot more land, why does it displace water rather than replace water? Both are reasonable assumptions since, you know, they are totally made up. Would be interesting video. And easier to conceive the consequences of MU
@Safwaan Not if it is all replaced by the exact same amount of land. Then the sea level would be unchanged.
@u know me You donut rolled me :(
Is mean its what a child would do.
True, this is all hypothetical. But there's a marginally-better argument for assuming a consistent volume of water on earth given the processes involved. But obviously that also has FAR greater impact on world history. I'm guessing that's why he didn't assume any change in sea levels for most of the video 😋
Edit: we can also assume the added land mass came from changes to the geography of Earth's crust, rather than any 'new' mass being added
Less water changes a lot more than just the sea level. That could change the entire Earth's gravity if you consider the differences between the Mass and said water.
Edit: This works for either A: If Mu is a true continent and as such wasn't just placed onto Earth, as removing water would reduce the Earth's mass, as well as B: if Mu appeared out of thin air replacing the water, as we cannot assume its exact mass.
It's actually really interesting to think about the idea of two Polynesian civilizations, one maybe Chinese-inspired and one Inca-inspired, having vastly different religious and cultural ideals and clashing over them, while still speaking a somewhat mutually intelligible language and sharing lots of basic culture with each other. Imagine what those wars would look like. This is fascinating to think about even if the dude who invented Mu was bonkers.
Their culture would be awsome tbh ,
I'd love to see how a revealed religion
(Like buddism,christianity,islam,confucianism) by the Mu-pepole would look like ,
This essentially creates another great civilization
I think China wouldn't exist, not as in today, having MU smack in the center would change a lot more than what was imagined. I think MU would have the possibility of being the center of the civilized world, who has to say even Europe as today existed. The possibiliies are endless and this video really shows how egocentrical we can be in the sense of, we think that we matter, while the truth is, we don't and most likely no country that exists today would exist in that timeline
The Mu Civil Wars... Now that might be interesting as well.
One comparable example is Vietnam and Cambodia. They both speak Austroasiatic languages but one is Sinicized and the other is Indianized
Why is Polynesian culture not interesting enough for you in it’s own right? Why you wanna bastardise our proud and ancient culture? Austronesians are the most expansive civilisation in ancient history. From Taiwan to Papua to Hawaii to Rapanui to New Zealand to Madagascar the the largest civilisational area on earth
Now imagine if all the hypothetical landmasses were real? Mu, Atlantis, Lemuria, Zealandia, and all the obscure ones as well.
Zealandia is not "hypothetical". It was a 4.9 million km2 continent. New Zealand and New Caledonia comprise most of the 6% still above water.
@@shanemcdowall yeah well I'm talking about a resurfaced version
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Adria - What if Greater Adria still existed?>
means earth is drier and colder
colder would be great
just need a simple moisturizer
Just goes to show you, crazy has been around a lot longer than twitter, it’s just easier to find now
We really haven't changed as a species nearly as much as people think we have. We just have shinier toys and more dangerous weapons now. 😅
Hearing Cody call a theory "batshit stupid" made my day for some unexplainable reason.
Don’t click on that link if you don’t have *Threat Protection* enabled.
@@zenith6939 Thank you for the words of warning, sir.
@4:55
@@nodnarbleahcim5097 Thanks for the time, bro.
"Batshit" ...
"Mierda de *mu*rciélago"
Coincidence?!
Meta Pyshical Archeology is a term I never expected to hear but I imagine even flat earthers and ancient alien scientists would think they're crazy
"There's only room in here for one meta physical seeker"
No, the meta physical acrcheologists have been absorbed by them. I follow a couple on RUclips because I like hearing their theories, whether I gree with them or not.
I think that the Megafauna would probably survive in Mu, purely due to how big it is. Yet I can imagine that they'd be incredibly endangered and wouldn't be that numerous, with them surviving where the humans were less numerous.
They would probably end up just like the bison in the Midwest, killed off during and after colonization by outsiders
@@wavelength0123 yeah
Megafauna wasn't extinct because of humans
@pedro roque it was human overhunting. For Marsupials, definitely.
D
So, another important question is: How would the International Date Line look like if Mu existed?
Would it zigzag around the whole continent?
@@evanlee4289 maybe set in the Atlantic, there's an small stretch between Europe/ africa and south America where there's no landmass. the first hour will be in brazil and the last hour in cabo verde (maybe)
I would love a video on if the Sino-Soviet split never happened or was patched up in the 70s. It would be a wacky and awesome scenario.
@today was a good day stupid bot
@Safwaan a unification of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria… would still be a Yugoslavia by etymology lol
69th like nice🤙🏻
@@moonshinei congratulations! You've found an even stupider multi ethnic regime in the Balkans than Rumelia or Austria-Hungary!
The USSR gets one more S?
Union of Sino/Soviet Republics? USSSR?
I know you like to keep your alternate histories grounded and logical, but I do enjoy when you go the extra step of complete fictional wild speculation
It's the Mythbusters method. "Yes, this is bullshit. But how much dynamite do we have to use to make it NOT bullshit?"
A non topic but still interesting thing to learn about here (since you were talking about this on twitter i did my own research about the pacific) The eastern Pacific region, which extends southward from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, is relatively narrow and is associated with the American cordilleran system of almost unbroken mountain chains, the coastal ranges of which rise steeply from the western shores of North and South America. The continental shelf, which runs parallel to it, is narrow, while the adjacent continental slope is very steep. Significant oceanic trenches in this region are the Middle America Trench in the North Pacific and the Peru-Chile Trench in the South Pacific.
I’m not sure if you mean to say “I did mu own research about the pacific” and it is going to give me an aneurism.
Hey, i follow u on twitter :)
@@YuriCcrt34 Thanks :)
I love how self aware this channel is when making all of this high effort stuff. The acknowledgement that the city states looked like Europe made me laugh my ass off. All to say, such great and well researched work and keep it up!
I’d argue MU would have more likely been settled by the ancestors of Native Australians rather than the Polynesians. The ancestors of indigenous Australians arrived there when sea levels were low and nearly connected Asia to Australia. Depending on Mu’s geography it may have also been connected and allowed for human migration tens of thousands of years ago
@The Philosoraptor I mean there’s a chance Mu wouldn’t have been connected to Sunda and Sahul but, it it was it likely would have been settled by humans 70,000+ years ago when the Australian aboriginals arrived in Australia
Australia was never connected to Asia, the gap was just smaller; the ancestors of Native Australians (and Papuans) would still have needed to boat between several islands to get from Sunda (a southeast Asian peninsula that existed during the ice age) to Sahul (the then geographically united Australian continent, containing Australia and New Guinea). You may be right about people from Australia (the continent, not the country) being the first to reach Mu though; early Papuans also island hopped across Melanesia, which would bridge the gap between Mu and New Guinea (as well as partly being included in Mu), well before the Polynesian migrations.
I think so too. In my head, I theorised that Australia practically repelled my Austronesian, Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian ancestors from ever outright settling on the continent owing to its desert climate and the sheer vast expanse of the continent. Maybe, in this alternate universe, perhaps my ancestors would have settled on Australia's humid western and northern coasts, while the ancestors of Australian Aborigines would have settled in the desert regions of the south and east?
I thought that as well but seeing as how new guinea wasn't populated until ~3,000 BC due to no land bridge I find it very unlikely there would somehow be one connecting Mu.
They're the same guys, they're both descended from settlers from Indonesia
I really love that the continent of Mu does in fact look kind of like a slightly more bulbous New Guinea.
It's a giantic version of New Guinea yes
@@NormalChannel95lol on steroids 😂
I disagree. It looks like a rip off of New Guinea, and it even looks dumber when you can see New Guinea just next door to it on a map like as if there is a mini version of Mu right next to it. It’s stupid.
Is it weird I want to see a scenario where Lemuria, Zelandia, Atlantis and Mu all were existing continents at once?
+ Greater Adria and Doggerland
According to the New Age people. They all existed at some point and they tell tall tales about Atlantis going to war with the Lemurians and using the equivalent of an ancient weapon to create massive waves and drown the continent of Lemuria.
Throw in Green Antarctica too while we're at it
Same, so much so I made a custom map of it in civ. Celt Mu going strong!
it would be the most batshit insane episode but would be awesome.
21:18. Omg, The Road to El Dorado Goldposting. I knew I recognized that meme template anywhere.
I use to make memes for that page on Facebook. Lot of fun, really hope you're a member there Cody!
I disagree with the ending statements that Mu would eventually be cut up by European Powers. It’s underestimating just how much Mu would positively impact oceanic cultures, and overestimating the power of European nations.
A main reason why Oceanic / Native American cultures couldn’t really defend against European conquest was almost exclusively because they simply didn’t have enough resources and communication / organization. They were stuck in tiny, habitation-poor islands with thousands of miles of ocean between each other. Colonial powers could easily island hop, conquering one small island after the other.
With Mu existence though, these Oceanic cultures suddenly have complete access to a massive continent, fit for large scale habitation and civilization. And with their connection to Asia, they would likely be right behind the two other continents in technology and industry.
At worst, I could easily see civilizations on Mu being capable of resisting widespread European colonialism in a similar way to Asia; where although marked by colonialism, the continent still retains it’s cultural independence and becomes a large power at the turn of the century.
At best, Mu could probably be an active and viable threat to Europe, being a peer to peer rival.
I disagree with you, no power on earth of the era could resist the Era of European dominance, Asia didn't really do well, Japan was the only exception, everyone else was humiliated or out right conquered.
Lets look at that track record: The subcontinent of India wasn't united as rule and most of the history of the subcontinent shows that, to China couldn't resist the empires of the era, Thailand had to give up land to the French and British as a buffer state, Burma, Vietnam, the sultans of the western half of indo-pasific where all conquered dispute having comparable technology. The sultans even had ottoman cannons. Part of their fall to Spain and the Dutch was the economic collapse that occurred when the Ming Chinese isolated themselves they weakened the states around them as China was the center of the world's trade at the time.
Looking at how far east and along the equator Mu is, it is next to the eastern, less develop half of the indo-pasific, the Philippines, Australia, New Guinea, & New Zealand where all by and large tribal and in spite of being settled for far far longer then Mu they possessed no big civilizations that even approach the larger states of Asia. Unlike that region, with both the distance and short time frame, domestication would take far far to long, that means no draft animals to build large civilizations with. It doesn't matter if they have a lot of rivers and river deltas good for city states and kingdoms, so did the eastern half of the indo-pasific. The city of cahokia is a good example of what they are more likely to look like, more then any of the city states of central America. 2000 years is not enough time for a strong civilization to form that wouldn't anything more then an irrigation society like that of Mesopotamia or the Aztecs, and that is being generous given the large size of the seas between the Philippines, Australia, New Guinea, & New Zealand and then overcome the tribes that continually raid into these civilizations even before the horse was domesticated. An that bit he had with a mediterranean of the pacific sound funny to me when considering new the waters around Austrialia, New Guinea, & New Zealand are very rough, and that the sea would be much larger then the Mediterranean Sea by far.
That leaves them with, in the best of cases, city states, and the jungles also present another issue as the inability to burn down the forest leave them in the best of cases like the central American city states. This region was also hit hard by the old world plagues a little later then those of the new world. Contact with the Spanish will see their population cut by 90% and from that they will never recover just as the new world tribes didn't. This is what really determines the battles with the 16th-19th century maritime empires.
Even if they did the Spanish conquests of the new world and the Philippines, as well as the Dutch conquests of west indo-pasific like Java and the spice islands, who did resist, show Mu's own low development and tribal nature would ensure their control is limited to insight of the coast for both these early empires, just as the Spanish struggled to push north into the Americas and were limited to forts in California and Texas, the Dutch didn't even have a proper fort on New Guinea or Australia, it's just not profitable for the effort necessary.
It's the later British and Americans that could take the continent with their settlers. The French would have issues projecting power and enforcing claims but nothing is out of the cards. With the plagues of Europe coming, the native have the same issues as those of the new world, whose population never recovered even centuries after the plagues sweep through.
It doesn't matter if they have a lot of rivers and river deltas good for city states and kingdoms, so did the eastern half of the indo-pasific. It doesn't matter if they have a lot of rivers and river deltas good for city states and kingdoms, so did the eastern half of the indo-pasific. A new British settler colony is made, and the Americans settle the better northern half as early as the 1880s Japan get nothing and would have to fight these to powers and their settled populations, and just as Hawaii was seen as integral by that time, so to would the Americans so the norther holding of Mu.
The British and Dutch would be exhausted and loose it all as without india and Jave their Empires where unsuitable, while the US would be at the height of it's power, it's keeping the northern half as it's manifest destiny would have never ended in 1890s.
This is a timeline with a massive US power, and a second Australia.
@@nicholasrocha2414 You aren’t actually considering the fact that Mu *is an actual continent off the coast of Asia*. Your still thinking that this is the same Polynesians as in our own history.
You assume that Mu wouldn’t be settled until Polynesian started sailing, and so there would only be 2,000 year of development. Yet this is faulty logic, since if Mu actually existed, it would’ve absolutely had humans settling around the same time as Australia, some 50,000 years ago.
You assume that Mu would be decimated by old world plagues, but fail to realize that Mu would have constant and consistent contact with Asia, and by extension, Europe, and have immunities.
You apparently don’t realize that the tribal nations of oceanic were hampered by their lack of suitable terrain, terrain that would be found in Mu.
You say that the vanguard asian nations fell due to a lack of trading power, but don’t realize that in this world, Mu would become as much of an economic power as China.
You say that the jungles of Mu would stop progress, yet the massive inner heartland, ripe for farmland.
You aren’t comprehending that Mu is an actual continent onpar with all of the same advantages that Europe would have.
If ur listening he said that in these scenario mu didnt changed much of history so he still included the colonization.
@@nicholasrocha2414
"Japan was the only exception"
*_Conveniently forgets about Thailand and how it dodged European Colonialism by using European advisors and contacts to reach a technological and cultural level that would have made the European powers uncomfortable with "civilizing" an already-civilized country._*
@@Username-le4eq I mean I get that, but I disagree with the premise that Oceanic Colonialism would be exactly the same as in our own history.
I'm just wondering why the people on Mu would have been relatively weak enough for the Spanish to basically bully land out of them, with their own continent and traving with Asia, they would likely have the metals and technology to keep a good hold on their land
I feel like the video runs into some determinism issues, i.e. "well, no non-European power was able to hold off European colonisation in our timeline, sooooo..."
Nevermind that a trade network like mentioned in the video would very likely shift dynamics a LOT. For example, an actual trade route stretching from East Asia all the way to the Americas would mean native tribes and empires could have likely gotten access to gunpowder, which would have made initial contact with Europeans... less one-sided.
I agree especially since while they wouldn't get Asian trade nothing says they couldn't receive trade from European nations which would then trickle to North and South America
Honestly Spain conquered the Aztecs because they got all the native tribes to rise up against then and then disease began wiping them out
They would've been far more advanced in metallurgy and animal husbandry if that continent in the middle traded with them
Completely agree. A continent that big would probably mean stable systems the colonisers would have found hard to squash. Heck, this is a fantasy scenario. I vote that the civilization from this continent will be even better than the whites at colonising OTHER continents and in this timeline all maps are Mu-centrific.
@@Midorikonokami agreed, they would have most likely been able to conquer parts of spain and the Americas, as well sa Africa although they'd hit a limit as i dont think they'd be able to take to much beyond the coastlines, the real question is whether they would side with the muslim caliphate or Christian kingdoms as well as what religion would be dominant there.
its such an interesting conundrum especially since almost everyone in europe especially the greeks would consider this new continent to be atlantis
@@Memelord-md5hs exactly. It may even have been called that on 'western' maps for a while, and which political system they would have had too! Olygarchy? Monarchy? Diarchy? Dare I dream, democracy?? Or maybe something in between like Venice had, which brought stability for decades. Or even even, the beautiful system that the Native Americans had that the 'american' Europeans -stole- ahem, adopted. How THAT would have effected the world politics and how it would be different or the same today... And whether they had a lot of natural resources or few, and how they would have - in this scenario - probably stomped the British into the mud they came from.
I am glad we finally got to talk about Mu for once.
We do not talk about Mu. Mu. Mu.
If this was real, then the modern pacific time would be crazy and chaotic
@@that1worldcitizen152 what? You don't think all of the Pacific is one time zone do you?
@@druidictroy1157 no what I mean is the modern era of the pacific, you know, from around the 1500’s up to modern times
@@that1worldcitizen152 ahhh ok. Sorry about that. That makes a lot more sense. But it's RUclips comment section so I never know what I'm running across. 😋
Found you're channel awhile ago and i love you videos history and geography are my favorites subjects keep up the good work dawg
Imagining a Pacific Theater in WW2 with Mu existing is real crazy and pretty interesting
It would be a massacre of a great or worse scale , everything that would encounter the word wars would end up in an apocalypse .
Mu is essentially comparable to Europe and Asia at that state
But what if it changed course of history enough to prevent ww2 we know?
@@Losowy that's not as fun to imagine so I'm going to pretend it isn't a possibility
@@vertexed5540lol funny how you replied almost 2 years later
this channel is gradually explaining all the civ 6 continent names to me and I appreciate it
If you went with the premise, that Mu would be settled only around 1500 BC there would be a very very high chance, that the east coast would still be completely unsettled/unknown to make any difference for the Americas. Polynesians only settled the pacific so fast, because distances between islands are so large. With a giant continent people wouldn't travel hundreds of miles to settle new lands. They would go out and find the next best place a few dozen miles away maybe. No need to skip thousands of miles. The settlement of this continent would thus be much much slower than the settlement of the pacific islands.
Idk people have a tendency to walk in one direction until they run out of space too. Hard to say
Actually, that’s another possible cultural and geopolitical shift for Asia and Oceania: What does the presence of a frontier end up doing? A space that is open for population movement from what has been historically one of the most developed areas of the world?
People are curious and often do set out for new lands. The distance from islands and even mainland would be so small, you'd literally be able to at least see a glimpse of it depending on the atmosphere conditions of the time. This alone would set off people's curiosity enough to want to go explore.
It actually would've been settled long before that simply because of that fact, to the point we'd literally be finding cousin ancestors fossils there. It would def change the entire world and our history.
They only need one "promised land" land narrative to move inwards so the chances of them populating the entire continent are actually much higher
dont u think that the presence of mega fauna and a lack of competing humans would spark a population boost and there for increase settlement of the continent? look at all the other continents, humas are every where. i personally would be VERY interested in japanese samurai culture finding mu, since they are so cough, cough, friendly, cough. i could see japanese culture doing its thing on there if the other asians dont beat them to it.
There already is one. It's called New Zealand. Wrongly described in the past as an island, in fact, New Zealand is a part of the large and mostly submerged continent of Zealandia.
yess i dont know why more people dont talk about the one that talked into the austraua for the one that is my one word and the sayed the gogo and the car and cat dog with the rootbear convertible.
@@alexanderfoster8171 I know this is old at this point, but I just have to ask, was this intended to make sense?
@@CJ-mk3nf well yes the because of the one that the dog for the world and my one to be one leaves for could the one because swear to remember it you because of the all too why me? so yes it is because we lost in too much tore it there all too well.
i flew intercontinental several times as a young one, and I remember sitting window seat and looking out at the ocean expanse for miles for long moments spanning several minutes at a time, and thinking how easy it would be to hide something out there. So much space, we don't really process it most of the time. You could absolutely land a space ship the size of a small country in the middle of the water and -if you knew the plane paths and could avoid being in them -there's no WAY anyone would ever find you out there. I also remember picturing sea creatures as big as I could see. They could totally exist out there and there would be literally no way to detect them. Crazy how much of the earth is undiscovered by humans.
ong like if aliens come from the right angle, they can see a virtually almost water planet and see that nothing is there and become uninterested
@@0piumaeternumthey’d see light from the cities
That is, until satellites appear, they are pretty much the "know all land" card in "LIFE 'the game'"
Um... you do realize that radar and satellites exist, right? You couldn't land a spaceship anywhere on Earth undetected. What year do you think this is?
Assuming our tech is better than their stealth tech.@@JakeKoenig
The Milanesians, and Micronesians would play a large role along with the Polynesians. These are three very distinct cultures and I understand in this video "Polynesian" is a standin for all three, but it's worth considering how different these three are today, and what that could have looked like in this alternative history. For example, the mountainous regions (highlands) of PNG (Milanesian) bear more similarity to how they lived 300 years ago vs how westerners live today. It's a similar geography to western Mu, and I couldn't foresee these folks being subjugated by colonialism (the highlands of PNG are... wild, by any measure).
Melanesian. milanesian wouldbe someone from the land of milanesas 🍛
Melanesian, not milanesian , but thanks for including us, we are often overlooked by many
@@oKayVayea, I’m Polynesian btw I’m samoan niuen and Tongan
I was waiting for some mention of how the geography of the Marianas Trench would affect the peninsula civilization. Like are the Chamorros separated by a massive mountain chain (if the ocean floor was inverted) or if they had a Marianas River Valley civilization but I guess he didn’t know that the “Ladrones” islands on the Mu map are actually the Marianas.
And how the most populated region (the peninsula) is mostly Micronesia in our universe
The “Lost Continent” story motif has been around, and usually is romanticized with colonial ideas. Yet, these fictitious continents (or locations) pose fascinating settings for alternative stories and ways that create history.
I’ve followed your channel for many years, and this content is just as intriguing as the next. Mu might be a cool concept to create many stories!
Like the real Zealandia thats an actual continent right where the guy says it is? You guys don’t want to admit you’re wrong so bad you just act like things don’t even exist.
@MrPaytonw34 what the fuck are you saying? Zealandia wasn't even in the exact spot that the creator of Mu said it was. It was next to Australia, also it was not even an island or continent, it depends on your opinion of what defines an island or continent is. Zealandia was smaller than Australia but bigger than Greenland, so it might be the biggest island or the smallest continent or the 2nd biggest island. And again, what. the. fuck. WERE YOU SAYING! That's why Zealandia is named after NEW ZEALAND. It was named after the mountains that survived the flood that the continent/island fell to and was on, New Caledonia also survived
@@MrPaytonw34 the real submerged continent is Sundaland in Indonesia and Malaysia, scientific research and evidence suggests that came from this continent, submerged in 10,000 years ago
@@MrPaytonw34 are you referring to the original commenter or what , cause no one is pretending Zealandia doesn't exist , its been proven by scientists for years
I can't believe there isn't already a half-baked effort at creating a story out of this from someone like Harry Turtledove
The rise of Europe had a lot to do with geography, and I see that possibly Mu could have all the qualifications to rival the Europeans. As said, their continent would be horizontal, leading to a climate that is relatively the same. Second of all, it's skinny enough that 2 civilizations on opposite sides of the continent could sail around to trade with each other with relatively good speed, sparking more exchange of goods and ideas. These ideas would lead to massive technological advancements not seen in Polynesian history in our timeline. And, this leads into my last point which is that a substitute for the horse or cow could evolve to make trading/farming easier, leading to the possibility of massive centralized empires built around agriculture, trade and production. This could lead to an empire similar to Rome, which straddled the Mediterranean, except this empire would instead be straddled by the ocean, but the idea is basically the same. Trade by the sea is everything, and agriculture and probably slavery is the backbone of the empire. Slaves might be taken from the New World, but over time American empires will import the same animals the Mu people had, leading to them also rising. In this timeline, when the Vikings came to America they might see civilizations near equal to their own, and Europeans would probably not be able to subdue the people of the New World. A funny change I think would happen is that instead of East and West being divided through the Pacific Ocean, it would probably be divided through the Atlantic Ocean instead due to cultural similarities between the Mu and other Asian people, and the fact that if you divided down the Pacific it would cut through the continent. In this timeline, the New World would probably be considered the far east, and Europe and Africa would be the far west.
This was a better scenario than the video.
If they were trading with East Asia they would definitely get cows, pigs, chickens, and horses as they are all native to that area and that's not even considering potential native domesticable animals on Mu.
Okay horses aren't exactly native to east Asia but they got to Europe from the steppe, they would get to Mu.
Western Mu would have strong links with China, which means gunpowder could easily reach them. This could lead to a state on the Mu peninsular that would be capable of, at the bare minimum, fending off European colonisers. Furthermore if Eurasian dieseases reached the Americas via Mu, the Spanish would struggle to conquer the Amiercas. I would imagine the Aztec empire becoming a vassal of Spain which would eventually revolt, while the Incan empire would likely never fall due to its mountainous terrain and the Spanish being tied down by rebellions in Mexico. Contact with Europe would mean these two empires would eventually also gain access to guns, horses and European-style ships, so eastern Mu might become a battle ground between the Incan, Aztec and West Mu empires.
So Mu is Calradia
Nah, that huge peninsula sticking out to Asia like a sore thumb would be a constant battlefield between Japan, the Ming dinisty trading fleet, and the Polynesian
Wouldn't Mu's existence lead to the possibility of its own Empire, ala the Chinese, Indian, and Japanese? If it's near such a wealthy area and has such consistent climate, a decent river valley is a great place for an empire, and a pressure cooker of various competing places could easily make a strong one. Depending on its strength, it might be the one doing the colonizing.
I agree, but there's a couple barriers that they'd have to break through first. The ones that immediately pop into my mind are how they're in a tropical environment and how that's horrible for diseases. The other thing that popped to mind is what kind of crops would they have? Would it be like how the Maori farmed? Since they're connected into this whole trade network with East Asia, I'd imagine that Rice Farming coupled with their climate would lead to quite a bit of Mu Rice being cultivated. Rice farming comes with different issues that need solving, if they do flood irrigation than they need to have a much more centralized government to maintain their flood canals, and with China being so close they'd definitely pull a lot of inspiration from the Chinese. What I can assume is that due to the combination of their climate and local trading partners, they'd be a relatively Authoritarian country/countries on that Western Coast.
I guess much of it does depend on Geography, if the interior is highly mountainous, then it'd be rather difficult to form a single Political entity that unites them early on, whereas if it's a flat plain than that would become significantly easier.
Heck, going off of an extension of the Geography question, what the heck is happening with nonrenewable resources? I'd imagine that there'd be whole new reserves of Oil and Gas due such a massive change in Tectonic activity over the past couple million years.
Anyway, it'd be possible but there's a lot of factors that we'd need to know in order to discuss that potentiality in any significant level of detail.
idk if they would be there long enough b4 other empires came knocking
@@intelligencecube6752 well an entirely unique staple crop could evolve on the continent that the mu people could use. Tropical climates havent really hindered empires, as shown by many indian empires of the past. The mughals were even the richest empire on the planet at one point
On the contrary a tropical climate is better as its easier to grow crops
Of course the 1963 film "Atragon" Has a depiction of Mu which might be accurate even if the continent isn't on the surface and just submerged underwater.
@@masterdeetectiv9520 Mughal were not tropical, only southern and eastern India is which they never conquered
I’m curious how times zones would work on this continent. Cuz the international date line cuts it in half. Imagine walking to your house and it’s 20 hours behind
I'd have to imagine the date line would get moved (either east or west) and some extra deviation put in it so it doesn't cross land.
Perhaps running it between Mu and the Americas?
@@347Jimmy maybe in the atlantic because alaska exists
@@Lugemaster1202 probably an even better place for it 👍
They already redrew it just to accommodate a tiny but very widespread island country; I have to think they would either do the same here or realign the grid so the IDL runs through the Atlantic.
I believe that if Mu existed, it would have been the pacific empire, maybe not as advanced as Europe, but definitely very advanced, as there is just so many trade to be had, that ideas would spread fast enough for naval type ideas or something like that would have exploded
Wonder if, especially if theres any trade with eastern China, the Mesoamericans would not just be better protected against Old World disease, but also better armed; After all, china did invent gunpowder many centuries prior to the Age of Discovery. And such a trade network of a Western Pacific Triangle and an Eastern Mu Triangle would create remarkable wealth, but also spur conflict that might drive acceleration of arms development; Even if they never quite hit an industrial revolution, theyd be better armed and protected against Spanish conquistadors and with fewer deaths from plague, have the armies and economies in reserve to defend themselves better; Not to mention, potential allies in the Muvian countries they trade with.
I argue europe wont be as advance. Mu have acces to all the world. Asia and the americas meaning their trade woukd be way better than europe trades
with the land mass that big, I gonna assume it's a continent with multiple countries. not one big empire.
The trade zones in Asia would be immense meaning they’d probably close in on the US and become the second largest or largest economy. The benefits of trading by sea is a lot, and considering this nation would also probably have to have a lot of water,
Considering it’s entire basis was
On islands, it’s waterways would help with geography and they could also just easily build canals. The pacific empire would probably have high HDI too
Lucas B
1) trade volume (and thus rate of information exchange and cultural competition) isn't just about proximity but also the terrain. Europe became more advanced than the rest of the world partially due to how easy trade could connect due to the abnormal number of navigable rivers and the abnormal number of natural harbours. Its why Europe developed faster than other areas along trade routes (and its why coastal Europe, ie Western and Southern Europe, developed faster than Eastern Europe). So Mu's development would also depend on how good their coastlines are for trade volume. The more peninsulas the better, not just proximity.
2) trade isn't the only driveing force of techology. The biggest driveing force is military competition (and other local competition). Europe's large number of rivers and mountains helps create inteneral competition, but it's lack of natural barriers to the east also allows new players to shake things up (the almost continuous phases of steppe invasions from the Indo-Europeans to the mongol successors and thousands of others), despite otherwise good terrain the reason China often stagnated is its good natural borders meaning internal stability could last longer before being shaken up.
Mu being a separate continent gives it even better natural borders than China, and thus even if its internal geography is similar to Europe/China, its geography would make its tech development more like China, but dialed up (ie likely even longer peroids of stability and stagnation). Its defensability and centre of trade would likely also give it an arrogance similar to irl China which further agrivated its periods of stagnation. Irl China went through periods of massive tech advancement (due to being located well for trade and good internal terrain) and periods of massive staganaiton. Mu would be similar but even more exteme of its internal geography is good.
3) in adition to good rivers and coastlines for large volume of trade, and plenty of natural intneral divsions, the tiger things that allowed Europe and China to advance faster than average is a good temperate climate. Hotter and colder climates reduce tech and societal advancement. Mu would not have a temperate climate. Its most northerally point is tropical. Assuming no other change to the world's climate (see no4) it would be most arrid desert. Its centre and west specifically. Its east would likely be hot and humid like the amazon, West africa or Indonesia. This means its societies would be hamstrung. Its East and centre would be dry and very under populated, very poor for trade and human habitation. This would also affect trade heading to the eastern part from Asia (as trade has to cross an ocean and then sail past a massive desert). The eastern part would be thick tropical rainforest and jungle, and similar have populations and deseases, likely very decentralised and staganent. It would be like a worse south east Asia. Hot and humid with lots of tropical deseases but even further from the temperate centres of tech development, separated by an ocean and a vast desert.
4) ofcaurse its existance would affect all of the earth's geography, but espeically the Pacific coasts. The whole world would be dryier, espeically the Pacific coasts. This so due to less evaporation from smaller oceans.its also because there is disrupted Pacific currents. Europe wpudl probably be more like China irl (still mostly temporate but with even more cold and arrid Western Europe, creating a large natural border like China irl), China would have a narrower temperate zone, and mu would be even more desert. This would likely result in mu being isolated.
5) If antartica (as a continent, and is instead a bunch of frozen islands) doesn't exist in this altensitve world then you would have a mu similar to no3, but China and the americas would be different. Due to the change in ocean currents, etc.
Mu's very existance woudk alter climate everywhere, but espeically the irl Pacific coasts. Which affects their trajectory and thus their affect on mu. But in all scenarios Mu is rather poor for civilisation even if its coasts and rivers were good.
If Mu started Human contact around 1500 bc, why wouldn't horses eventually be traded for goods ,that makes Mu easier to traverse and accelerates its human advancement
Fun fact: the entire story of The Mysterious Cities of Gold is based on James Churchward books on Mu. And honestly the fantasy world of this series is interesting and well made, when they explained the fall of Mu and Atlantis that was so cool ngl
nice fact but can I just say listening to him talk about this all I think about is the anime Gunjou no magme.
Yet again in one of your videos i have to point out to you that there is a distinct differnce between settling and colonzing.
Mu might also mean that Trans Atlantic Slave trade as we know it wouldn't exist. Due to a surviving native population immune to their diseases, Europeans wouldn't need to import African slaves to tend to their cash crops, resulting in a different ethnic makeup for the new world and a different Africa as well
Things might have played out similar to our timeline on the east coast, but a surviving native population on the west coast would mean that westward expansion would be a far longer and bloodier (to both sides) full on war of conquest instead of a bunch of sporadic battles aided by disease and railroad-sponsored outpopulation.
I think the Trans Atlantic Slave trade would have still happened anyway. (Even if only amongst the Portuguese between modern day Nigeria, Angola, and Brazil)
The natives would have died out regardless, not from disease, but from poor working conditions on the plantations (eg. sugar or silver) as per the very short life expectancy on a Brazilian sugar plantation in our own real timeline.
Africa is closer anyway and this again assumes that Europeans can defeat the natives
@@AlxndrHQ That's true, though I wonder how plausible the plantations would be if the native population was more resistant to diseases and how much that would effect native resistance. The Pequod wiped out a lot of settler populations
@@maseoembry4165 unfortunately, I think no matter how we look at it, the Americas (and Africa) would be colonized; even if it’s delayed by a couple hundred years relative to our timeline.
Main reason being: the Silk Road, and Guns.
Unless the empires in the Americas can establish trade with Chinese gunpowder merchants by sea before Europeans do so via the Silk Road; they would be no match for machine guns, and thus would be colonized. (Assuming Europeans still found a way to industrialize without the colonies)
However I think this arms race would have sent enslavement into overdrive. There likely would be people/war captives purchased/enslaved from South/Southeast Asian, Mu, and African slavers. There would also likely be a triangular slave trade on both sides of the Americas.
Slight correction: continental drift never really got accepted as a popular theory. It wasn't until plate tectonics was theorized in the 1960s that it actually became accepted as science fact, helped largely by the discovery of seafloor spreading.
"Sometimes we don't have to be realistic, lets just say there's a continent in there and it doesn't effect global climate too much."
"Anyway... lets reflect on how sea levels are effected, no coastal civilizations would exist as we know them."
He ignored the science later on the video
@@nosferatuoddz7974 yeah it was a weird moment is IMO the quality of the video fell by a lot
@@nosferatuoddz7974 yea, I know, it just came out of nowhere and I thought it was funny and a little annoying. Sometimes Cody can't control himself.
If wasn't just the sea levels, even if they were the same just the fact of something like a trade network from the Americas to Europe being possible would butterfly everything
As an Eastern Polynesian (New Zealand Māori and British) I do find these ideas fascinating. I've posed questions to an A.I app, asking how Māori culture would have developed if Zealandia had remained above the sea. It actually came to quite a few of the conclusions you came to.
🤫🤫🤫they pretend that Zelandia doesn’t exist their very hush-hush on it. Even going to the extreme where they make fun of it like in this video even though it’s real. If they admit it then they look like idiots and sense archeologists and archaeologists dick riders like this guy don’t wanna look like idiots, they just act like it doesn’t exist.
I play a lot of civilization 6 and there are continents and areas with names that I have never heard of before. Quite frankly watching your videos over the last couple years has allowed me to understand where the names of these continents come from. Some from history, some from old civilizations and others from books. I always found it a bit of a coincidence and that I enjoyed.
Even if it makes even less sense in regards to plate tectonics, I'd love to see a scenario with both Mu and Atlantis.
Then you could have a westwards extention of the silk road running from Europe to Atlantis to the Americas, and from there to Eastern Mu where it links up with the eastern end of the road.
One massive trade route encircling the globe.
I kind of wonder what It’d look like I’d you had all the geography videos together as one map
Like
Green Sahara
Green Antarctica
Zealandia
Mu
America and Parias
Atlantis
Shit would be Crazy and it’d be interesting to see how that stacks
what if we mine asteroids to use as new land for a mu-like continent?
@@ItsButterBean1020 that should be a book, the world building would be really interesting
@@rokamayonoh3rt362 it’d be fun potential for a fantasy series
Perhaps “Atlantis” is a larger landmass but possesses a California esque island adjacent to it and Mu could be another random land
@@wren_. we must dump ocean water somewhere else so the sea level won't rise
Alternate ideas: Chinese-writing, Buddhist Western Mu would have powerful enough civilizations for the Spanish language to never really take hold, and colonial holdings be fairly modest until later colonialism and the widespread use of the steam engine, resulting in a colonial experience somewhere inbetween that of Africa and East Asia, not the complete erasure that much of the Americas experienced. You could have "Muan Thailands" existing, countries that were never properly colonized, but instead became protectorates, or allied with one colonizer against others, getting preferential treatment. Hell, imagine a Muan Japanese-style modernization!
That might depend on how the mountains and valleys lined up on the Muan coast (and perhaps the interior). If I recall correctly from my poli-sci studies, a lot of cultural divides in South East Asia align with river valleys and can be dramatically different from those on the other side of the dividing ridge. Heck, cultures and ethnicities can be dramatically different between those who live on the valley slopes, those who live in the valley floor, and those who live on homes with stilts on the riverbank and floodplain.
@@jakeaurod Oh, absolutely. Papua is the most linguistically diverse region in the world, for example. These are all just ideas that I think would be neat.
Lol was that some Turtledove shade? It's a really good series. 6:21
Another consequence is that for sure America north of Amazon, south of Texas, west of Andes and the Caribbean would probably know how to make Iron weapons. By the time of Columbus arrival it'd probably be around 800-1000 year old set of skills they learned from traders of Mu.
They knew how to make them tho, theyre expert with rock and bronze. Is just iron was not as common as in other places in the americas
That was such a long way to say "central america"
Even though it is located in the South India Ocean, it would appear having something like the Kerguelen Plateau above water would likely be more grounded and possibly less disruptive (to the currents, etc) as despite being a microcontinent about 3 times the size of Japan recall it being estimated in one or more AH TLs potentially being capable of supporting a population roughly the size of New Zealand.
Which alternate histories???
I wanna see thiissssssss
Huh is it that big?
Also corn, potatoes, peppers. etc might move westward from Americas, into Mu and into Eurasian much much sooner. This could have great effect on the food supplies of the ancient world. High populations and more stable crops would massively change things.
Honestly? I expected to watch about 5 minutes of this video, and then click away because it was completely stupid, but instead it was one of the most entertaining and fun videos I've seen in quite some time. Very well thought out, and very fun speculation. Thank you for this video! Sharing with all my friends.
I feel like you're giving Mu too little credit to stand own its own. With a large continent that can easily allow trade from the east and New World, I feel like it might prosper and advance technologically exponentially faster than the Polynesians/Incas of our time. It could easily be a global superpower and a major trading hub with access to vast resources and imports to the point that it derails our euro-centric idea of colonialism. Though I would expect it to be more trade-oriented like Carthage was, it would still be entirely possible for it to be more militaristic. Also I'm imagining it will be a heaven for pirates as the trade routes would be easy pickings. I very much also like the idea of Japan trying to invade a part of it at the western peninsular too eventually which would vastly influence the culture of the continent even more.
The problem Mu would have is the lack of population. Being only colonized by the Polynesians as late as 1500 BC the population would be very small relative to other population centers.
No, it would have no black death, it would be fine population wise. With enough food and stable climate, human do be breeding like cockroaches
@@puppykitten4779 of there is trade with China, which is believed to be the source of the Black Death, why wouldn't it also affect Mu?
@@evancombs5159 the problem with that is its unlikely to take that long given the distance is actually pretty short. Chances are people on mainland Asia would be able to at least glimpse this mysterious world during certain atmosphere conditions, which would spark curiosity, and have them traveling much sooner. We are too curious of creatures.
It would give rise to colonization by the east asian people if there are no strong native kingdoms or empires
I think an interesting thought experiment would be to create an Alternate History Hub video from the perspective of an alternate world where a real continent like South America didn't exist, and imagine a world where it did exist without the context of actual history to see how close you could get to reality without making assumptions. That would put new light onto the "missing continent" alternate history takes.
You should check out "DBWI (Double-blind what if)", which is when someone creates an alternate timeline from the perspective of someone living in that alternate world. For example "What if Reagan was never assassinated?" made by someone living in a world where Ronald Reagan assassination attempt succeeded..
Another possibility could’ve been the Manihiki Plateau (Manihiki Atoll) being above sea level. Although this wouldn’t be continent sized or smack dab in the middle of the ocean (more towards Australia and New Zealand). But Mu is still fascinating and fun to think about too.
This had so much potential
Some insight regarding the German settlements on Mu: It all started with a small land purchased by a merchant from Oldenburg, Georg Friedrich Schinderhannes, in the south-eastern part of the continent in 1888. The now well-known city build on that spot of land was later named after the merchant, Schinderhannesstätt. It became Germany's single most important economic center in the pacific and the de facto capital of the beautifully named colony "Deutsch-Südost-Muh". .... A special German dialect also developed within said colony, Schinderhannesstättlerdeutsch, as well as a special pidgin called Mühemannisch (a unique mix of German, Lower German, Frisian, French and dozens of indiginous languages). Unfortunately, both are now considered nearly extinct due to the fact that Deutsch-Südost-Muh was later annexed by the Entente after WWI. ... At least one thing remains: After gaining independence, the inhabitants of the former colony, the Atanakamariwa, Kukumacha and Hatatawarika, decided to adopt the animal once intended to be depicted on the Colonial Coat of Arms of Deutsch-Südost-Muh as their own national animal: the Cow. 🐄💚💛💜
nice
German Mu cease to exist after ww1 and lands are divide between France and UK.
I was kinda hoping to hear how we’d arrive to modern day with Mu if sea levels weren’t effected but it still had an impact on world history before colonization. Either way, this was quite the fantastic video! Very interesting idea, and I love the attention to detail with how Mu would affect/ be affected by both East Asia and the Americas. Not even to mention the visuals, some of your best videography yet!
The idea of such continent sized islands having once existed, but which sank beneath the sea did not seem as crazy to the average person 150 years ago as the notion that the continents floated around on lava crashing into each other.
It's only because we grew up in a time that plate tectonics was an accepted theory with a ton of evidence backing it up that we think it's a reasonable idea and Mu was ridiculous.
BTW, I'm just talking the geography of Mu here, not the metaphysical psychic woo-woo BS.
look up zealandia
@@peteynutt4104
Zealandia has been almost entirely underwater for the past 79million years+. Even at the ocean level minimum during the ice ages, only 10-11% of Zealandia was above sea level. That's down to about 7% today.
Cody is held back by the ridiculous dogma historians still cling to.
-Sea levels were 400ft lower as recently as 13,000 BC
-Even as glacial maximums receeded, ocean levels didn't near modern levels until around 6,000 BC
-Google underwater roads off Japan and Florida to see how pathetic historians denying the existence of lost seafaring cultures is.
-Göbekli Tepe in Turkey has already forced dogmatic historians to (very reluctantantly) double civilizations age.
-Carbon dating put a 30k yr old age on a South American dig almost 2 decades ago but cost the anthropologist any further grants for the rest of her life. Cro-mag-style spearheads are found all over North America.
- The is weathered by deluge of rainwater consistent with a rainforest that hasn't existed in Egypt for over 12,000 years. There are stone megaliths and pyramids around the globes equator. Considering the glaciers that started receding 15,000 years ago would have scraped away pyramids further north... That tell you anything?
-Anthropologists have been proving historians to be nothing but dogmatic obtuse asshats for decades now.
Omg thank you for creating and giving me new material for a new book for an alt universe
I liked that he mentioned AML, its also a really fun mod for hoi4 that really does spice up the pacific gameplay. Cant wait for him to explain the continent of Lemuria next.
@E. yeah I saw like 20 minutes after this
he's also done Doggerland
This is what I love about your channel. You have so much fun with things but you put a lot of thought into them. Because you make them feel real... it gets the brain juices pumping. Amazing work as always.
Aah, i was so hyped when i've seen the post that teases this video, i couldn't wait xD
I love the fact there would be austronesian civilisations trading with east-asian cultures, and in the same time trading with Meso-American cultures. That would be so fun having the silk road spanning from Europe to South/Central America
I genuinely liked the way you did the sponser in this.
Y'know, the climate zones, and therefore biomes of Mu would IMO be an AMAZING Idea for a hybrid between alternate evolution and seeded world project
If it's fine to add so much land in the earth I'd assume it would also be fine to remove some water as well.
Also without the natives dying from plagues, it would be interesting to see how different American societies would be, since they would probably keep much more native characteristics.
And another thing with a bridge between the old and new world, possibly animals and technologies would exchange, leading for one, possibly the creation of nomadic empires in the Americas and putting them in a much more even playing field with the Europeans
The Americas lost around 90% of their population due to disease when colonial nations landed. Imagine Caesar in Gaul compared to one hundred Spanish conquistadors taking the entire Incan Empire.
Are you saying that when when the Europeans arrives in the American plains they could meet a society that greatly resembles a kind or "American Mongols"? Due to them possibly getting horses early.
@@MilloSpiegel *Mongolian throat singing intensifies*
@@MilloSpiegel According to numerous American Generals of the time, many of the Native Americans who lived in the American plains were the most adept Light Horsemen they had ever seen. Whether they were actually good compared to the Mongols is another debate, but in our time line even with a limited time with horses, they became extremely adept.
@@OCinneide Tribes like the Sioux would probably become the terror of Mezoamerica
Honestly, maybe I’m just an optimist, but I feel like Mu being so close to China (the inventor of gunpowder) would give the natives of Mu a leg up on the colonizers. Due to trade, they and the natives in the americas may have developed weaponry that natives in the americas never had the opportunity to develop without trade routes. I think just like with the disease immunity idea, access to other civilizations and more extensive trade routes in general (which might have helped develop alliances too) would’ve been extremely helpful in deterring potential colonizers.
China didn't really fair well when it came to holding off European powers
The century of humiliation was a thing
Le Plungeon is a classic example of a highly intelligent person who goes down a rabbit hole of error because of failure to self-critique. Scout mindset is so important … don’t believe things just because you want to, believe them because they’re supported by evidence.
In an alternate timeline
"What if the continent of Australia actually existed"
I’ve always thought about this possibility or even in the middle of Atlantic. Great topic!
Is this a other video about lemurs?
@u know me who asked?
@@lawjef I have no idea
It would be far better in the Atlantic because Hurricanes wouldn't be an issue.
the idea of a continent in the middle of the Atlantic is basically Atlantis
I love alternate history hub, and in case anyone is interested in knowing, the pushies are on point! I've got a couple of a couple, and it has both come through and been of high quality :)
your ability to connect with your viewers is unmatched!
Alternate history hub is slowly becoming speculative evolution hub and I’m loving this content!
meanwhile in an alternate universe, we're all sitting here watching "what if Mu never existed"
Honestly, the Mu world where the coasts are underwater sounds really cool.
I’d love to see people explore it, maybe even have some speculative evolution for the plants an animals that exist on Mu
Mu would have some really weird native wildlife, depending on when it broke off from Australia. If that happened before 50 million years ago, Mu would entirely lack marsupials, which originally migrated from South America through Antarctica to reach Australia. There probably wouldn't be placental mammals in Mu either, aside from bats and marine mammals.
What would Mu have instead? There could be a great diversity of monotremes, flightless birds, and maybe other kinds of mammals that have become extinct in our world, like the egg-laying Gondwanatheria.
There is one actually made out of rubbish
Yes, buuuttt can people live on a giant mass of trash? I don’t think so, sorry
Watching this and realizing this whole theory had to have been a huge inspiration for story elements in One Piece
Perhaps in such a scenario, the existence of Mu ends up leading to different civilizations rising to power. Maybe they aren't colonized at all but are in fact the colonizers.
Given the sweet potato becoming popular in Asia a couple centuries before Europeans got there.. I’d say the Polynesian trade with the Americas had some significant impact in our timeline!
Le Plongeon died in 1908, but the baton was soon picked up James Churchward, a British writer, inventor and engineer, who ran with it, publishing several books including Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Man (1926), The Lost Continent of Mu (1931), The Children of Mu (1931) and The Sacred Symbols of Mu (1933).
Unlike Le Plongeon, however, Churchward focused his research in India where, he claimed, he had found ancient clay tablets kept by a high-ranking priest, containing writings in a lost language that only he and two other people could read.
Great video
you have been memeing this Continent for ages on twitter man ima so happy that know your covering this thanks iam going to love it
I first Heared if în Reksio and Captain Nemo
I first heard this în Reksio and Captain Nemo but i think was just a reference to Ctulhu Mythos
It is worth noting that in this representation, you give Mu basically the same degree of technology as the Americas. Which may simply not be the case.
Let us imagine that the east and western parts of Mu led to two empires which, for whatever reason started having conflicts. By the 1500s, they would likely be starting to use cannons on their ships (or at least, WEST Mu would), due to the fact that both Korea and Japan (though Japan was mostly using guns while Korea focused on ship-mounted weapons) were both making lots of firearms in the 1500s and the general fervor to adopt these weapons would likely extend to West Mu as well.
In fact, there is a possibility that Japan would have invaded Mu with their advanced firearms instead of Korea, if they were still going to invade SOMEONE during that time (again, assuming that Mu being there didn't change Japanese history too much up to that point, and that they still unified with Nobunaga, and then invaded someone in the mid 1500s). If there is a trade triangle, the Japanese may well have better ships by this time too than they did when they invaded Korea, perhaps even making use of more ship to ship weapons themselves, like the Koreans did at the time (the superior range and tactics of Admiral Yi being basically the invention of modern naval combat with emphasis on destroying enemy ships with cannonfire instead of boarding, and being the reason Korea survived).
As such, Mu could either have a fairly modern navy for the time, OR the most western tip of it could actually be in the midst of losing to a Japanese invasion by the time Spain tried to actually do anything. The result would be either Spain going to war with Japan, or Spain getting their ships rebuffed by one or more of the naval forces belonging to Mu (since it is a lot harder to send a fighting force halfway around the world at this point in time whereas Mu would literally be defending their own land).
Put simply, you don't give Mu itself enough credit, and you also don't give the trade triangle you mention enough credit. The triangle which would likely result in increased rates of development in some aspects of the surrounding areas to the west (i.e. China, Japan, Korea, etc).
Yep I agree
Being populated around 1500BC, it is unlikely that the Eastern part even got populated, and this also would mean that the continent would have a tiny population, which could not stand up to Spanish or Portuguese armies.
Also, Japan didn't have firearms until 1543, when the Portuguese gave them some, so how would they give Mu firearms when they don't have them themselves?
Mu would most likely just be a large extension of the Spanish Empire, connecting the Philippines with the rest of the possessions. This could result in a 16/1700s Panama Canal being built and could even make a difference in the Napoleonic and Spanish American wars, possibly making the Spanish Empire as strong as the British Empire in this alternate timeline.
I'd presume he avoided dealing with that because if you did note the changes, even with ignorance of how geologically it changes human history, the relation of this massive continent spanning two sides of an ocean and the history that could evolve from there with a Phillipine Sea Trade Triangle and the empires that could spawn from it would likely have the chance to already change so much in wider world history, let alone in just East Asia or even the Americas. As he said, if he did consider it changed world history in dramatic ways, he'd basically be making stuff up, and if he didn't, and the tech and development was largely the same as it was for Polynesian OTL, it would likely just end in European colonization of some form. I could certainly see there being a potentially difficult empire to break into on the continent, especially the likely far more developed western peninsula where those technologies from trade and overall larger population would likely make it difficult to colonize. In such a case though, at best for the European powers, it would just be a bit tougher to colonize than some of the other colonies, and at worst for them, they'd probably still have some trade concessions and ports like China or early India colonization. It's all difficult to tell though, given the amount of butterflies that would or could come with such a place and how soon you run into just pure speculation based on speculation.
the simple issue is that going into any serious depth on this potential reality would make a several hour long video, a very cool historic fiction video but a bloody long one and those take ages to edit
He ignores all the archaeological evidence and advancements of Nan-Madol and Easter Island, sadly that's just the beginning. Mu was catastrophically gone by the time your theory catches up. ✌️
Likely, trade with Asia for centuries would have probably meant that they had gunpowder weaponry, so I don't think that the continent would have been steamrolled by the Europeans. Not saying there wouldn't have been wars, but it's hard to say what really would have happened.
As well as asian technology it would probably end up with a lot of asian people via migration. It might start off as Polynesian but would probably become quite mixed before long. God, what am I doing actually thinking about this..
@@DinoCism Giving your brain a nice workout. It's a good thing.
@@DinoCism yup. I can easily see it being an east Asian,Southeast Asian & Polynesian mixed on the western side of Mu while on the eastern side it'll be Polynesians & indigenous Americans. In the middle it'll be Polynesian nomads who just wants to be left alone.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but wasn’t Asia literally steamrolled by the Europeans?
@@XXXTENTAClON227 Not in the same way though. Asia had the situation where their governments fell and control of Asian countries fell to European empires. Not like the Americas and Australia where steel and germs wiped out the populations to such a degree that Europeans were just walking onto free land and started setting up house. Also, not EVERY Asian country fell, just the ones that were weak with infighting already, making them easy pickings.
If there had been a huge continent across the pacific I think that contact between the new and old worlds would have been established so long ago that we wouldn't have historical records for it. Any population experiencing demographic collapse due to infectious diseases would have been long gone in the forgotten past. Domesticated animals would have spread so long ago we might not know that they hadn't always been everywhere.
Since I was a about twelve I’ve had the concept of a fantasy novel set on a fictional pacific continent that is basically like a Middle Earth Tolkien kind of Historical Fantasy of the peoples, wars, languages ect. Before slowly splitting and sinking like Atlantis due to immense short term volcanic eruptions and spasms in continental drift
I’m glad Cody has thought about this too
This video has inspired my to get back into writing the book series I always wanted to make
That sounds really interesting and intriguing, I’m also planning out my own book series which will be a novella collection series that I titled Mysteriarch Mythos anthology.
The series will be a esoteric occult sci-fi, supernatural/cosmic horror, parallel/alternative universe/history and dark mystery series.
The world that the series takes place in is on a continent in the North Pacific and arctic/sub arctic during the preflood era, before the era of myth in the protozoic era.
That’s when the pacific was mostly called the great Yehnèisian Sea.
The main provincial territory in the series is Hyrumund territory.
Which was originally within the far distant future TimeFractal of the great river of time, however in the year 2230 a event called the time fracture/great sundering occurred.
That resulted in the entirety of the future TimeFractal being teleported to the far distant ancient preflood/PreMyth era of the past.
Over time the fallen and lost future TimeFractal slowly molded with the past and became one with it, as did the other TimeFractals.
The timelines of the alternative/parallel world of Terragartha were fused into one.
The society of my books world is still futuristic for the most part with advanced technology and small traces of hyper advanced technology.
There’s a societal balance between all the sciences ( both higher and lower), technology, spirituality and the mystic arts.
I think I remember reading most of that series . I just wish I could remember the author and name of the series.
This is really interesting. You played with some real fun stuff at the beginning. Early immigrations and weather and biomes and all that fun jazz.
Kinda disappointed it ended with a slap of modern European centric history over top, but that can't really be helped.
Did make me chuckle because of the thought, instead of Columbus misnaming the west indies, it would been west Mu. If anything they would have thought the Americas were Mu.
I think it would be a continent in the Pacific Ocean
I think an interesting possibility is the introduction of gunpowder and metalworking to Mu through their trade with Asia, which also would affect Australia and possibly even South America. I imagine that the interior of Mu would be a lot like the interior of Africa or South America where exotic species and isolated tribes could be found.
Seeing yet another alternate history get conquered by colonization really makes me wonder what it would take for there to be an alternate history where colonization failed. Not necessarily all of colonization but for at least one civilization to exist that when Europeans try to colonize it they just can't. For it to have the resources and war experience needed to be able to defeat the Europeans.
I thought Mu might be the one to defeat colonization since it's trade access to China would give it both access to gunpowder and experience with plague. As well as Mu's massive size allowing it to both have plenty of natural resources, and multiple nations that could conflict with each other thus raising their overall proficiency at war.
IMO I think the reason is because he ignored the fact that Mu would get access to Chinese weapons and a harder colonization of the americas makes Mu even harder to be taken over
US military losing to Tecumseh or the Spanish losing to Moctezuma comes up often for me. 100% possible but never came to pass. Closest we have is Sentinel Island.
@@Afrologist here is significantly more likely that they would be able to resist
@@board-qu9iu Yeah its weird that he got bent up on the sealevel thing but handwaved away the fact it wouldn't be just diseases being traded. Centuries before a European set foot in the Americas they would have been exposed to:
-Proper livestock, which is sort of the bedrock for any advanced society. Livestock is absolutely critical for moving up the production-efficiency ladder, which frees up more people from having to work in food-related roles and instead work in more complex professions.
-Horses. Huge understated reason for the early spectacular successes of Europeans. It wasn't guns that let Cortez overcome 100-to-1 odds it was all the dudes in steel armor on horseback that might as well been invulnerable to the native armies. Also incredibly important for travel and transportation over land.
-Ironworking, similar to above. Naturally ironworking is also vital to industrialization down the road.
-Gunpowder, I think this is actually the least important one. The Chinese basically did nothing with gunpowder after discovering it and most cultures that interacted with it did not majorly improve it, until it got to the Middle-East and then Europe. Its possible the Mu or (Native) Americans could have broken this mold but I doubt it.
-Philosophy: the wildcard, its really impossible to predict what the exchange of *ideas* would do. Just think about religions: What would China be like if Buddhism was not exported there? Whats Africa like if Islam did not proselytize past the Sahara through trade? What does a modern Zoroastrian Persia look like? etc etc. Thats just religions. Hell, its entirely possible that northwest Mu gets sucked into China's orbit of Confucian/Buddhist imitation states.
Could keep going on and on but just with the above you could easily make a more interesting scenario compared to "CORTEZ DOES IT AGAIN, HOW DOES HE KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS?"
@@daroaminggnome yeah. I do think a few colonies would exist but they would be Small and in North America
My guess is that even if this hypothetical continent has a very small Asian population, it would still have been invaded by Imperial Japan in WW2.
First the video about Atlantis, then Lemuria and now Mu, now I feel complete! Thank you for presenting this legendary geographical trinity! I really love when they give it more of a speculative realism approach!
Lemuria and mu are one in the same
@@Soul-cry1 True, there are many who point to that but answer me this why Lemuria is only in the indian ocean while Mu is in the pacific ocean? It reminds me a lot of how the location of Atlantis changed throughout the ages.
@@juanisol8275 people often get it's location confused because they go by different names but Mu is another name for Lemuria which was in the Pacific, that doesn't mean there wasn't some other land mass in the Indian ocean with a civilization unto itself.
@@Soul-cry1 Who trully knows, they are Lost Continents after all and thats the wonderfull of them
@@juanisol8275 once the land mass rises up again will know, it's fun to speculate all the same.
I thought they had found a 'lost' continent that sunk that new zealand is a mountain range on. It was on a geography channel i watched like 3 years ago, I'm gonna have to track that video down again... It was interesting and apparently the sinking process had something to do with the type of new lava being created having a different buoyancy on the mantle if i recall. Going from basaltic rock to a more mud-like rock, the same reason that the marinara's trench is so deep,
ruclips.net/video/NmFUFnMj5Jw/видео.html
What if instead of horses, Mu had a mega bird that the "nomads" domestacated into taking the horse role. Call it the Chocobo......
There is a mod for hoi4 that actually adds Mu into the game. I like that Mu better because it’s smaller than this mu but probably still big enough to be considered a continent. I’d also be curious to see what would happen if Hyrule was real and Termina was in the North Pacific.
What's the name
CANABALISTIC NAZI ELVES
SPEEDWAAAAAGOOON
@@МартинРупски Atlantis Mu Lumeria
I'd expect that the presence of this Pacific continent would either cause much earlier circumnavigate (around 1000, like Viking expeditions), or even completely prevent the rise of European powers. Having a trade route east out of Asia would be talked about all along the Eurasian trade routes, and in some cases may significantly reduce trade in that direction.
i love how you explain it with humor if only my history teacher was like this