The Lost Continent of Pan

Susan B Martinez Bear & Co 2016 Pb, $24.00, 501pp, illus, bib, ind, ISBN 9781591432678

Dr Martinez, a linguist, waves a warning finger: “Like cures for cancer which are promptly banned by the medical establishment, cures for our ignorance of prehistory are likewise burked, bullied and blackballed.” We warm to her already! In this profusely illustrated (by exempla and pictures) book, she revisits the theories and proponents of the idea that world culture originated in a long-lost oceanic civilisation. Eschewing the more familiar Atlantic-centric notions, she makes a feisty argument, instead, for the northern Pacific. She reboots the legendary continents of Lemuria and Mu, re-interpreting such gloriously unconventional sources as Oahspe (an alternative ‘bible’ written in a trance in 1880 by a dentist) and the fantasy history of Mu by James Churchward. The greater part of the book, though, lays out arguments based upon linguistics, demonstrating fascinating levels of correspondence between primary vocabularies of ancient cultures from both sides of the Pacific. Martinez’s thesis is detailed, cleverly (even humorously) argued and surprisingly easy to read. By exploring the ‘grey areas’ in the conventional understanding of ancient history of the world and the origin of its peoples, she manages to make her ideas seem disturbingly plausible and refreshingly provocative.

Academics with high blood pressure are advised to avoid the book but, as wacky as Martinez’s premises and as wide-ranging as her sources might be, this is the biggest feast of archæological, cultural, technological and dating anomalies since the ‘forbidden archæology’ tomes of Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson.