Augustus Le Plongeon and the Emergence of Early Pseudoarchaeology

 

Augustus Le Plongeon (1825–1908) occupies an ambiguous position in the history of archaeology: while he was an important early photographer of Maya sites and a pioneer of mayanism, his interpretations of Mesoamerican history became some of the earliest, most elaborate examples of what is now recognised as pseudoarchaeology. Working primarily in the Yucatán between 1873 and 1885, Le Plongeon combined meticulous visual documentation with speculative historical narratives that far exceeded the available evidence and were ultimately rejected by contemporary scholars.

Central to his pseudoarchaeological framework was the conviction that the Maya were the world’s primordial civilisers. Influenced by earlier diffusionist ideas and by esoteric writings such as those of Brasseur de Bourbourg, he argued that Maya culture had spread eastward across Asia, reached the lost continent of Atlantis, and from there laid the foundations of ancient Egypt. This grand transoceanic schema relied on the assumption that architectural and iconographic similarities must derive from direct contact or common origin, a hallmark of later diffusionist pseudohistories. Even when advances in archaeological dating showed that Egyptian civilisation predated the Maya, Le Plongeon maintained his position, dismissing critics as “armchair archaeologists”.

Le Plongeon called the disseminators of the wisdom of the lost land "the Naacal". The first recorded use of this term is contained in his work from 1896, "Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx":

"Perhaps also will be felt the necessity of recovering the libraries of the Maya sages (hidden about the beginning of the Christian era to save them from destruction at the hands of the devastating hordes that invaded their country in those times), and to learn from their contents the wisdom of those ancient philosophers, of which that preserved in the books of the Brahmins is but the reflection. That wisdom was no doubt brought to India, and from there carried to Babylon and Egypt in very remote ages by those Maya adepts (Naacal—'the exalted'), who, starting from the land of their birth as missionaries of religion and civilization, went to Burmah, where they became known as Nagas, established themselves in the Dekkan, whence they carried their civilizing work all over the earth".

("Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx." From pages xxiii - xxiv of the preface) According to Augustus Le Plongeon, the Naacals were the missionaries of Mayan religion and civilization. Le Plongeon advocated that the original, great civilization was in Central America.

His reading of Maya texts further illustrates the pseudoscientific character of his work. Le Plongeon attempted a complete translation of the Codex Troano, despite the fact that the decipherment of Maya glyphs was still in its infancy and he lacked a method grounded in linguistics. Unsurprisingly, his translations, such as the claim that the codex narrates the destruction of “Mu,” a civilisation he equated with Atlantis, are now regarded as imaginative inventions. These interpretations helped popularise the legend of Mu, later elaborated by James Churchward and absorbed into 20th-century occult and “lost civilisation” literature.

Le Plongeon’s fieldwork also fed into his speculative narratives. His discovery of a reclining figure at Chichén Itzá (later known as the Chac Mool) was accompanied by an invented name and an associated storyline linking the sculpture to his larger diffusionist theories. Although archaeologists rejected his interpretations, the invented term Chac Mool entered scholarly vocabulary as a stylistic label, illustrating how the boundary between documentation and speculation can blur in early archaeological practice.

In retrospect, Le Plongeon’s legacy is twofold. His photographs constitute a valuable early record of Maya architecture and glyphs, preserving details later lost to weathering and looting. At the same time, his sweeping historical narratives exemplify the emergence of pseudoarchaeology in the late 19th century: a mixture of genuine field research, diffusionist fantasies, and esoteric speculation that projected global civilisational origins onto the Maya and fed directly into later Atlantis- and Mu-centered alternative historiographies.

Books by Augustus Le Plongeon:

•  Queen Móo and the Egyptian Sphinx (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1896) (second edition; New York: The author; London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1900).
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• Sacred Mysteries Among the Mayas and the Quiches, 11,500 Years Ago: Their Relation to the Sacred Mysteries of Egypt, Greece, Chaldea and India; Free Masonry in Times Anterior to the Temple of Solomon (New York: R. Macoy, 1886) Gutenberg text and illustrated HTML  (third edition; New York: Macoy Pub. and Masonic Supply Co., 1909)
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• Vestiges of the Mayas: or, Facts Tending to Prove that Communications and Intimate Relations Must Have Existed, in very Remote Times, Between the Inhabitants of Mayab and Those of Asia and Africa (New York: J. Polhemus, 1881)  Gutenberg text .

References

Lawrence G. Desmond: Augustus Le Plongeon. A fall from archaeological grace, in: Alice B. Kehoe und Mary Beth Emmerichs (Hrsg.): Assembling the Past. Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 1999, 81–90. 

Lawrence G. Desmond/Phyllis Mauch Messenger: A dream of Maya, Augustus and Alice Le Plongeon in nineteenth-century Yucatan. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 1988.