initial reluctance. His knowledge remained incomplete, as the available tablets were mere fragments of a larger text. Churchward claimed to have found verification and further information in the records of other ancient peoples. His writings attempt to describe the civilisation of Mu, its history, inhabitants, and influence on subsequent history and civilisations. Churchward claimed that the ancient Egyptian sun-god Ra originated with the Mu; he claimed that "Rah" was the word which the Naacals used for "sun", as well as for their god and rulers. Scientific rebuttal Alfred Metraux undertook research on Easter Island in the 1930s, and in 1940 published a monograph on Easter Island which includes a rebuttal of the hypothesis that Easter Island was a remnant of a sunken continent. In the second half of the twentieth century, improvements in oceanography, in particular understanding of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics, have left little scientific basis for claims of geologically recent lost continents such as Mu. American science writer Martin Gardner wrote that Churchward's books contain geological and archaeological errors and are regarded by scholars as a hoax. The archaeologist Stephen Williams, in Fantastic Archaeology (1991), described his writings as pseudoscience. Williams has written that Churchward's "translations are outrageous, his geology, in both mechanics and dating, is absurd, and his mishandling of archaeological data, as in the Valley of Mexico, is atrocious." Gordon Stein in Encyclopedia of Hoaxes (1993) has noted that Churchward's claims have no scientific basis. According to Stein "it is difficult to assess whether Churchward really believed what he said about Mu, or whether he was knowingly writing fiction." Brian M. Fagan has written that Churchward's evidence for Mu was made from "personal testimonials, false translations, notably of tablets from Mesoamerica, and spurious reconstructions from archaeological and artistic remains. Although it has attracted some following, it has never received scholarly or scientific support." Popular culture Churchward is mentioned in fiction in the short stories "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" by H. P. Lovecraft, "Out of the Aeons" by Lovecraft and Hazel Heald, and The Fitzgerald Contraction by Miles J. Breuer. Churchward and the lost island of Mu also appear in Philip K. Dick's Confessions of a Crap Artist. The British anarchist situationist band KLF, also known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, often refer to Mu Mu land and were inspired by The Illuminatus! Trilogy, and much of their work was Discordian