Charles Étienne Brᴀsseur de Bourbourg (1814 – 1874) was a 19th-century Flemish abbot. In addition to his clerical profession, the French abbot is universally known for his significant contributions to the knowledge of Mesoamerican peoples. In fact, Charles Étienne Brᴀsseur was also a famous writer, ethnographer and archaeologist who specialized particularly in the study of the Maya and Aztec civilizations.
According to the scholar, the Maya remembered their homeland as a “continent located in the Pacific,” and which had later sunk. They called this continent by the term “Land of Mu.”
Until a few years ago this was thought to be just a legend. But the advent of satellites proved that it was all true. In fact, present-day Indonesia and Australia are ‘remnants’ of a much larger continent, which scientists call Sundaland. This continent located in the waters of the Pacific Ocean was partially submerged beginning 14,000 years ago, when the Pacific Ocean rose about 140 meters.

How did the Maya know about the “submerged continent” in the Pacific Ocean? Was it just an incredible coincidence? Or were their ancestors really from Sundaland?
Again, if we would only listen to science, and not to our prejudices, the Maya would be absolutely right. Their ancestors did come from Sundaland. How do we know for sure? According to Kenneth M. Olsen, PhD, a biologist specializing in plant evolution at Washington University in St. Louis, we have irrefutable evidence that navigators from the Sundaland and Sahuland area managed to get as far as Panama, Central America, in pre-Columbian times.
The ‘living proof’ is the presence of the coconut in the Americas. This researcher has found that all coconut plants, wherever in the world they are found, originated either from India or from the area that used to be Sundaland. Moreover, the professor explains that, at least as far as great distances are concerned, the coconut plant does not migrate naturally, as seeds of other plants do. In its case, it has to be taken by human beings to other distant areas in order to take root there as well. If the coconut plant arrived in Central America in pre-Columbian times, it means that sailors from the Sundaland area arrived in America before Columbus and planted it. There is little to argue against that.

In 1866, Brᴀsseur de Bourbourg had an opportunity to examine an artefact in Madrid which was in the possession of a Spanish paleography professor named Juan de Tro y Ortolano, who had purchased it some six years earlier. This artefact was an old codex, a book made from paper-bark in the form of a folded screen of continuous pages, several metres in length when extended. The codex contained numerous signs and drawings, which Brᴀsseur de Bourbourg was readily able to identify as being Mayan in origin, having seen and studied many similar markings and glyphs while in Central America.

Tro y Ortolano gave him permission to publish the codex in a reproduction, and Brᴀsseur de Bourbourg gave it the name Troano Codex in his honour. His identification of the codex was significant, as it was the only third such Maya codex to have been uncovered (the second, the Codex Paris, had been discovered by the French scholar Léon de Rosny only a few years before). In particular, Brᴀsseur de Bourbourg recognised its exceeding rarity, since de Landa’s Relación, which he had earlier rediscovered, gave an account of how he had ordered the destruction of all such Maya codices he could find, and many volumes had been burned.

During 1869–1870 Brᴀsseur de Bourbourg published his analyses and interpretations of the content of the Troano codex in his work Manuscrit Troano, études sur le système graphique et la langue des Mayas. He proposed some translations for the glyphs recorded in the codex, in part based on the ᴀssociated pictures and in part on de Landa’s alphabet, but his efforts were tentative and largely unsuccessful.

However, his translation would later inspire Augustus Le Plongeon’s pseudo-science and speculation about the lost continent of Mu. The name Mu was actually used first by Brᴀsseur de Bourbourg.

A few years later, another Maya codex was found possessed by another collector, which became known as the Codex Cortesianus (in the belief that it had been in the possession of Hernán Cortés). When Léon de Rosny examined it later, he determined that it was actually a part of the Troano codex, the two parts having been separated at some indeterminate time in the past. The two parts were later rejoined and are known collectively as the Codex Madrid or Tro-Cortesianus; they remain displayed in Madrid.

In 1871 Brᴀsseur de Bourbourg published his Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatémalienne, a compendium of literature and sources ᴀssociated with Mesoamerican studies.

His last article, “Chronologie historique des Mexicains” (1872) refers to the Codex Chimalpopoca and identifies four periods of world cataclysms that began about 10,500 BC and were the result of shifts of the Earth’s axis (a concept related to pole shift theory).