In a January 2008 blog entry entitled "Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Tahsin Mayatepek & Mu (Part 1)", I related that I was in contact with individuals that could provide information concerning the ever-elusive "Great Uighur Empire." I have not heard back from them since. I also sent an email to Sinan Meydan, the Turkish author of books on Mu, however I have not heard back yet.

On the other hand, I have been contacted by others with some different avenues of research to follow.
First, one person emailed me the names of some scholars that have been engaged in research along the lines of the Great Uighur Empire, and secondly, other people have sent me emails with pictures from Google Earth and some ground level photographs to indicate that evidence for the Great Uighur Empire exists around Xi'an, China and the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia.

After a little digging, I have been able to find out a little more about the list of scholars. Allow me to apologize in advance if I butcher these names. I have never heard them spoken and can only guess at the correct pronunciation.

Dr. Kazim Mirsan was born in Ghulja (or Ili as the Chinese call it) and he theorizes that the Orkhun Inscriptions in Mongolia date from the 5th century BC instead of the commonly accepted 8th century AD. He has quite a few books published and some even in English.

Polat Kaya has his own website and Yahoo group. His research consists of studying the relationship between the Turkish and Indo European languages. Mr Kaya also explains that Turkish was the universally spoken language as far back as the middle of the first millenium BC.

Turgay Kurum postulates that the Latin and Cyrillic Alphabets originated from Runic writing, which was founded by the Gokturks.

I was unable to find English language sources for Turgay Tufekci, so I am unaware of his theories.

One of the common threads that I have discovered, other than that these researchers all approach the topic using linguistics, is that each mentions or alludes to a bias against their theories. Specifically, a bias from Western Europeans against even discussing their theories. Since we have been inviting comment and discussion on the 'Great Uighur Empire' as envisioned by James Churchward for almost two years, they must have overlooked our offer to contribute. We extend an offer to these researchers/scientists to present their theories in English on our webpages or through our Great Uighur Empire mailing list. Also, we extend an invitation for them to present their theories via Skype interview.

Another point was brought up in an email I received from Mr. Polat Kaya. According to his research, the Uyghurs are Turks and not Aryans as postulated by my great-grandfather.

I do not know enough about the aforementioned author's theories to defend or discuss them in an intelligent manner; however, I have researched Uyghur and Inner Asian history. In the coming days, I will provide a short bibliography on the James Churchward's Mu blog that should satisfy the most rigorous skeptic that the 8th century Uyghur Empire or Uyghur Khaganate in what is now known as Mongolia did, in fact, exist.

Jack Churchward
Clearwater, Florida