James was a product of his age. Born a member of the British Empire in sleepy village in England in 1851, he was adamantly opposed to the idea of evolution. Although probably not the primary motivation for publishing his series on Mu, James' beliefs did color the presentation. Take the following examples:
1. James postulated the the Lost Continent of Mu was the wellspring of humanity - placing all evidence of our origins out of the reach of today's scientists and researchers.
2. James believed that Man experienced savagery as a result of civilization, as evidenced by this passage from the Lost Continent of Mu Motherland of Man from page 267:
I do not stand alone when I say that savagery came out of civilization, not civilization out of savagery. It is only those who know nothing of savages who maintain that civilization emerged from savagery."
My interpretation is that James believed that originally, Man was without sin (or without worldly influence) since he had been created by the Supreme Being and when the worldly influences played a greater role in people's lives, savagery ensued. Since Man was created by the Supreme Being, he(she) could not have evolved or been involved in evolution.
3. James had also considered evidence of non-human ancestors, as evidenced in the following from The Lost Continent of Mu Motherland of Man from page 171:
In their excitement over the discovery of a few old human bones, such as the Neanderthal, Piltdown, and Heidelberg man, scientists, in both Europe and America, have completely ignored and cast aside the remains of ancient man in North America. That the European remains were those of idiots and degenerates is obvious from the abnormal shapes of their skulls. Doubtless they were outcasts from civilized communities.
From Valmiki, Druidical works, the Popol Vuh and other ancient writings we learn that such characters were driven into the forests, there to live and die like the beasts. It would appear from many ancient writings that the usual method of disposing of bodies was by cremation, consequently there remained no trace of those whose bones had been consumed by fire.
James had been provided the scientific data that evidenced a new species of human in his day and chose to reject it. Today's scientific data may have been enough for him to change his mind if he had been exposed to it, but we will never know.
The recent podcast "Genetics and the Lost Continent of Mu", compared the theories of James Churchward's Lost Continent of Mu and the genetic evidence for the Out of Africa theory. In the presentation, my personal observation was that, given the evidence, the Out of Africa theory was more credible, however, some people disagreed and posted (unedited) comments like:
Whites and other non-blacks never came from Africa, that out of Africa theory is to? coverup the truth; Caucasians and all other non-blacks are a different spieces, that came from very cold caucasus mountains in Europe ; their something TOTALLY .different to ordinary Black African humanity; melanin is NOT in their makeup
Given thoughts like that, I guess it is quite possible that James could have brushed off the evidence for another species of human, just as the commenter did.
In case you haven't seen the latest podcast video: