Sunday, April 24, 2022

Part 2 The Atlantis Encyclopedia ... Atara to Bahr Atala

 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
by Frank Joseph
Atara 
Among the Guanche, the original inhabitants of the Canary Islands, the word for “mountain,” apparently derived from and related to the Atlantean mythic concept of the sacred mountain of Atlas.

Atarantes 
“Of Atlantis.” A people residing on the Atlantic shores of Morocco and described by various classical writers (Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, etc.). 

Atas 
Natives inhabiting the mountainous central region of Mindanao, a large southern island in the Philippines. They tell how the Great Flood “covered the whole Earth, and all the Atas were drowned except for two men and a woman. The waters carried them far away.” An eagle offered to save them, but one of the men refused, so the bird took up the other man and woman, carrying them to safety on the island of Mapula. Here the Atas were reborn and eventually multiplied sufficiently to conquer the entire Philippines. The Atas still claim descent from these light-skinned invaders who, over time, intermarried with the Negritos and aboriginal peoples. 

Atauro 
A small island near East Timor, memorializing in native tradition a larger landmass, long ago swallowed by the sea.

Atcha 
In ancient Egyptian, a distant, splendid, vanished city, suggestive of Atlantis. The prefix “At” recurs among ancient Egyptian mythic figures associated with overtly Atlantean themes (Atum, Atfih, At-hothes, etc.). 

Atchafalaya 
Known as the “Long River” to the Choctaw Indians of Louisiana. Its resemblance to the shorter Egyptian name Atcha is suggestive, especially in view of the Choctaws’ own deluge myth. Here, too, “At” is used to identify water, one of the three Atlantean themes (city, mountain, and/or water) associated with this prefix by numerous cultures around the world.

Atea 
The Marquesans regarded Atea as their ancestral progenitor who, like the Atlanto-Egyptian Atum, claimed for himself the creation of the world. Fornander wrote, “In the Marquesan legends the people claim their descent from Atea and Tani, the two eldest of Toho’s twelve sons, whose descendants, after long periods of alternant migrations and rest in the far western lands, finally arrived at the Marquesas Islands.” 

Like Atlas, Atea was his father’s first son and a twin. With his story begins the long migration of some Atlanteans, the descendants of Atea, throughout the Pacific. Fornander saw Atea as “the god which corresponds to Kane in the Hawaiian group” and goes on to explain that “the ideas of solar worship embodied in the Polynesian Kane as the sun, the sun-god, the shining one, are thus synonymous with the Marquesan Atea, the bright one, the light.” Atum, too, was a solar deity.

Atemet 
The dwelling place and/or name of the goddess Hat-menit, who was depicted in Egyptian temple art as a woman wearing headgear fashioned in the likeness of a fish. Worshiped at Mendes, where her title was “Mother,” she was somehow connected to the Lands of Punt often associated with the islands of Atlantis. Budge believed Atemet was a form of Hathor, the goddess responsible for the world flood. Atemet’s Atlantean name, fish-crown (queen of the sea), and connections to both Punt and Hathor identify her with some of the leading features of the Atlantis story. 

Atemoztli 
Literally “the Descent of Waters,” or the Great Flood, as it was known to the Aztecs. A worldwide cataclysm accompanied by volcanic eruptions, its few survivors arrived from over the Sunrise Sea (the Atlantic Ocean) to establish the first Mesoamerican civilization. “Atemoztli” was also the name of a festival day commemorating the Deluge, held each November 16—the same period associated with the final destruction of Atlantis (late October to mid-November). Atemoztli philological resemblance to Atemet, the Egyptian deluge figure, is clear. 

Atennu 
Egyptian sun-god, as he appears over the sea in the west. Another example of the “At” recurring throughout various cultures to define a sacred place or personage with the Atlantic Ocean. 

Atep 
The name of the calumet or “peace pipe” in the Siouan language. The Atep was and is the single most sacred object among all Native American tribes, and smoked only ritually. It was given to them by the Great Spirit (Manitou) immediately after a catastrophic conflagration and flood destroyed a former world or age, which was ruled over from a “big lodge” on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. 

The survivors, who came from the east, were commanded by the Great Spirit to fashion the ceremonial pipes from a mineral (Catlinite) found only in the southwest corner of present-day Minnesota (Pipestone National Monument) and Barron County (Pipestone Mountain), in northwestern Wisconsin. In these two places alone the bodies of the drowned sinners had come to rest, their red flesh transformed into easily worked stone. The bowl represented the female principle, while the stem stood for the male; both signified the men and women who perished in the flood. Uniting these two symbols and smoking tobacco in the pipe was understood as a commemoration of the cataclysm and admonition to subsequent generations against defying the will of God. 

The Atep was a covenant between the Indians and the Great Spirit, who received their prayers on the smoke that drifted toward heaven. It meant a reconciliation between God and man, a sacred peace that had to be honored by all tribes. The deluge story behind the pipe, the apparent philological relationship of its name to “Atlas” or things Atlantean—even the description of the Indians’ drowned ancestors as red-skinned (various accounts portray the Atlanteans as ruddy complected)—confirm the Atep as a living relic of lost Atlantis. 

Ater 
The Guanche Atlas, also worshiped in the pre-Conquest Canary Islands as Ataman (“the upholder,” precisely the same meaning for the Greek Titan), and Atara (“mountain,” Mount Atlas).

Ateste 
The Bronze Age capital, in northern Italy, of the Veneti, direct descendants of Atlantis. 

Atfih 
More of an Egyptian symbol than an actual deity, he supported the serpent, Mehen, that protectively surrounded the palace in which Ra, the sun-god, resided. Here, Atlantis is suggested in the serpent, symbolizing the Great Water Circle (the ocean) and in Ra’s palace, center of a solar cult, while Atfih, whose name means “bearer,” was Atlas, who bore the great circle of the heavens. 

At-hothes 
The earliest known name of Thaut, (Thoth to the Greeks, who equated him with Hermes), the patron god of wisdom, medicine, literature, and hieroglyphic writing, who arrived in Egypt after a deluge destroyed his home in the Distant West. These western origins, together with the “At” beginning his name, define him as an Atlantean deity. Arab tradition identifies him as the architect of Egypt’s Great Pyramid on the Giza Plateau. Edgar Cayce, who certainly knew nothing of these Arab accounts, likewise mentioned Thoth as the Atlantean authority responsible for raising the Great Pyramid. (See Cayce)

At-ia-Mu-ri 
Site of impressive megalithic ruins in New Zealand, believed by John Macmillan Brown, a leading academic authority of Pacific archaeology in the1920s, to be evidence of builders from a sunken civilization. The name of the site is particularly interesting for its combining of At[lantis] and Mu, at this midpoint between the two sunken kingdoms. (See Mu) 

Atinach 
The name by which the natives of Tenerife referred to themselves, it means “People of the Sky-God.” Antinach derived from Atuaman, the Canary Island Atlas. 

Atitlan 
A lake in the Solola Department in the central highlands of southwestern Guatemala, where Quiche-Maya Civilization reached its florescence. Atitlan was named after its volcano surrounded by lofty mountains, a setting that could pass for a scene from Plato’s description of the island of Atlantis in Kritias. Blackett describes Atitlan as “the large and rich capital, court of the native kings of Quiche and the most sumptuous found by the Spaniards.” The lake’s name was apparently chosen to match its appropriately Atlantean environment; this, together with its obvious derivation from “Atlantis,” and the extraordinary splendor of its culture, identify Atitlan foundation by Atlantean colonizers.

Atiu 
An extinct volcano forming an atoll among the southern Cook Islands in the southwest Pacific. “At,” associated with volcanic islands, occurs throughout the Pacific Ocean. 

Atius 
Among the Pawnee Indians of North America, the sky-god, who controlled and understood the movements of the sun, moon, and stars. The similarity of his name and function to Atlas are affirmed by the Pawnee flood story. 

Atjeh 
A mountainous area of Indonesian Sumatra bordering a sloping plain reminiscent of Plato’s description of Atlantis. Even in this remote corner of the world, “At” was anciently applied to sacred mountains. 

Atl 
“Water” in Nahuatl, the Aztecs’ spoken language. The ancient Mexican Atl is likewise found in Atlantis, a water-born civilization. Atl also occurs on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean among Morocco’s Taureg peoples, for whom it also represents “water.” Atlantis’ former location between Mexico and Morocco suggests a kindred implication between the Nahuatl and Taureg words. 

In the Aztec calendar, “4-Atl” signifies the global deluge that destroyed a former “Sun” or age, immediately after which the Feathered Serpent arrived with his followers to found Mesoamerican civilization. The date 4-Atl is depicted on the Aztec Calendar Stone as a celestial bucket of water inundating a half-sunken stone pyramid, a self-evident reference to the final destruction of Atlantis. (See Quetzalcoatl)

Atla 
As described in the Hyndluljod Saga, she was a giantess, the mother of Heimdall, an important Norse god. Atlantean elements evident in the mythic relationship between Heimdall and Atla begin in the obvious derivation of her name. She was also a “daughter of the ocean,” who gave birth to her divine son “at the edge of the world, where land and sea meet.” So too, in Greek tradition, the Pleiades were daughters of Atlas—“Atlantises”—whose sons founded new civilizations. According to MacCullow (111), Atla personified at once the waves of the deep and the “Heavenly Mountain,” Himinbjorg, from which Heimdall derived his name, just as Atlantis was known after the sacred Mount Atlas. Even in modern Norwegian, himinbjorg refers to a mountain sloping down to the sea. Like the Mayas’ fair-skinned Itzamna, who brought civilization to Yucatan after a great flood in the Atlantic Ocean, Heimdall was “the White God,” the father of mankind.

Another Atla is a town in Mexico’s central plateau region, inhabited by the Otomi Indians who preserve the mythic heritage of their Aztec ancestors beneath a Christian gloss. Some Otomi tribes are among the most culturally conservative peoples in Middle America, refusing to wear modern dress and still preserving ritual kinship institutions handed down from pre-Spanish times. Because of this maintenance of prehistoric traditions, anthropologists regard the Otomi as reliable guides to Mesoamerica’s past.

Pertinent to our study is the Otomi acatlaxqui, the Dance of the Reed Throwers. Every November 25, 10 dancers assemble in Atla’s main square, dressed in red and white cotton costumes, and wear conical headgear. From the points of these paper hats stream red ribbons. Each dancer carries a 3-foot long reed staff decorated with feathers and additional reeds attached. The performers form a circle, at the center of which one of their number, dressed as a girl, rattles a gourd containing the wooden image of a snake. The acatlaxqui climaxes when the surrounding dancers use their reeds to create a dome over the central character, taken as a sign to begin a fireworks display.

The dance is not only deeply ancient, but a dramatic recreation of Otomi origins. The 10 dancers symbolize the 10 kings of Atlantis, portrayed in their conical hats streaming red ribbons, suggesting erupting volcanos. The reed was synonymous for learning, because it was a writing instrument. The Aztecs claimed their ancestors came to America from Aztlan, “the Isle of Reeds.” The boy “girl” dancer at the center may signify the Sacred Androgyne, a god-concept featured in an Atlantean mystery-cult. More likely, the female impersonator is meant to represent Atlantis itself, which was feminine: “Daughter of Atlas.” His gourd with the wooden snake inside for a rattle is a remnant of the same Atlantean mystery-cult, in which serpent symbolism described the powers of regeneration and the serpentine energy of the soul.

Forming a dome over the central performer may signify the central position of Atlantis, to which all the allied kingdoms paid tribute, or it could represent the sinking of Atlantis-Aztlan beneath the sea, an interpretation underscored by the fireworks timed to go off as the dome is created. The Otomi acatlaxqui-Atlantean identity is lent special emphasis by the name of the town in which it is annually danced, Atla. Moreover, November is generally accepted as the month in which Atlantis was destroyed. The name, Otomi, likewise implies Atlantean origins: Atomi, or Atoni, from the monotheistic solar god, Aton.

Atlahua 
Aztec sea-god with apparent Atlantean provenance. 

Atlaintika 
In Euskara, the sunken island, sometimes referred to as “the Green Isle,” from which Basque ancestors arrived in the Bay of Biscay. Atlaintika’s resemblance to Plato’s Atlantis is unmistakable. (See Belesb-At) 

Atlakvith 
A 13th-century Scandinavian saga preserving and perpetuating oral traditions going back 1,500 years before, to the late Bronze Age. Atlakvith (literally, “The Punishment of Atla[ntis]”) poetically describes the Atlantean cataclysm in terms of Norse myth, with special emphasis on the celestial role played by “warring comets” in the catastrophe. 

Atlamal 
Like Atlakvith, this most appropriately titled Norse saga tells of the “Twilight of the Gods,” or Ragnarok, the final destruction of the world order through celestial conflagrations, war, and flood. Atlamal means, literally, “The Story of Atla[ntis].” 

Atlan 
Today’s Alca, on the Gulf of Uraba, it was known as Atlan before the Spanish Conquest. Another Venezuelan “Atlan” is a village in the virgin forests between Orinoco and Apure. Its nearly extinct residents, the Paria Indians, preserve traditions of a catastrophe that overwhelmed their home country, a prosperous island in the Atlantic Ocean inhabited by a race of wealthy seafarers. Survivors arrived on the shores of Venezuela, where they lived apart from the indigenous natives. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, “Atlan” meant, literally, “In the Midst of the Sea.” Atlan’s philological derivation from Atlantis, kindred meaning, and common account of the lost island comprise valid evidence for Atlanteans in Middle and South America, just where investigators would expect to find important cultural clues.

Atland 
The Northern European memory of Atlantis, as preserved in the medieval account of a Frisian manuscript, the Oera Linda Bok, or “The Book of How Things Were in the Old Days.” (See Oera Linda Bok)

Atlanersa 
King of Nubia in the fifth century B.C. The name means “Prince or Royal Descendant (ersa) of Atlan,” presumably the Atlantis coincidentally described by Plato in Athens at the same time this monarch ruled Egypt’s southern neighbor. Unfortunately, nothing else is known about Atlanersa beyond his provocative name, nor have any Atlantean traditions been associated with the little that is known about Nubian beliefs.

Atlantean 
As a pronoun, an inhabitant of the island of Atlas or its capital, Atlantis. As an adjective, it defines anything belonging to the culture and society of the civilization of Atlantis. In art and architecture, Atlantean describes an anthropomorphic figure, usually a male statue, supporting a lintel often representing the sky. Until the early 20th century, “Atlantean” was used to characterize the outstanding monumentality of a particular structure, an echo of the splendid public building projects associated with Atlantis.

Atlantean War 
The Egyptian priest quoted in Plato’s Dialogue, Timaeus, reported that the Atlanteans, at the zenith of their imperial power, inaugurated far-reaching military campaigns throughout the Mediterranean World. They invaded western Italy and North Africa to threaten Egypt, but were turned back by the Greeks, who stood alone after the defeat of their allies. Successful counter offensives liberated all occupied territories up to the Strait of Gibraltar, when a major seismic event simultaneously destroyed the island of Atlantis and the pursuing Greek armies. The reasons or causes for the war are not described. 

The Egyptian priest implies that the Greeks perished in an earthquake on the shores of North Africa (northern Morocco) fronting the enemy’s island capital. He spoke of “the city which now is Athens” (author’s italics), meaning that the Greeks he described belonged to another city that preceded Athens at the same location during pre-classical times. This represents an internal dating of the war to the late Bronze Age (15th to 12th centuries B.C.) and the heyday of Mycenaean Greece.

There is abundant archaeological evidence for the Atlanteans’ far-ranging aggression described by the Egyptian priest. Beginning in the mid-13th century B.C., the Balearic Isles, Sardinia, Corsica, and western Italy were suddenly overrun by helmeted warriors proficient in the use of superior bronze weapons technology. At the same time, Libya was hit by legions of the same invaders described by the Greek historian Herodotus (circa 500 B.C.) as the “Garamantes.” Meanwhile, Pharaoh Merenptah was defending the Nile Delta against the Hanebu, or “Sea Peoples.” His campaigns coincided with the Trojan War, in which the Achaeans (Mycenaean Greeks) defeated the Anatolian kingdom of Ilios and all its allies. Among them were 10,000 troops from Atlantis, led by General Memnon. These widespread military events from the western Mediterranean to Egypt and Asia Minor comprised the Atlantean War described in Timaeus.

It is possible, however, that Atlantean aggression was not entirely military but more commercial in origin. Troy, while not a colony of Atlantis, was a blood related kingdom, and the Trojans dominated the economically strategic Dardanelles, gateway to the Bosphorus and rich trading centers of the Black Sea. It was their monopoly of this vital position that won them fabulous wealth. In fact, it appears that the Atlanteans founded an important harbor city in western coastal Anatolia just prior to the Trojan War (see Attaleia). But the change of fortunes in Asia Minor also won them the animosity of the Greeks, who were effectively cut off from the Dardanelles. This was the tense economic situation that many scholars believe actually led to the Achaean invasion of Troy.

The abduction of Helen by Paris, if such an event were not merely a poetic metaphor for the “piracy” of which the Trojans were accused, was the dramatic incident that escalated international tensions into war—the last straw, as it were, after years of growing animosity. Thus, the victorious Greeks portrayed the defeated Atlanteans as having embarked upon an unprovoked military conquest, when, in reality, both opposing sides were engaged in economic rivalry, through Troy, for control of the Bosphorus and its rich markets. These commercial causes appear more credible than the otherwise unexplained military adventure supposedly launched by the Atlanteans in a selfish conquest of the Mediterranean World, as depicted in Timaeus. On the other hand, our pro-Atlantean example of historical revision is at least partially undermined by the Atlanteans’ unquestionable aggression against Egypt immediately after their defeat at Troy and again, 42 years later. (See Memnon)

Atlanteotl 
An Aztec (Zapotec) water-god who “was condemned to stand forever on the edge of the world, bearing upon his shoulders the vault of the heavens” (Miller and Rivera, 4). This deity is practically a mirror image in both name and function of Atlas-Atlantis, powerful evidence supporting a profound Atlantean influence in Mesoamerica.

Atlantes 
Described by many classical writers (Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, etc.), a people who resided on the northwestern shores of present-day Morocco. They preserved a tradition of their ancestral origins in Atlantis, and appear to have been absorbed by the eighth-century invasion of their land by the forces of Islam. Notwithstanding their disappearance, their Atlantean legacy has been preserved by the Tuaregs and Berbers, who pride themselves on their partial descent from the Atlantes.

Atlanthropis mauritanicus 
A genus name assigned by the French anthropologist, Camille Arambourg, to Homo erectus finds at Ternifine, Algeria. It represented a slight development, considered “superfluous” by some scholars, of a type along the Atlantic shores of North Africa and may indicate that early man followed migrating animal herds across former land bridges onto the island of Atlantis. There the abundance of game and temperate climate fostered further evolutionary steps toward becoming Cro-Magnon. The Atlanthropis mauritanicus hypothesis is bolstered by Cro-Magnon finds made in some of the Canaries, the nearest islands to the suspected location of Atlantis. Atlanthropis mauritanicus is also referred to as Homo erectus mauritanicus.

Atlantiades 
Atlantises, Daughters of Atlas. 

Atlantic Ocean 
The sea that took its name from the land that once dominated it, Atlantis, just as the Indian Ocean derived its name from India, the Irish Sea from Ireland, the South China Sea from China, and so on.

Atlantica 
A four-volume magnum opus by Swedish polymath Olaus Rudbeck. Published in the year of his death, 1702, Atlantica was eagerly sought out by Sir Isaac Newton and other leading 18th-century scientists. It describes “Fennoscandia,” roughly equivalent to modern Sweden, as the post-deluge home of Atlantean survivors in the mid-third millennium B.C. (See Rudbeck)

La Atlantida 
Literally “Atlantis”; an opera (sometimes performed in concert form) by Spain’s foremost composer, Manuel de Falla (1876 to 1946). When a youth, de Falla heard local folktales of Atlantis, and learned that some Andalusian nobility traced their line of descent to Atlantean forebears. De Falla’s birthplace was Cadiz, site of the Spanish realm of Gadeiros, the twin brother of Atlas and king mentioned in Plato’s account (Kritias) of Atlantis. 

La Atlantida describes the destruction of Atlantis from which Alcides (Hercules) arrives in Iberia to found a new lineage through subsequent generations of Spanish aristocracy. One of the opera’s most effective moments occurs immediately after the sinking of Atlantis, when de Falla’s music eerily portrays a dark sea floating with debris moving back and forth upon the waves, as a ghostly chorus intones, “El Mort! El Mort! El Mort!” (“Death! Death! Death!”). 

Atlantida is also the title of a Basque epic poem describing ancestral origins at “the Green Isle” which sank into the sea. 

Atlantika 
In their thorough examination of the so-called “Aztec Calendar Stone,” Jimenez and Graeber state that Atlantika means “we live by the sea,” in Nahuatl, the Aztec language (67)

Atlantikos 
Ancient Greek for “Atlantis,” the title of Solon’s unfinished epic, begun circa 470 B.C. 

Atlantioi 
“Of Atlantis.” The name appears in the writings of various classical writers (Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, etc.) to describe the contemporary inhabitants of Atlantic coastal northwestern Africa. 

Atlantis 
Literally “Daughter of Atlas,” the chief city of the island of Atlas, and capital of the Atlantean Empire. From the welter of accumulating evidence, a reasonable picture of the lost civilization is beginning to emerge: As Pangea, the original supercontinent, was breaking apart about 200 million years ago, a continental mass trailing dry-land territories to what is now Portugal and Morocco was left mid-ocean, between the American and Eur-African continents pulled in opposite directions. This action was caused by seafloor spreading, a process that moves the continents apart by the operation of convection currents in the mantle of our planet. The resultant tear in the ocean bottom is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a seismic zone of volcanic and magmatic activity extending like a narrow scar from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic. The geologic violence of the Ridge combined with rising sea levels to eventually reduce the Atlantic island’s dry-land area.

About 1.5 million years ago, early man (Homo erectus mauritanicus, or Atlanthropis mauritanicus) pursued animal herds across slim land bridges leading from the western shores of North Africa onto the Atlantic island. These earliest inhabitants found a natural environment of abundant game, extraordinarily fertile volcanic soil with numerous freshwater springs, rich fishing, and a year-round temperate climate. Such uniquely superior conditions combined to stimulate human evolutionary growth toward the appearance of modern or Cro-Magnon man. With increases in population fostered by the nurturing Atlantean environment, social cooperation gradually developed to produce the earliest communities— small alliances of families for mutual assistance. These communities continued to expand, and in their growth, they became complex. The greater the number of individuals involved, the greater the number and variety of needs became, as well as technological innovations created by those needs, until a populous society of arts, letters, sciences, and religious and political hierarchies eventually emerged. The island of Atlas was, therefore, the birthplace of modern man and home of his first civilization.

Time frames are very controversial among Atlantologists, and this issue is addressed in the text that follows. Conservative investigators tend to regard Atlantean civilization as having come into its own sometime after 4000 B.C. By the end of that millennium, the Atlanteans were mining copper in the Upper Peninsula of North America; establishing a sacred calendar in Middle America; building megalithic structures such as New Grange in Ireland, Stonehenge in Britain, and Hal Tarxian at Malta; as well as founding the first dynasties in Egypt and Mesopotamia’s earliest city-states.

The island of Atlas was named after its chief mountain, a dormant volcano. The chief city and imperial capital was Atlantis, arranged in alternating rings of land and water interconnected by canals. High walls decorated with gleaming sheets of polished copper alloys and precious stones, featuring regularly spaced watchtowers, encircled the outer perimeter, which was separated from Mt. Atlas on the north by a broad, fair plain. The inner rings were occupied by a spacious racetrack, for popular events of all kinds; military headquarters and training fields; a bureaucracy; the aristocracy; and the royal family, who resided in a palace near the Temple of Poseidon, at the very center of the city. This temple was the most sacred site in Atlantis—the place where holy tradition claimed that the sea-god Poseidon mated with a mortal woman, Kleito, one of the native inhabitants, to produce five sets of male twins. These sons became the first Atlantean kings, from whom the various colonies of the Empire derived their names. The first of these was Atlas, earliest ruler of the island in the new order established by Poseidon.

By the 13th century B.C., the Atlantean Empire stretched from the Americas to the western shores of North Africa, the British Isles, Iberia, and Italy, with royal family and commercial ties as far as the Aegean coasts of Asia Minor. The Atlanteans were responsible for and dominated the Bronze Age, during which they rose to the zenith of their material and imperial success to become the leading power of late pre-classical times. However, their expanding trade network eventually clashed with powerful Greek interests in the Aegean, resulting in a long war that began at Troy and spread to Syria, the Nile Delta, and Libya, climaxing at the western shores of North Africa.

Initially successful, the Atlantean invaders suffered defeats at the hands of the Greeks, who had just pushed them out of the Mediterranean World when a natural catastrophe destroyed the island of Atlantis, along with most of its population, after a day and night of geologic upheaval. The same event simultaneously set off a major earthquake in present-day Morocco, where the pursuing Greek armies had gathered, and engulfed them, as well. Atlantean survivors of the destruction arrived as culture-bearers in different parts of the world, founding new civilizations in the Americas, and left related flood legends as part of the folk traditions of peoples around the globe.

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World 
The first modern, scientific examination of Atlantis begun in 1880 by Ignatius Donnelly and published two years later by Harper Brothers (New York). Certainly the most influential book on the subject, it triggered a popular and controversial revival of interest in Atlantis that continues to the present day.

Donnelly’s use of comparative mythologies to argue on behalf of Atlantis-as-fact is encyclopedic, persuasive, and still represents a veritable gold mine of information for researchers. His geology and oceanography were far ahead of his time, while his conclusions were largely borne out by advances made during the second half of the 20th century in the general acceptance of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics. Atlantis: The Antediluvian World has been unfairly condemned for its relatively few failings, mostly by Establishment dogmatists and cultural isolationists to whom any serious suggestion of Atlantis is the worst heresy. But no scholarly position has been able to remain unscathed after 100 years of scientific progress, and, for the most part, Donnelly’s work has stood the test of time. In the first 10 years after its publication, the book went through 24 editions, making it an extraordinary best-seller, even by modern standards. It has since been translated into dozens of languages, has sold millions of copies around the world, and is still in print—all of which qualifies the book as a classic, just as vigorously condemned and championed today as it was more than a century ago.

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World poses 13 fundamental positions, which formed the basis of Atlantology. These predicate that: 

1) Atlantis was a large island that lay just outside the Strait of Gibraltar in the Atlantic Ocean. 

2) Plato’s account of Atlantis is factual. 

3) Atlantis was the site where mankind arose from barbarism to civilization. Donnelly was the first to state this view, which, although not mentioned in Plato’s Dialogues, is suggested by the weight of supportive evidence found in the traditions of peoples residing within the former Atlantean sphere of influence. 

4) The power of Atlantis stretched from Pacific coastal Peru and Yucatan in the west to Africa, Europe, and Asia Minor in the east. 

5) Atlantis represented “a universal memory of a great land, where early mankind dwelt for ages in peace and happiness”—the original Garden of Eden. 

6) The Greek, Phoenician, Hindu, and Scandinavian deities represented a confused recollection in myth of the kings, queens, and heroes of Atlantis. 

Although important Atlantean themes interpenetrate both Western and Eastern mythologies, as he successfully demonstrated, Donnelly overstated that relationship by reducing all the ancient divinities to merely mythic shadows of mundane mortals. 

7) The solar cults of ancient Egypt and Peru derived from the original religion of Atlantis. 

8) Egypt, whose civilization was a reproduction of Atlantis, was also the oldest Atlantean colony. 

Early Dynastic Egypt was a synthesis of indigenous Nilotic cultures and Atlantean culture-bearers who arrived at the Nile Delta during the close of the fourth millennium B.C. The hybrid civilization that emerged was never a “colony” of Atlantis, although Donnelly was right in detecting numerous aspects of Atlantean culture among the Egyptians.

9) The Atlanteans, responsible for the European Bronze Age, were the first manufacturers of iron, as well. 

While persuasive evidence for this last argument is scant, Donnelly’s identification of the Atlanteans with the bronze-barons of the Ancient World is among his most valid and important positions. 

10) The Phoenician and Mayan written languages derived from Atlantis. 

Phoenician letters evolved from trade contacts with the Egyptians, whose demotic script was simplified by merchants in Lebanon. If Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs are both Atlantean, they should be at least partially intertranslatable, which they are not. Even so, they may have evolved into separate systems over the millennia from a shared parent source in Atlantis, because at least a few genuine comparisons, known as cognates, between the two have been made. 

11) Atlantis was the original homeland of both the Aryan and the Semitic peoples. 

What later became known as the so-called “Indo-Europeans” may have first arisen on the Atlantic island, and the Atlanteans were unquestionably Caucasoid. But such origins are deeply prehistoric, and any real proof is very difficult to ascertain. More likely, the Atlanteans were direct descendants of Cro-Magnon types, whose genetic legacy has been traced to the original inhabitants of the Canary Islands, the native Guanches, direct descendants of Atlantis. Donnelly mistakenly accepted the Genesis story of the Great Flood and related references in Old Testament and Talmudic literature as evidence for Aryan (Japhethic), as well as Semitic origins in Atlantis. In truth, the Hebrews incorporated some ancient Gentile traditions, such as the Deluge, into their own mosaic culture. Even so, the Phoenicians were in part descended from the invading “Sea Peoples” of lost Atlantis in the early 12th century B.C.

It was the depredations of these Atlantean survivors-turned-privateers that ravaged the shores of Canaan, thereby making possible a takeover of the Promised Land by the Hebrews. They intermarried with the piratical Gentiles to produce the mercantile Phoenicians. Their concentric capital at Carthage and prodigious seafaring achievements were evidence of an Atlantean inheritance. These influences, however, are after the fact (the destruction of Atlantis). Even so, Edgar Cayce spoke of a “principle island at the time of the final destruction” he called “Aryan.” Later, he described “the Aryan land” as Yucatan, where a yet to-be discovered Hall of Records contains original documents pertaining to Atlantis. 

12) Atlantis perished in a natural catastrophe that sank the entire island and killed most of its inhabitants. 

13) The relatively few survivors arrived in various parts of the world, where their reports of the cataclysm grew to become the flood traditions of many nations. 

The late 19th-century publication of Atlantis: The Antediluvian World marked the beginning of renewed interest in Atlantis, and is still among the best of its kind on the subject. (See Cayce)

Atlantis, the Lost Continent 
A 1961 feature film by George Pal based less on Plato than the wildest statements of Edgar Cayce. Its bromidic screenplay, vapid dialogue, wooden acting, and bargain-basement “special effects” have made Atlantis, the Lost Continent into something of a cult classic for Atlantologists with a sense of humor. 

Atlantis, the Lost Empire 
Presented in a flat, dimensionless animation characteristic of the Disney Studio since the death of its founder, this 2001 production has far less in common with Plato than even George Pal’s unintentionally comic version. A sequel to Atlantis, the Lost Empire, released two years later, was even more miserable, but demonstrated that popular interest in the subject is still strong 24 centuries after Plato’s account appeared for the first time. 

Atlantology 
The study of all aspects related to the civilization of Atlantis; also refers to a large body of literature (an estimated 2,500 books and published papers) describing Atlantis. It calls upon many related disciplines, including archaeology, archaeoastronomy, comparative mythology, genetics, anthropology, geology, volcanology, oceanography, linguistics, nautical construction, navigation, and more.

Atlas 
The central figure in the story of Atlantis, he was the chief monarch of the Atlantean Empire, ruling from its island capital. Atlas was the founder of astrology-astronomy (there being made no original distinction between the two disciplines), depicted as a bearded Titan or giant supporting the sphere of the heavens on his shoulders, as he crouches on one knee. He thus became a symbol and national emblem for the Atlanteans and their devotion to the celestial sciences. In Sanskrit, atl means “to support or uphold.” 

Parallel mythic descriptions of Atlas are revealing. His father, in the non Platonic version, was Iapatus, also a Titan, who was regarded as the father of mankind. After his defeat by the Olympians, Iapatus was buried under a mountainous island to prevent his escape, suggesting the sunken island and punishment meted out to Atlantis by the gods, as described in Plato’s account. Clymene was the mother of Atlas. She was a sea-nymph who personified Asia Minor. Interestingly, “Atlas” is the name of a mountain in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) near Catal Huyuk, which, at 9,000 years old, is among the most ancient cities on earth. Thus, in Atlas’s parentage are represented the Far West of the Atlantic islands (Iapatus) and the eastern extent of Atlantean influence (Anatolia) in Clymene. Her parents were Tythys, “the Lovely Queen of the Sea,” and Oceanus, the oldest Titan, known as the “Outer Sea,” or the Atlantic Ocean itself—all of which underscore Atlas’s oceanic identity, contrary to some scholars who confine him to Morocco and the Atlas Mountains. 

Plato’s version of Atlas’s descent makes Poseidon, the sea-god, his father, and Kleito, the native girl of the ocean isle, his mother. These discrepancies are unimportant, because the significance of myth does not lie in its consistency, but in its power to describe. The Titan’s transformation into a mountain took place after he fetched the Golden Apples for Heracles, who temporarily took Atlas’s place in supporting the sky. He had been condemned to this singular position as punishment for his leading role in the Titanomachy, an antediluvian struggle between gods and giants for mastery of the world. But Perseus, Heracles’ companion, took pity on Atlas and turned him into a mountain of stone by showing him the Gorgon Medusa’s severed head. 

This largely Hellenistic myth from early classic or late pre-classic times added peculiarly Greek elements, which clouded a far older tradition. Even so, certain details of the original survive in the Titanomachy, the Atlanteans’ bid for world conquest, of which the depredations of the so-called “Sea Peoples” against Pharaoh Ramses III’s Egypt, Homer’s Iliad, and Plato’s Atlanto-Athenian War were but various campaigns of the same conflict. 

According to Sumerian scholar Neil Zimmerer, Atlas was indigenously known in West Africa, where he was remembered as “the king of Atlantis, and fled when the island sank into the sea. He established a new kingdom in Mauritania.”

Atlatonan 
The “Daughter of Tlaloc,” a blue-robed virgin ritually drowned as a sacrifice to the Aztec rain-god. Her fate and philological resemblance to Atlantis, literally, “Daughter of Atlas,” are too remarkable for coincidence. (See Tlaloc)

Atlcaulcaco 
“The Waste of Waters,” a month in the Aztec calendar commemorating the Great Flood, the first month calculated by the Aztec Calendar Stone, during which a blue-robed virgin was ritually drowned to honor the rain-god. Plato described the royalty of Atlantis as favoring blue robes during ceremonial events. 

Atlixco 
An Aztec outpost in south-central Mexico near a sacred volcano, Iztaccihuatl, associated with the earlier Mayas’ version of Atlas, Itzamna, “the Lord of Heaven,” and “the White Man.” Iztaccihuatl means “Great in the Water,” a clear reference to Mt. Atlas, the great peak on the island of Atlantis.

Aton 
Among the oldest deities worshiped in Egypt, he was the sun-god who alone ruled the universe, suggesting an archaic form of monotheism, which may have been the “Law of One” Edgar Cayce said functioned as a mystery cult in Atlantis up until the final destruction. His “life-readings” described the Atlantean Followers of the Law of One arriving in Egypt to reestablish themselves. Egyptian tradition itself spoke of the Smsu-Hr, the Followers of Horus (the sun-god), highly civilized seafarers, who landed at the Nile Delta to found the first dynasties. Shortly thereafter, Aton dwindled to insignificance, as polytheism rapidly spread throughout the Nile Valley. 

It was not until 1379 B.C., with the ascent of Amenhotep IV, who changed his name to Akhenaton, that the old solar divinity was given primacy. All other deities were banned, allowing Aton to have no other gods before him. The religious experiment was a disastrous failure and did not survive the heretical Pharaoh’s death in 1362 B.C., when all the old gods were restored, except Aton. His possible worship by Cayce’s Followers of the Law of One, along with the “At” perfix, suggest the god was imported by late fourth-millennium B.C. Atlanteans arriving in Egypt. Aton’s name appears to have meant “Mountain Sun City” (“On” being the Egyptian name for the Greek Heliopolis, or City of the Sun-God), and may have originally referred to a religious location (that is, Atlantis) rather than a god. Indeed, he was often addressed as “The Aton,” the sun disc—a thing, more than a divine personality. (See Cayce)

Aton-at-i-uh 
The supreme sun-god of the Aztecs depicted at the center of their famous “Calendar Stone,” actually an astrological device. His supremacy, astrological function, and philological resemblance to the Egyptian Aton imply a credible connection through Atlantis. Additionally, young Egyptian initiates of the Aton cult were required to have their skulls artificially deformed after the example of their highpriest, Pharaoh Akhenaton, a practice that would identify them for the rest of their lives as important worshippers of the Sun Disk. Surviving temple art from his city, Akhetaton (current-day Tell el-Amarna), show the King’s own children with deformed heads. On the other side of the world, the sun-worshipping elite among the Mayas in Middle America and the pre-Inca peoples of South America all practiced skull elongation. At both Akhetaton and Yucatan, the newborn infant of a royal family had its head placed between cloth-covered boards, which were gently drawn together by knotted cords. For about two years, the malleable skull was forced to develop into an oblong shape that was considered the height of aristocratic fashion. 

According to chronologer Neil Zimmerer, Aton-at-i-uh was originally a cruel Atlantean despot who crushed a rebellion of miners by feeding them to wild beasts. He was supposedly responsible for the destruction of Atlantis when he blew up its mine shafts during his frustrated bid to assume absolute power. Aton-at-i-uh’s reputation lived on long after his life, eventually transforming into the Aztec God of Time, which destroys everything. As the sun was associated with the passage of time, so Aton-at-i-uh personified both the supreme solar and temporal deity.

At-o-sis 
A monstrous serpent that long ago encircled a water-girt palace of the gods located across the Sunrise Sea, according to the Algonquian Passamaquoddy Indians. Their concept is identical to the Egyptian Mehen, with its mythic portrayal of Atlantis. Many tales of At-o-sis describe him as lying at the bottom of “the Great Lake” (the Atlantic Ocean), with the remains of the gods’ sunken “lodge.” Interestingly, the Passamaquoddy “Sunrise Sea” is in keeping with the Egyptian sun-god, Ra, encircled by the Mehen serpent. (See Atfih, Ataentsik) 

At-otarho 
Among the North American Iroquois, a mythic figure with a head of snakes for hair, similar to the Greek Medusa, who was herself associated with Atlantis. 

Atrakhasis 
“Unsurpassed in Wisdom,” the title of Utnapishtim, survivor of the Great Flood portrayed in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Scholars believe the story predates by 1,000 years its earliest written version, recorded around 2000 B.C. in cuneiform script on 12 clay tablets. The prefix “At” combines with the epic’s early third-millennium B.C. origins to indicate that Utnapishtim belonged to the First Atlantean Deluge, in 3100 B.C.

Atri 
In Hindu myth, one of 10 Prajapatis, beings intermediate between gods and mortals, known as the progenitors of mankind, and assigned by Manu to create civilization throughout the world. Atri may be an Indus Valley version of Atlas, who likewise had nine brothers, Titans, who similarly occupied a position between the Olympians and men. The Prajapatis were sometimes associated with the Aditayas, the “upholders” of the heavens (sustainers of the cosmic order), just like Atlas, who supported the sky. Atri’s prominent position as a world-civilizer echoes the far-flung Atlantis Empire.

Atsilagigai 
Literally, the “Red Fire Men” in Cherokee tradition. The name more broadly interpreted means the “Men from the Place of Red Fire,” Cherokee ancestors. Some of them escaped the judgement of heaven, when the Great Flood drowned almost all living things. Atsilagigai refers to culture-bearers from a volcanic island, and is a Native American rendering of the word “Atlantean.”

Atso, or Gyatso 
Tibetan for “ocean,” associated with the most important spiritual position in Boen-Buddhism, the Dalai Lama. The Mongolian word for ocean is dalai, a derivative of the Sanskrit atl for “upholder,” and is found throughout every Indo-European language for “sea” or “valley in the water,” as though created by high waves: the Sumerian Thallath, the Greek thalassa, the German Tal, the English dale, and so on. Dalai, according to Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, stems from the Tibetan word for “ocean” that forms his name. Although Dalai Lama has sometimes been translated as “Ocean of Wisdom,” it really means “Wise Man (Guru) of (or from) the Ocean,” a title that appears to have originated with the pre-Buddhist Boen religion somewhat absorbed by the creed introduced from India in the eighth century. 

Atlantologists have speculated since the late 1800s that the history and religious tenets of Atlantis are still preserved in some of Tibet’s secret libraries or even encoded in the very ritual fabric of Tibetan religion itself. Some investigators discern traces of the Atlantean mystery cults in Boen-Buddhism, particularly the central importance placed on the doctrine of reincarnation and the sand mandalas designed to portray the celestial city, with its concentric layout of alternating rings of land and water powerfully reminiscent of Plato’s sunken capital, even to the sacred numerals and elephants of Atlantis recurring through the sand-paintings. These considerations seem stressed by Atlantean influences in the high-holy terminology of Tibetan just discussed: Gyatso, Dalai, and so forth. 

Edgar Cayce spoke of an unnamed person from the land now known as Tibet, who visited Atlantis at a time when Atlantean teachings were being disseminated. Perhaps this refers to the early spread of spiritual concepts to Tibet from Atlantis and accounts for the Tibetan “Wise Man from the Ocean.” In other “life-readings,” Cayce mentions a “correlating” of Atlantean thought with Mongolian theology. (Cayce, 957-1 M.53 3/12/30; 938-1 F.29 6/21/35; 1159-1 F.80 5/5/36) 

Att 
A word in the language of the ancient Egyptians signifying a large pool or lake, a body of water. As elsewhere in Egyptian and the tongues of other peoples impacted by the Atlantis experience, “Att” has an aquatic reference.

Attaleia 
Modern Antalya, in western coastal Turkey, chief port of ancient Anatolian Lycia, founded (actually refounded in classical times) by Attalos II of Pergamon, circa 150 B.C. Recent excavations unearthed material evidence demonstrating civilized habitation at Attaleia in the form of stone bulwarks and harbor facilities dated to the late or early post-Bronze Age (circa 1300 to 900 B.C.) Attalus II rebuilt the site, following closely the original walls, which were laid out in concentric circles interspaced with watchtowers. Its architectural resemblance to Atlantis; early date, during which Atlantis was at the zenith of its military influence, which stretched as far as the eastern Mediterranean; identity as an Atlantis-like harbor capital; and the Atlantean character of its name all suggest that Attaleia was originally founded by Atlanteans in Asia Minor, perhaps to assist their Dardanian allies in the Trojan War (1250 to 1240 B.C.)

Attawaugen 
Known to native Algonquian speakers in Connecticut as a sacred hill associated with the arrival of their forefathers on the eastern shores of North America following a catastrophic flood that engulfed an ancestral homeland. (See Atum) 

Attewandeton 
An extinct aboriginal tribe cited in the oral traditions of Upper Michigan’s Menomonie Indians as responsible for having committed genocide against the “Marine Men,” identified with Plato’s miners from Atlantis. (See Bronze Age) 

At-tit 
In pre-Columbian Guatemala, an ancestral goddess who preached “worship of the true God,” suggesting she was a practitioner (probably high priestess) of the Followers of the Law of One, which Edgar Cayce claimed was the second most influential cult in Atlantis at the time of its final destruction. At-tit’s name and character identify her as an important Atlantean visitor to Middle America. (See Cayce) 

Atu 
In Sumerian myth, a sacred mountain in the Western Sea, from whence the sky-goddess, Inanna, carried the Tablets of Civilization to Mesopotamia after Atu was engulfed by the sea. 

Atua 
In Maori, “Altar of the God,” found among various Polynesian islanders. They regard its memory as a sacred heirloom from their ancestors and a symbol of the holy mountain, the original homeland of their ancestors who largely perished when it sank beneath the surface of the ocean. Atua is also the name of a district in Western Samoa, whose inhabitants speak the oldest language in Polynesia. The cult of Atua, the chief god worshiped by the Easter Islanders, arrived after he caused a great people to perish in some oceanic cataclysm.

Atuaman 
Similar to the Polynesian Atua and the Egyptian Atum, Atuaman was the most important deity worshiped by the Guanches, the original inhabitants of the Canary Islands. His name means, literally, “Supporter of the Sky,” precisely the same description accorded to Atlas. Atuaman is represented in pictographs, especially at Gran Canaria, as a man supporting the heavens on his shoulders, the identical characterization of Atlas in Western art. Among archaeological evidence in the Canaries, the appearance of this unquestionably Atlantean figure—the leading mythic personality of Atlantis—affirms the former existence of Atlantis in its next-nearest neighboring islands. 

Atuf 
According to the Tanimbar Austronesian people of southeast Maluku, he separated the Lesser Sundras from Borneo by wielding his spear, while traveling eastward with his royal family from a huge natural cataclysm that annihilated their distant homeland. It supposedly took place at a time when the whole Earth was unstable. The chief cultural focus of the Tanimbar is concentrated on the story of Atuf and his heroism in saving their ancestors from disaster. “Thereafter they had to migrate ever eastward from island refuge to island refuge,” writes Oppenheimer, and “as if to emphasize this, visitors will find huge symbolic stone boats as ritual centres of the villages” (278). North of Maluku, a similar account is known to the islanders of Ceram and Banda. In their version, their ancestors are led to safety by Boi Ratan, a princess from the sunken kingdom.

Atum 
Among the most ancient of Egyptian deities associated with a Sacred Mountain, the origin of the first gods, Atum was the first divinity of creation. He created the Celestial Waters from which arose the Primal Mound. Shu, the Egyptian Atlas, declares in the Coffin Texts, “I am the son of Atum. Let him place me on his neck.” In Hittite mythology, Kumarbi, a giant arising from the Western Ocean, placed Upelluri on his mountainous neck, where he supported the sky, and is today regarded by mythologists as the Anatolian version of Atlas. 

Atum says elsewhere in the same Texts, “Let my son, Shu, be put beneath my daughter, Nut [the starry night sky], to keep guard for me over the Heavenly Supports, which exist in the twilight [the far west].” His position beneath Nut indicates Shu’s identification with Atlas as the patron of astronomy. “The Heavenly Supports” were known to Plato and his fellow Greeks as “the Pillars of Heracles,” beyond which lay Atlantis-Atum. 

The 60th Utterance of the Pyramid Texts reads, “Oh, Atum! When you came into being you rose up as a high hill. You rose up in this your name of High Hill.” As Clark explains:

When the deceased, impersonated by his statue, was crowned during the final ceremony inside the pyramid, he was invested with the Red Crown of Lower Egypt. A heap of sand was put on the floor and the statue placed upon it while a long prayer was recited, beginning, ‘Rise upon it, this land which came forth at Atum. Rise high upon it, that your father may see you, that Ra may see you.’ The sand represents the Primal Mound. The instruction to the king is to ascend the mound and be greeted by the sun. This implies that the mound can become the world mountain whereon the king ascends to meet in his present form, the sun. 

This, then, is the concept of kingship descended from the supreme sun-god, Ra, on his holy mountain of Atum, the gods’ birthplace. It was this sacred ancestral location, reported Egyptian tradition, that sank beneath the sea of the Distant West, causing the migration of divinities and royalty to the Nile Delta. Atum’s philological and mythic resemblance to Mount Atlas, wherein the Egyptian deity is likewise synonymous for the sacred mountain and the god, defines him as a religious representation of the original Atlantean homeland.

Atur 
A unit of nautical measurement used by the ancient Egyptians that meant, literally, “river” (more probably, an archaic term for “water”) and corresponded to one hour of navigation covering 7,862.2 meters, equal to a constant speed of about 4.5 miles per hour. The term was a legacy from the Egyptians’ seafaring Atlantean forefathers, as is apparent in the prefix “at” and its definition as a nautical term.

Atziluth 
The Cabala, literally “the received tradition,” is a mystical interpretation of Hebrew scriptures relying on their most ancient and original meanings. The cabalistic term Atziluth refers to the first of four “worlds” or spiritual powers that dominated the Earth. It signified the “World of Emanations” or “Will of God,” the beginning of human spiritual consciousness. Philological and mythological comparisons with Atlantis, where modern man and his first formalized religion came into existence, appears preserved in the earliest traditions of the Cabala.

Autlan 
Located in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains, Autlan was the home of the highly civilized Tarascans of Michoacan. The only Mesoamericans known to have established regular trade with the civilizations of coastal Peru, because of their seafaring abilities, the Tarascans’ superior bronze weapons enabled them to fight off the Aztecs. Their chief ceremonial center was at Tzintzuntzan, renowned for its outstanding Atlantean architectural features, including circular pyramidal platforms profuse with the sacred numerals of Atlantis, 5 and 6, mentioned by Plato (in Kritias). Autlan’s philological resemblance to “Atlantis” and the Atlantean features of the Bronze Age-like Tarascans define both the site and its people as inheritors from the drowned island civilization.

Autochthon 
Literally, “Sprung from the Land,” he was the sixth king of Atlantis listed in Plato’s Kritias. Autochthon was also mentioned in Phoenician (Canaanite) myth— the Sanchuniathon—as one of the Rephaim, or Titans, just as Plato described him. The first-century B.C. Greek geographer Diodorus Siculus wrote of a native people dwelling in coastal Mauretania (modern Morocco), facing the direction of Atlantis, who called themselves the Autochthones. They were descendants of Atlantean colonizers who established an allied kingdom on the Atlantic shores of North Africa. According to the thorough Atlantologist Jalandris, “Autochthon” was a term by which the Greeks knew the Pelasgians, or “Sea Peoples” associated with Atlantis. 

Avalon 
From the Old Welsh Ynys Avallach, or Avallenau, “The Isle of Apple Trees.” The lost Druidic Books of Pheryllt and Writings of Pridian, both described as “more ancient than the Flood,” celebrated the return of King Arthur from Ynys Avallach, “where all the rest of mankind had been overwhelmed.” Avalon is clearly the British version of Atlantis, with its grove of sacred apple trees tended by the Hesperides, Daughters of Atlas (that is, Atlantises). Avallenau was also the name of a Celtic goddess of orchards, reaffirming the Hesperides’ connection with Atlantis. Avalon was additionally referred to as Ynys-vitrius, the “Island of Glass Towers,” an isle of the dead, formerly the site of a great kingdom in the Atlantic Ocean. Avalon has since been associated with Glastonbury Tor—roughly, “Hill of the Glass Tower”—a high hill in Somerset, England. During the Bronze Age, the site was an island intersected by watercourses, resembling the concentric layout of the island of Atlantis. Underscoring this allusion is the spiral pathway that spreads outward from the Tor, because Plato described Atlantis as having been originally laid out in the pattern of a sacred spiral. 

In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini, Avalon is called “the Fortunate Isle,” the same title Classical Greek and Roman writers assigned to Atlantic islands generally and to Atlantis specifically. The Welsh Ynys Avallach and English Ynys-vitrius were known along the Normandy coast as the Isle of Ys, which disappeared beneath the waves. Avalon is also a town in Burgundy named after the sunken island city, because some of its survivors reached Brittany. (See Ablach, Ys) 

Awun 
One of the divine twins in the Chinese version of Atlantis. (See Infoniwa) 

Ayar-aucca 
The third and last wave of foreign immigration into prehistoric South America comprised refugees from a natural catastrophe—the sudden obliteration of their once mighty kingdom in fire and flood. Appropriately remembered as the “War-like People,” they were undoubtedly veterans of failed Atlantean wars in the eastern Mediterranean and survivors from the final destruction of Atlantis, in 1198 B.C. Their Atlantean identity is confirmed by the Incas themselves. They described the Ayar-aucca as four twin giants who held up the sky. But they eventually grew tired of their exertions on behalf of an ungrateful humanity, and let it fall into the sea, creating a worldwide deluge that destroyed most of mankind. 

One of the Ayar-aucca arrived in Cuzco, where he transformed himself into a huaca, or sacred stone, but not before mating with a local woman to sire the first Inca. Henceforward, Cuzco, known as “the Navel of the World,” was the capital of the Inca Empire. The Ayar-aucca is the self-evident Peruvian rendering of the Bronze Age Atlantis catastrophe, incorporated into the Incas’ imperial foundation myth. (See Ahson-nutl, Navel of the World) 

Ayar-chaki 
This second wave of foreigners in South America suddenly appeared as “Wanderers” or immigrants from earthquakes and floods that made continued residency at their distant homeland impossible. Their leader was Manco Capac and his wife, Mama Ocllo. They established the “Flowering Age,” when the “Master Craftsmen” built Tiahuanaco about 3,500 years ago. Indeed, radiocarbon testing at the ceremonial center yielded an early construction date of +/-1600 B.C. (Childress, 139). Their sinful homeland was destroyed in a flood sent as punishment from the gods, who spared Manco Capac and his large, virtuous family. The Ayar-chaki were refugees from geologic violence that beset much of the world with the return of a killer comet between 1600 and 1500 B.C., the same celestial phenomenon that forced the earlier Ayar-manco-topa and the later Ayar-aucca to flee their seismically unstable oceanic homelands for higher ground.

Ayar-manco-topa 
Bands of men and women who arrived along the northern coasts of Peru, where they built the earliest cities, raised the first pyramids and other monumental structures, understood applied mathematics, cured illnesses with medicines and surgery, and instituted all the cultural features for which Andean civilization came to be known. In the Chimu version, they were led by King Naymlap, who landed with his followers in “a fleet of big canoes.” The Ayar-manco-topa correspond to the Salavarry Period in Andean archaeology, when the first South American pyramidal platforms with rectangular courts appeared in Peru. The Ayar-manco-topa were probably Lemurian culture-bearers fleeing the worldwide geologic upheavals that particularly afflicted, but did not yet destroy, their Pacific Ocean homeland at the close of the fourth millennium B.C. (See Lemuria)

Azaes 
The ninth king of Atlantis listed in Plato’s Kritias. On the Atlantic shores of Middle America, he was known as Itzamna, leader of the ancestral Mesoamericans’ “Greater Arrival,” that first wave of Atlantean culture-bearers from across the Sunrise Sea, recorded by the Mayas. Portrayed as a fair-skinned, bearded figure among the beardless natives, his title was “The First One.” He holds up the sky in the temple art of Yucatan’s foremost Maya ceremonial center, Chichen Itza, which was named after him and his descendants, the Itzas. Chichen Itza is particularly noted for its Atlantean statuary and sculpted relief. 

Azaes-Itzamna was probably a real colonizer from Atlantis, who established his allied kingdom, which eventually took his name. In Yucatan, Azaes means “the Parched or Thirsty One,” appropriate to the arid conditions of Middle America, where sufficient drinking water was always a question of paramount importance and the Atlantean Tlaloc was a rain-god of highest significance. Another title for Itzamna was “Lizard,” the Mayas’ symbol for a bringer or harbinger of rain and, hence, abundance.

Azores 
Ten major islands in the North Atlantic comprising 902 square miles, lying 740 miles west of Portugal’s Cape Roca from the island of San Miguel. The Azores are volcanic; their tallest mountain, Pico, at 7,713 feet, is dormant. Captain Diego de Sevilha discovered the islands in 1427. Portugal’s possession ever since, they are still collectively and officially recognized by Portuguese authorities as “os vestigios dos Atlantida,” or “the remains of Atlantis.” The name “Azores” supposedly derives from Portuguese for “hawks,” or Acores. The Hungarian specialist in comparative linguistics, Dr. Vamos-Toth Bator, believes instead that “Azores” is a corruption of “Azaes,” the monarch of an Atlantean kingdom, as described in Plato’s account (Kritias). 

None of the islands were inhabited at the time of their discovery, but a few important artifacts were found on Santa Maria, where a cave concealed a stone altar decorated with serpentine designs, and at Corvo, famous for a small cask of Phoenician coins dated to the fifth century B.C.

The most dramatic find was an equestrian statue atop a mountain at San Miguel. The 15-foot tall bronze masterpiece comprised a block pedestal bearing a badly weathered inscription and surmounted by a magnificent horse, its rider stretching forth a right arm and pointing out across the sea, toward the west. King John V ordered the statue removed to Portugal, but his governor’s men botched the job, when they accidentally dropped the colossus down the mountainside. Only the rider’s head and one arm, together with the horse’s head and flank and an impression of the pedestal’s inscription, were salvaged and sent on to the King. 

These items were preserved in his royal palace, but scholars were unable to effect a translation of the “archaic Latin,” as they thought the inscription might have read. They were reasonably sure of deciphering a single word—“cates”— although they could not determine its significance. If correctly transcribed, it might be related to cati, which means, appropriately enough, “go that way,” in the language spoken by the Incas, Quechua. Cattigara is the name of a Peruvian city, as indicated on a second-century A.D. Roman map, so a South American connection with the mysterious San Miguel statue seems likely (Thompson 167–169). Cattigara was probably Peru’s Cajamarca, a deeply ancient, pre-Inca site. Indeed, the two city names are not even that dissimilar.

In 1755, however, all the artifacts taken from San Miguel were lost during a great earthquake that destroyed 85 percent of Lisbon. While neither Santa Maria’s altar in the cave nor San Miguel’s equestrian statue were certifiably Atlantean, they unquestionably evidenced an ancient world occupation of the Azores, and the bronze rider’s pointed gesture toward the west suggests more distant voyages to the Americas. Roman accounts of islands nine days’ sail from Lusitania (Portugal) describe contemporary sailing time to the Azores. The first century B.C. Greek geographer Diodorus Siculus reported that the Phoenicians and Etruscans contested each other for control of Atlantic islands, which were almost certainly the Azores. We recall Corvo’s Phoenician coins, while the Etruscans were extraordinary bronze sculptors, who favored equestrian themes, such as the example at San Miguel. Both the Phoenicians and Etruscans were outstanding seafarers. 

Atlantologists speculate the Etruscans did not discover the islands, but learned of them from their Atlantean fathers and grandfathers. The Azores’ lack of human habitation at the time of their Portuguese discovery and their paucity of civilized remains may be explained in terms of the Atlantis catastrophe itself, which forced their evacuation and, over the subsequent course of centuries of geologic activity, buried most of what survived under lava flows, which are common in the islands. The oldest known reference to the Azores appears in Homer’s Odyssey, where he refers (probably) to San Miguel as umbilicus maris, or “the Navel of the Ocean,” the name of an Atlantean mystery cult. (See Ampheres)

Aztecs 
A Nahuatl-speaking people who established their capital, Tenochtitlan, at the present location of Mexico City, in 1325 A.D. Over the next two centuries, they rose through military aggression to become the dominant power in pre-Conquest Middle America. Although their civilization was an inheritance from other Mesoamerican cultures that preceded them, the Aztecs preserved abundant and obvious references to Atlantis in their mythic traditions. Despite the millennia that separated them from that mother civilization, their royal ancestry, though not entirely unmixed with native blood, could still trace itself back to the arrival of Quetzalcoatl, the “Feathered Serpent,” an Atlantean culture-bearer. 

Aztecatl 
The Aztecs themselves drew their national identity from this term, which means, “Man of Watery (that is, sunken) Aztlan,” the Aztec name for Atlantis.

Aztlan 
An island civilization in the Atlantic Ocean from which the ancestors of the Aztecs arrived in America following a destructive flood. A clear reference to Atlantis, Aztlan was remembered by the Aztecs as “the Field of Reeds,” “Land of Cranes” (denoting its island character), and “the White Island.” On the other side of the world, the ancient Egyptians referred to an island in the Atlantic Ocean from which the first gods and men arrived at the Nile Delta as Sekhet-aaru, or “the Field of Reeds.” To both the Aztecs and the Egyptians, reeds were symbolic for wisdom, because they were used as writing utensils. Atlantis was likewise known as “the White Island” to North African Berbers, ancient Britons, and Hindus of the Indian subcontinent. (See Albion, Atala)

B

Bacab 
A Mayan name given to anthropomorphic figures usually carved in relief on sacred buildings. They simultaneously represent a single god and his own manifestation as twin pairs signifying the four cardinal directions. The Bacabs are portrayed as men with long beards, distinctly un-Indian facial features, and wearing conch shells, while supporting the sky with upraised hands. Their most famous appearance occurs at a shrine atop Chichen Itza’s Pyramid of the Kukulcan, the Feathered Serpent, in Yucatan. Placement in the holy-of-holies at this structure is most appropriate, because the Mayas venerated Kukulcan as their founding father—a white-skinned, yellow-bearded man who arrived from over the Atlantic Ocean on the shores of prehistoric Mexico with all the arts of civilization. Bacab is synonymous with Kukulcan and undoubtedly a representation of Atlas in Yucatan. Indeed, the conch shell worn by the Chichen Itza Bacabs was the Feathered Serpent’s personal emblem, symbolic of his oceanic origins. 

Plato tells us that sets of royal twins ruled the Atlantean Empire, which was at the center of the world. So too, the Bacabs are twins personifying the sacred center. Among the many gifts they brought to the natives of Middle America was the science of honey production, and even today they are revered as the divine patrons of beekeeping. In ancient Hindu tradition, the first apiarists in India were sacred twins called the Acvins, redoubtable sailors from across the sea. Each brother Bacab presided over one year in a four-year cycle, because Bacab was the deity of astrological time. In Greek myth, Atlas, too, was the inventor and deity of astrology-astronomy. 

Mexican archaeologists have associated the post-Deluge arrival of the Bacabs in Guatemala with the foundation date of the Mayas and the start of their calendar: August 10, 3113 B.C. This date finds remarkable correspondence in Egypt, where the First Dynasty suddenly began around 3100 B.C. after gods and men were said to have sailed to the Nile Delta when their sacred mound in the Distant West began to sink beneath the sea. The Babylonian version of the Great Flood that produced Oannes, the culture-bearer of Mesopotamian civilization, was believed to have taken place in 3116 B.C. Clearly, these common dates commemorated by disparate peoples define a shared, seminal experience that can only belong to Atlantis. 

Bahr Atala 
Literally, the “Sea of Atlas,” a south Tunisian archaeological site known as Shott el Jerid. With concentric walls enclosing what appears to be a centralized palace, it resembles the citadel of Atlantis, as described by Plato. Nearby hills are locally referred to as the Mountains of Talae, or “the Great Atlantean Water.” Bahr Atala was probably an Atlantean outpost in Tunis during the Late Bronze Age, from the 16th to 13th centuries B.C. 

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