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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