The Atlantis Encyclopedia
by Frank Joseph
Balam-Qitze
According to the cosmological Popol Vuh, the Mayan “Book of Counsel,” he
was unanimously elected chief by the U Mamae to lead the “Old Men” across the
Atlantic Ocean from Patulan-Pa-Civan, their realm drowning beyond the eastern
horizon. Balam-Qitze appears to have been the authentically Atlantean name of
a leader who conveyed survivors from Atlantis to Yucatan.
(See Giron-Gagal, U Mamae)
Bailey, Jean
An 18th-century French Atlantologist who traced Atlantean influences into
Scandinavia.
(See Rudbeck)
Balearic Islands
An archipelago in the western Mediterranean Sea, ranging from 50 to 190
miles off the east coast of Spain, forming two distinct island groups, which are
actually a continuation of the Andalusian Mountain chain. An Early Bronze Age
people settled in the Balearics who were notable for their military aggressiveness,
as evidenced in surviving representations on stone stelae of helmeted warriors bearing long swords. They were invaders of the Mediterranean from Atlantis,
during that empire’s later, imperialistic phase, as described by Plato. Their
Atlantean identity is underscored by a number of great, stone watchtowers, found
mostly on Majorca, still remembered as talaia or talayot, derivatives of Atlas.
Balor
In Old Irish folklore, he was the king of the Formorach, a giant “Sea People.”
Balor led them to Ireland, where they arrived as its first inhabitants after a great
flood destroyed their former kingdom. Later renditions of his myth put his original
homeland in Spain or North Africa. Although corruptions of the earliest version,
they nonetheless properly indicate the general direction from which the Formorach
came, because the island of Atlantis lay about 200 miles west of Gibraltar.
Basilea
In Greek folk tradition, the sister of Atlas, who was elected the Queen of
Atlantis after the death of her husband, Uranus, an early king. Her name, in fact,
means, “queen.” She remarried with Hyperion, and bore him a son and daughter,
Helios and Selene, deities of the sun and moon, respectively. A variant of her
myth had the other Atlantean kings, afraid Hyperion would seize the throne of
Atlantis and establish his family as a usurping dynasty, conspire to assassinate him
and his son. Their deaths occasioned the suicide of Selene and the madness of
Basilea. According to Lewis Spence, “When her subjects endeavored to restrain
her, a terrible tempest of rain, thunder, and lightning broke forth, and she was
seen no more.” He believed her story signified the triumph of the powers of
darkness over light (Helios), a reference to the Atlantis catastrophe itself, when
neither sun nor moon were visible because of ash clouds which encircled the globe.
The “Arcane Tradition,” he writes, reported that, after her disappearance,
Basilea took the place of her dead daughter to become the moon-goddess, and
assisted Atlas in his creation of astrology-astronomy.
Basque
The English and French word used to describe a people who refer to themselves as the Euskotarak. They inhabit the Bay of Biscay in both France and Spain,
including the western foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains. There are only about
1.25 million Basque people, living mostly in Europe but also in communities in
South and North America, particularly the state of Nevada. Stocky, with auburn
hair and gray eyes, they are genetically distinct from both French and Spanish and
speak a unique tongue totally unrelated to any European language. Euskara is
spoken by approximately half a million persons worldwide. It shares some affinity
with Finno-Urgic Patumnili, the tongue of ancient Troy; Etruscan, as spoken by
the pre-Roman civilizers in west-central Italy; Guanche, belonging to the native inhabitants in the Canary Islands; and, most surprisingly, Nahuatl, the language of
the Aztecs, in ancient Mexico. Each one of these disparate peoples played important roles in the story of Atlantis.
A revealing cognate is “Atalya,” the name of a prehistoric ceremonial mound
in Biarritz, in Basque country. “Atalaia” is also a site in southern Portugal featuring Bronze Age tumuli, or domed tombs, dating to the high imperial phase of
Atlantis, in the 13th century B.C. Another “Atalya” is a Guanche region high in
the central mountains of Gran Canaria that could pass for a scene taken directly
from Plato’s account of Atlantis. “Atalya” is the name of a holy mountain in the
Valley of Mexico, venerated by the Aztecs at the time of their discovery by the
Spaniards in the 16th century.
Clearly, “Atalya” carries the same meaning in Euskara, Iberian, Guanche,
and Nahuatl, the Aztec language; namely, the description of a sacred mountain,
mound, or mound-like structure, and apparently derivative of “Atlas,” the holy
peak at the center of the island of Atlantis. The “Atalya” of the Basque, Iberians,
Guanches, and Aztecs were probably meant to commemorate, in both word and
configuration, that original Mount Atlas, from which their ancestors fled the
destruction. Indeed, they all preserved stories of a great flood that preceded the
establishment of their own civilizations.
Parallels between Euskara and pre-Columbian speech are underscored by a
traditional ball game known alike to Europe’s Euskotarak and the ancient Maya
of Middle America. Rules of the Basque Pelota are identical in numerous details
to the otherwise unique Maya version. “These similarities,” observed the noted
German Atlantologist, Otto Muck, “form a bond between peoples on two sides of
the Atlantic, pointing to a common cause, a common center: Atlantis, heartland
of this long-vanished maritime power.”
There is an additional link between the Basques and the ancient Canary
Islanders: the Guanches practiced a singular goat cult with rituals likewise observed
in traditional Basque witchcraft. Basque folktales still recount the Aintzine-koak,
their seafaring forefathers who arrived in the Bay of Biscay after “the Green Isle,”
Atlaintika, went under the waves. Atlantida is a national Basque poem describing
their ancient greatness in Atlaintika, its fiery collapse into the sea with most of its
inhabitants, and the voyage of survivors to southwestern Europe. Although composed in the 19th century, “like many other epics committed to paper long after
their first telling,” according to a Reader’s Digest investigation, “it is based on ageold folk belief and oral tradition.”
In 1930, the famous German writer Ernst von Salomon reported a claim made
by a native of the Pyrenees: “The Basque are the last of a more beautiful, freer,
prouder world, long ago sunk beneath the sea.”
Historian Robert Gallop writes, “These fireside tales of the Basques are a
strange hotchpotch of legends which must have reached them from east and south
and north, and—who knows?—perhaps even from the west, if there is anything to
the Atlantis theory!” (165).
Racially, the Basque have been associated by some anthropologists with the
pre-Indo-European people who occupied the western Mediterranean until the eighth century B.C. If so, the Euskotarak may be the last direct descendants of
Atlantis, and their strange language is perhaps the same heard in that lost world,
more than 3,000 years ago.
(See Atlaintika, Belesb-At, Muck)
Bath
See Orichalcum, Findrine.
Battle of Mag Tured
Also known as Moytura, a military campaign in which the Formorach were
defeated by the Tuatha da Danann, as described in The Book of Invasions. Stripped
of its mythic colors, Mag Tured tells how the Atlanteans lost control of Ireland to
Celtic invaders.
The Begetting of Nanna
A late third-millennium B.C. Sumerian epic in which Atlantis is described,
according to Noah Kramer: “Behold, the Bond-of-Heaven-and-Earth, the kindly
wall, its pure river, its quay where the boats stand, its well of good water, its
pure canal!” Here, at the birthplace of the gods, they “built the lofty stage-tower
on the nether-sea, and chapels for themselves,” devised the first laws, and founded
the science of astronomy-astrology.
The Babylonian version of the Sumerian Ea was Marduk, who “made supreme
the glorious city, the seat dear to their [the gods’] hearts, constructed an enclosure
around the waters.” In a liturgical text, Ea is described as “the lord who dwells in
a fane in the midst of the ocean” (Gaster, 135).
These mythic accounts of Enki’s “sea-house,” Ninhursag “cosmic mountain”
and Ea’s “glorious city in the midst of the ocean” are self-evident portrayals of the
same homeland of civilization Plato depicts in his Atlantis dialogue. Ninhursag “Bond-of-Heaven-and-Earth” is Atlas, “the Upholder” of the heavens, inventor of astrology-astronomy, etc.
(See Atlas)
Belesb-At
The Basques’ sunken “Green Isle” from which their ancestors arrived in the
Bay of Biscay. “Belesb” is a prefix or title referring to the sun-god Bel, whose symbol,
the oriphile swastika, adorns many of the oldest houses in the Pyrenees, and is still
revered as a Basque national emblem. Belesb-At is a clear reference to Atlantis.
(See Basque, Atlaintika)
Belial
The last generations of Atlantis in the 14th and 13th centuries B.C. overindulged themselves in luxury and military aggression. Their monopoly of the
copper trade made them the wealthiest, most influential people in the civilized
world, enabling them to build an empire unrivaled in size and splendor until the
Roman Imperium. National affluence became the new religion, personified in
Belial, less a god than the deification of materialism. His followers grew increasingly obsessed with technology to maintain and generate luxuries, while earlier
nature cults fell into decline through popular obsession with shallow distractions,
until his became the dominant state-monotheism.
Belial was an accurate projection of the decadent Atlanteans, when transient
wealth, power, and pleasure alone interested them. In his name, they despoiled not
only other peoples, but the Earth itself, until their homeland was obliterated by a
natural catastrophe. The worship of Belial escaped with his surviving followers, who
transplanted his cult in the British Isles and the Near East. Over time, his narrow
materialism was interpreted by the ancient Irish to signify deserved abundance. They
re-enshrined him in their Beltane festival, celebrating the munificence of the sun and
the goodness it implied. Staying closer to his original conception, the plutocratic
Babylonians appropriately made him their chief god: Bel, “Lord of Heaven and Earth.”
His Atlantean identification is certain, because he brought about the catastrophe
in the Babylonian version of the Great Flood. His rehabilitation from the wicked god
responsible for the destruction of Atlantis is described in the Sumerian Epic of
Gilgamesh, where Bel is ordered by his superior, Ea, another flood-god: “You did not
listen to my counsel and caused the deluge. Yes, punish the sinner for his crimes and
the evil-doer for his wickedness, but be merciful and do not destroy all mankind”
(Mackenzie). Henceforward, Bel was worshiped as a protector of the virtuous and
the maker of kings. But he was seen for what he really represented by the writers of
the Old Testament, where his name became the epithet for an evil or subversive person. In later Jewish apocryphal literature, Belial was synonymous for Satan himself.
Benoit, Pierre
Author of the popular L’Atlantide (1920), among the most successful novels
about the lost civilization, translated in England as Atlantida and in the United States
as The Queen of Atlantis. An atmospheric silent movie version in 1929, produced by
the renowned German director G.W. Papst and starring Brigitte Helm, has since
become a “classic” film. It was remade 20 years later in Hollywood with Maria Montez
and Jean Pierre Aumont.
(See Dionysus of Mitylene)
Benten, or Benzaiten
Goddess of civilization (music, eloquence, fine arts, seamanship, etc.), which
she brought to ancient Japan from her lost kingdom across the sea on a great ship.Her shrines at Biwa-ko, or Lake Biwa, and in Tokyo, at Shinobazu, are adorned
with discernibly Atlanto-Lemurian symbolism. In keeping with her identity as the
country’s earliest culture-bearer, the oldest indications of human occupation are
found around the shores of Lake Biwa.
(See Chikubujima, Shinobazu)
Bergelmir
A Norse giant, who, with his wife, escaped the catastrophic flood that destroyed
a former age. They sired a new race, the Jotnar, after establishing his realm,
Jotunheim. Bergelmir’s myth is similar to other ancient traditions around the world
describing a cataclysmic deluge from which only a few survivors emerge to found
new dynasties, races, or kingdoms.
Berlitz, Charles
American author (1913 to 2003) of The Mystery of Atlantis (1974) and Atlantis,
the Eighth Continent (1984), which revived popular interest in the subject after
more than 40 years of general neglect. As the innovative president of an internationally famous language training school in France that he inherited from his
grandfather, Maximilian (1878), his expertise in various tongues, ancient and
modern, led him to conclude that many derived from a single, prehistoric source.
Beginning in the Bahamas, Berlitz followed his line of research back to the lost
civilization of Atlantis. His renowned credentials as a professional linguist with
26 years as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army helped restore credibility to
Atlantean studies, which continue to this day.
Berosus
A Chaldean high priest who lived around the turn of the third century B.C.
Although the Greeks knew him as “Berosus,” his real name was Bel-Usur, a priest
of Bel in Babylon. The worship of Belial, the icon of a controlling cult in Atlantis
during its last years, was carried to Mesopotamia after the destruction, and reestablished as “Bel” in a new temple, as described by Berosus, who, serving there, read
the story of the Atlantean flood. His three-volume history of Babylon, written in
Greek, was regarded by scholars throughout classical times as authoritative. During
1928, his reputation for accuracy was reaffirmed by German archaeologists, who
found corroborating evidence described in a late-Babylonian tablet discovered at
the ruins of Uruk, the former capital, predating Berosus by 1,000 years.
He opened his first volume by describing the origins of Babylonian civilization, which began with the arrival of culture-bearers after a great flood. Their
leader was the half-man, half-fish Oannes, who came from the sea with all the arts
and technology from a preceding high culture. His characterization is not to be
taken literally, but was more a poetic metaphor signifying Oannes’s prodigious seafaring skills, in much the same way an outstanding swimmer is described as
“half fish.” Oannes came ashore daily to instruct the natives of Eridu in the
secrets of canal-building, irrigation, agriculture, literature, mathematics, civil
engineering, metallurgy, pottery, music, art, astrology-astronomy, city-planning,
temple-building—all the arts of civilization. He also exercised power over the souls
of the ocean, perhaps a reference to an Atlantean priest who conjured the spirits
of the dead in the submerged Atlantis.
In the Akkadian language, he was known as Nun-Amelu, a comparison Bailey
makes with the Egyptian Nun, a god of the primal sea, who carried men and gods
to the Nile Valley after a flood in the Distant West. A contemporary of Berosus,
the Greek writer, Orpheus, reported that “Egypt and Chaldea are twin sisters,
daughters of Poseidon,” the sea-god creator of Atlantis. Bailey also reproduces
the impression of a Sumerian cylinder seal portraying Oannes, known to the
Sumerians as Ea, paying homage to a bearded figure bent on one knee while
supporting the sky—the classic image of Atlas reproduced throughout the ancient
world—thereby associating the Mesopotamian culture-bearer with Atlantis.
In his second volume, Berosus described in some detail the Deluge itself, characterizing it as a worldwide natural catastrophe that wiped out most of
humanity and obliterated a former kingdom of enormous power and wisdom.
He wrote that there were “ten kings before the flood,” some of whose surviving
descendants sailed to Mesopotamia, where they reestablished civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Since then, every Babylonian monarch
had to prove direct descent from these antediluvian regents before legitimately
assuming the throne. In Timaeus, Plato also said that there were 10 kings of the
Atlantis Empire previous to its destruction.
Berosus was almost certainly privy to the same kind of original Atlantean
documents Plato and/or Solon saw at the Temple of the Goddess Neith, in the
Egyptian city of Sais, in the Nile Delta.
(See Oannes)
Bimini Road
Bimini is an island in the Bahamas, 55 miles east of Miami, Florida, approximately 7 miles long and 1/3 mile across at its widest point. Its modern inhabitants
are descendants of West African slaves imported by Spain and Britain beginning
in the mid-16th century. They replaced the resident Caribs, who arrived only a
few generations before and after whom the Caribbean Sea was named. Bellicose
cannibals from Middle America’s mainland, the Caribs feasted on the island’s
earliest known inhabitants, the Lucayans, a linguistic branch of Arawak Indians.
Before their extermination (consumption?), the Lucayans were described by Spanish
explorers as able craftsmen (surviving Lucayan celts and hammer-stones attest to
their refined skills), with noticeably lighter complexions and auburn hair, even
occasional blue eyes. These untypical traits may have been genetic traces of contacts
with pre-Columbian visitors from Europe, or even racial evidence for an Atlantis
pedigree, in view of the following information.
The origin and meaning of “Bimini” are unknown. However, the name appears
in the Ancient Egyptian language as Baminini, which means, “Homage (ini) to
the Soul (ba) of Min.” Min was the Egyptians’ divine protector of travelers on
far-off journeys, a particularly appropriate god to be worshiped at distant Bimini,
if indeed the island had been visited by voyagers from the Nile Valley. Material
evidence for an Egyptian or, at any rate, an Egyptian-like presence in the western
Atlantic appeared during the late 1930s, when James Lockwood, Jr., an American
archaeologist in Haiti, saw a stone statue of the ancient Egyptian god of the dead,
Anubis, that had been discovered on an off-shore island.
The Lucayans knew Bimini as “Guanahani,” another curious connection with
the Ancient World, because the name translates as “the Island (hani) of Men
(guana)” in the language of the Guanches. These were native inhabitants of the
Canary Islands, off the northwest coast of North Africa, until their utter demise at
the hands of the Spanish in the 15th and 16th centuries. Although no monumental
buildings were found on Bimini, in Arawak, Guanahani meant “the Place of the
Encircling Walls”; in Arawak, hani was also synonymous for “crown” or “wreath.”
This oldest known name for the island may have referred to a large stone formation
lying in 19 feet of water less than 2 miles off Bimini’s northernmost point.
It is composed of so far unnumbered but certainly no less than 5,000, mostly
square-cut blocks running in a straight line for about 1,900 feet, before swinging
back on itself to create a J-formation. To early observers, it resembled a paved
road running across the bottom of the sea. But the general consensus of investigators since then tentatively identifies the structure as a cyclopean wall, not
unlike Andean examples found in Peru, specifically, at Cuzco and Sacsahuaman.
Unfortunately, it continues to be known by its first and misleading appellation.
If removed from its underwater location, the Bimini Road would resemble the Peruvian
walls of Sacsahuaman.
In 1933, Edgar Cayce, during one of his trance states, said that records from
Atlantis still existed “where a portion of the temples may yet be discovered, under
the slime of ages of sea water—near what is known as Bimini.” The little island was
not Atlantis itself, he explained, but its outpost, known many thousands of years ago
as Alta, extending (politically) to east-coastal Florida, and part of a wider Atlantean
administration known as Poseidia, comprising the Lesser Antilles. In 1940, the “Sleeping Prophet” predicted, “Poseidia will be among the first portion of Atlantis to
rise again. Expect it in ’68 and ’69; not so far away!” The so-called “Bimini Road” was,
in fact, “discovered” in 1968 by maverick archaeologist Mason Valentine, while looking for Atlantean remains around the island in hopes of confirming Cayce’s prophesy.
Since then, the underwater site has been subjected to continuous investigation
by researchers convinced it is an Atlantean ruin and critics sure it is nothing
more than a natural formation of beach rock. The latter, despite their standard
array of academic credentials, have for more than 30 years failed to show an
analogous arrangement of beach rock, not only at Bimini, but anywhere else in
the world. Allegedly similar examples from Loggerhead Key, Dry Tortugas, or
near Sri Lanka, cited as evidence for its entirely natural provenance, are so unlike
the linear, organized blocks found at Bimini that such comparisons are worthless.
Moreover, core-drillings at the Bimini Road, beginning in the mid-1980s, extracted
micrite, which does not occur in beach rock. Some of its stones contain conglomerations of aragonite and calcite, patterns likewise missing from beach rock.
Florida geologist, Eugene A. Shinn, a harsh critic of theories on behalf of the
Bimini structure’s artificiality, radio-carbon dated the stones, which range in age
from 2,000 to 4,000 years before present. The oldest end of this time parameter
coincides with the Middle Bronze Age, just when port facilities resembling the
Bimini site were being constructed in the Near East, and Atlantis was nearing the
apogee of its material greatness, according to researchers who argue that Plato’s
sunken city flourished from 3000 to 1200 B.C.
The underwater ruin appears to be the foundation of a continuous rampart
which originally formed an elongated oval (the Lucayans’ “Encircling Wall”?)
to shelter seagoing vessels. A harbor at the north end of Bimini makes abundant
maritime sense, because its location serves two fundamentally important prerequisites for transoceanic travel: First, the island stands directly in the path of
an Atlantic current that travels like an underwater conveyor belt—northward,
parallel to New England shores, then due east toward the Azores, the British
Isles, and Western Europe. Second, Bimini is the last landfall for fresh water
before a transatlantic voyage from North America.
The discovery at Bimini of additional, prehistoric evidence underscores the site’s
ancient, man-made identity. These include colossal effigy mounds shaped like fish
and other zoomorphic and geometric figures, together with additional blocks also
found at 19-foot depths, about 3 miles northeast of the road, resembling Tiahuanaco’s
squared columns in the high Andes of Bolivia. But what divers see at Bimini today
are the ruins of a ruin. As recently as the early years of the 20th century, the surface of the Road was visible at low tide, when its location was even designated “a
navigational hazard.” Older natives still living in the 1990s personally testified
they saw waves washing over the tops of the stones on numerous occasions when
they were young, although most inhabitants of the island avoided the site with
superstitious dread. In the early 1920s, a Florida salvage company dismantled the
structure down to its bottom course. The blocks were removed to Miami, where
they were used as fill for the city’s new quayside.
Cayce may in fact have described the Bimini Road as early as 1932. He said in
a reading for May 5:
This we find (at Poseidia) not an altogether walled city, but a portion
of same built so that the waters of these rivers became as the pools
about which both sacrifice and sport, and those necessities for the
cleansing of the body, home and all, were obtained, and these—kept
constantly in motion so that it purified itself in its course;—water in
motion over stone—purifies itself in twenty feet of space.
The base of the Bimini Road is 1 foot short of 20 feet underwater. Rivers do not
exist on the island today, but they did in its geologic past. Cayce seems to have
portrayed the Road, not as part of a harbor, but a ritual and recreational feature.
Ongoing investigations at Bimini with increasingly sophisticated search technology may prove that “the Place of the Encircling Walls” was indeed Cayce’s
Alta, where ships 3,000 years ago, heavy-laden with copper ore mined in North
America, replenished their provisions of fresh water on the last leg of their return
voyages to Atlantis.
(Cayce 364-12 5/6/32)
Blake, William
Famed English poet and artist (1757 to 1827) whose visionary style—radically
advanced for his own time—is still highly valued by modern audiences. In his free
verse epic, America, Blake wrote of “those vast, shady hills between America and
Albion’s shore now barred out by the Atlantic Ocean, called Atlantean hills.” He paraphrased British myth in characterizing Albion as a flood hero who led a
contingent of survivors from Atlantis to England, which derived its early name from
him. Blake held that both ancient Britain and pre-Columbian America were
indebted to Atlantean culture-bearers. It says something for the credibility of an
historic Atlantis that men of William Blake’s genius believed the drowned civilization
was something more than fable, as its less-renowned skeptics continue to insist.
(See Albion)
Bochica
He is still known to various Indian tribes in coastal Colombia, Venezuela, and
Brazil, such as the Chibchas, near Bogotá, Colombia, as a white-skinned giant
with a long beard who supported the sky on his shoulders, until he dropped it,
causing the whole world to burst into flame and flood at the same time. The disaster
destroyed his home across the sea, forcing his children to migrate for their lives to
South America, where they became the ancestors of today’s native peoples. After
this catastrophe, Bochica reassumed his burden of the heavens, which he still
supports, but causes earthquakes when he shifts the weight on his shoulders. In
variants of his myth, he condemned a demon responsible for the natural disaster,
Chibchacum, to hold up the sky, while Bochica took up residence on the world’s
first rainbow. Ever since, rainbows are not only associated with the god, but venerated as commemorative phenomena of the ancestral flood.
This tribal memory of what can only be the destruction of Atlantis is ignored
by skeptics of the lost civilization. But why else would a dark-skinned people unable to grow beards concoct a pre-Columbian story about a bearded, white giant
causing a great flood? Moreover, the South American deluge myth contains many
elements found around the world, such as the annihilation of a distant, splendid
kingdom; some celestial disturbance; the arrival of racially alien survivors, who
become the ancestors of future leaders; and so on. Like Plato’s Kritias, in which
Zeus destroys Atlantis for the iniquity of its inhabitants, Bochica brings about the
catastrophe to punish a sinful mankind.
(See Cuchavira, Zuhe)
Bon
An important Feast of the Dead held in the middle of the seventh lunar month,
around August 14 or 16, when spirits return to visit their earthly homes in Japan.
Bon Odori are hypnotic outdoor dances held at this time. They are shamanic
exercises used to induce altered states of consciousness for commiserating with
the spirits. Bon concludes after sundown with burning lanterns floating across the
sea to guide the departed back to the Otherworld. The festival is not unlike Thailand’s
Lak Krathong or the Roman Lemuria, all of which aim at propitiating ghosts from
Mu, the Pacific Ocean civilization lost beneath the seas in ancient times.
(See Lak Krathong, Lemuria, Mu)
Bralbral
According to Sumerian scholar Neil Zimmerer, Bralbral was an Atlantean
who founded the Kingdom of Baralku (mentioned in Polynesian folk traditions),
in Lemuria, sharing the leadership with his two sisters, Djanggau and Djunkgau.
(See Lemuria)
The Bronze Age
Bronze was the Ancient World equivalent of plutonium in the Atomic Age.
Before its appearance, tools and weapons were made of either stone (usually granite
and flint) or copper. Bronze was entirely superior to both, and whoever possessed
it wielded a quantum advantage in military and industrial affairs. But it was difficult to manufacture, because it depended on the quality of the copper used and was
combined with zinc and tin. None of the three minerals occurred in abundance
throughout Europe and the Near East, where demands from every kingdom for
the new metal erupted after its discovery at the turn of the fourth millennium B.C.
The only real sources for tin were found in southern Spain and parts of
England. As some indication of the copper’s importance, the modern island of
Cypress derives its name from “Kippur,” the Assyrian word for copper, because it
was one of the few locations where it was mined in some abundance. But even
there, its quality was not consistently first-rate. Despite insufficient supplies of
copper, zinc, and tin, by 1500 B.C., the great powers, and even most of the lesser
ones, had outfitted their often massive armed forces with vast arsenals of superb
bronze weapons. The superpowers—Egypt, the Hittite Empire, Troy, Minoan Crete,
Mycenaean Greece, and Assyria—ranged against themselves literally millions of
bronze swords, spears, and battering rams, their soldiers outfitted with bronze
helmets and shields. In ostentatious displays of wealth, kings would sometimes
bedeck the walls of their cities with great sheets of gleaming bronze, or fill their
squares and temples with the bronze statues of gods and heroes.
An enormous industry arose, specializing in the manufacture of bronze tools
absolutely essential to craftsmen, artisans, and armorers from Ireland to
Mesopotamia. Clearly, native mineral deposits, especially of copper, were insufficient, both in quantity and quality, to have even begun to keep pace with such
a grand-scale supply and demand. For more than a century, historians have asked
themselves, “Where did the ancients obtain the copper necessary to make so many
bronze items?” The Old World Bronze Age began around 3000 B.C., reached peak
production from the 16th to 13th centuries B.C., then came to an abrupt end about
1200 B.C. It was not logically superseded by the advent of the Iron Age, but followed
instead by the precise opposite of all human progress: a 4-century long Dark Age,
during which the lamp of civilization was extinguished in Europe, Asia Minor, and
the Near East, excepting only Pharaonic Egypt, which had nevertheless entered
a decline from which she would never recover. Moreover, iron had been known to Egyptian workers since early dynastic times, while Hittite arms were already
bolstered by iron lance-heads and axes.
Bear Butte, South Dakota, where Native
Americans from across the continent gather
to commemorate the
Atlantean Deluge
Curiously, the Bronze Age exactly parallels another, although intimately
related mystery: the excavation of prodigious amounts of the world’s highest grade copper ore from the Upper Great Lakes Region of North America.
Beginning circa 3000 B.C., a people, described in Menomonie Indian oral tradition
as fair-complected “Marine Men,” applied sophisticated mining techniques
that would not be seen again
until the Industrial Age. They
extracted a minimum of 500
million pounds of copper, all of
which vanished with the white skinned miners by 1200 B.C.,
when the pits were suddenly
abandoned. That is the same
date for the final destruction
of Atlantis, whose inhabitants
Plato described as the world’s
wealthiest mineralogists.
Clearly, it was the seafaring
“Marine Men” of Atlantis who
discovered the Upper Peninsula’s rich mineral deposits, mined them, and sold
high-grade copper to the tool and weapons manufacturers of Europe, Asia Minor,
and the Near East. Together with copper, tin was mined along Michigan shores,
evidence for the manufacture of bronze, with which the Native American Indian
residents were unfamiliar. The North American source was jealously preserved
as a state secret upon which the Atlantean monopoly depended. When Atlantis was
destroyed around 1200 B.C., the secret went with her and the Bronze Age ended
for lack of quality copper supplies. The three most influential and interrelated
aspects of ancient times—the Bronze Age, Atlantis, and the Upper Great Lakes
copper mining—share the same time parameters.
Bull Worship
In Kritias, Plato describes an important ceremony undertaken by the kings of
Atlantis in the Temple of Poseidon. This monumental structure was situated at the
very center of the island, its own perfect center defined by a free-standing column
of great antiquity. It was made of solid orichalcum, an alloy of high-grade copper
and fine gold manufactured only in Atlantis. The pillar contained the original
laws of the land, as inscribed by the first monarchs themselves. Around its base,
subsequent Atlantean leaders consulted every fifth and sixth year on matters of state.
Before ruling on any final judgements, they prayed to Poseidon for guidance,
then removed clubs and nooses from a sacred vessel. Without assistance, the 10
men captured one of several bulls allowed to roam freely in the vicinity of the temple, where they had been maintained by priests. The kings brought their captured bull
into the sanctuary, then cut its throat over the top of the orichalcum column,
allowing blood to course over the inscription, which ended with a curse against anyone who knowingly violated the laws of Atlantis. The bull’s remains were gathered
into separate containers. Its flesh was roasted, later divided into several portions for
the kings’ ritual meal and as a gratuity to the temple priesthood. The rest, together
with all the bones and most of the blood, were tossed into a sacrificial fire.
Afterwards, the kings cleaned the pillar, utensils, and sacred precinct, then
mixed a bowl of wine, into which was dropped one clot of bull’s blood for each of
them. They received their drink in golden cups, swore an oath on behalf of themselves and their descendants to uphold the law of their forefathers, emptied their
wine into the sacred flames, and drank a fresh cup of bull’s blood wine in a pledge
of atonement for any sins they may have committed. Only after completing this
libation did they sit down to their sacramental meal.
Bulls were associated with divine regents in Sumer, Egypt, Assyria, Minoan
Crete, Greece, Rome, Iberia, and Ireland. All of these cultures featured traditions
of a great deluge from which their ancestors came with all the accoutrements of a
high civilization, including, most importantly, matters of kingship. In each people,
their king was ritually identified with a sacred bull, because it was important for a
leader to identify with the tremendous strength and aggressiveness epitomized by
such an animal. In pre-Celtic Ireland, the new monarch had to undergo a ceremonial
bath of bull’s broth, which he then drank from an Atlantean-like golden cup.
The Egyptian Hape, better remembered by his Greek name, Apis, was the sacred
bull of Memphis. Like the bulls at the Temple of Poseidon, he was allowed to roam
free in a courtyard of the temple. After reaching his 25th year, “he was killed with
great ceremony,” according to Mercatante, just as the Atlantean bull was ritually
slaughtered every fifth year (the divider of 25). The manner of his death was unique:
he was drowned in a cistern. Was his religious execution meant to symbolize his cultic
origins in drowned Atlantis? The dead animal was believed to be reincarnated in a
new bull, “the Golden Calf,”—the same idol adored by the Israelites under Aron in
Exodus 32:4—which began again the process of identification with Hape.
Romans participating in the mysteries of Mithra drank the blood of a slaughtered bull “as a sacramental act,” in which they were purified of their sins and
“born again for eternity”—all reminiscent of the atonement sought by the Atlantean
kings when they drank wine with bull’s blood. Their sacrificial meal even finds
echoes in the Last Supper, where Jesus tells his apostles that the wine they drink is
his own blood. The Messiah, too, was identified with the bull—a white one—in the
apocryphal Book of Enoch.
What might very well be an authentic artifact from Atlantis was discovered during
the 1889 excavation of a Bronze Age tomb at the Greek town of Vapheio, in Laconia,
5 miles south of Sparta. The item was an embossed gold cup depicting a bull roundup,
wherein the hunter is portrayed using only lassos—a scene straight out of Plato’s
Kritias. The item’s Atlantean identity is reinforced when we recall that he said the
kings who met in the Temple of Poseidon after their bull hunt toasted in cups of gold.
Archaeologists believe the Vapheio cup is not Greek, but from Crete, dating
to the first Late Minoan Period, about 1500 B.C. This date marks the florescence
of the Atlantis Empire and its widening influence throughout the Mediterranean.
Minoans may have made the cup
to commemorate some kingly
alliance forged in the bull ceremony between their country
and the Atlanteans. Or the object
may in fact be an import originally
manufactured in Atlantis and
brought somehow to Crete, from
where it was looted by invading
Mycenaean Greeks. In any case,
an Atlantean provenance for the
Vapheio cup seems inescapable.
Burotu
Revered by the Fiji Islanders of the western Pacific as their ancestral paradise
before it sank beneath the sea. The island is known as Buloto in distant Tonga and
Samoa. To the aborigines of Australia, it is remembered as Baralku, thereby
demonstrating a very broadly known tradition among disparate peoples all
apparently effected by a common event. According to native oral accounts,
Tonga’s ancient Ha’amonga (“The Burden of Maui”), a monumental arch almost
20 feet high, had its 105 tons of coral limestone ferried by survivors from Burotu.
These were the Hiti, or giants of that lost realm. Their ancestral island was
destroyed when the “heavens fell down,” and fire married water to produce the
Samoan islands. Like the Roman Lemuria, the souls of the dead return to Bolutu
in annual ceremonies. The Fiji Burotu may be philologically related to Rutas,
another name by which Mu was known in Asia.
(See Mu, Rutas)
Bussumarus
In Gallic folk traditions, a leader of 60 “Sea People” marines during their aggression against Europe immediately before and after the final destruction of Atlantis.
Byamspa
“When he found out that the Kingdom of Lemuria would sink under a gigantic
tidal wave,” according to chronologer, Neil Zimmerer, Byamspa led a group of
fellow seers into the Himalayas of Tibet.
C
Caer Feddwid
The “Court of Carousal,” also known as Caer Siddi and Caer Arianrhod, an
opulent island kingdom featuring fountains and curative fresh water springs, but
long ago lost beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Caer Feddwid is one of
several Welsh versions of Atlantis.
(See Arianrhod, Gwyddno, Llyn Syfaddon)
Calypso
An Atlantis, daughter of Atlas by Thetis, a sea-goddess. Calypso’s residence
was a sacred cave on the island of Ogygia, where she had the power to grant eternal
life to mortal human beings. She personifies the Atlantean Navel of the World
mystery cult, with its cave rituals and promises of immortality. “Ogygia” derives
from Ogyges, a flood hero in Greek mythology, implying that Calypso’s island and
Atlantis were one and the same.
(See Ogyges)
Ca-Mu
Literally “He from Mu,” a flood hero of the Arovac Indians described as a tall,
white-skinned, fair-haired and bearded “magician” who arrived on the shores of
Panama after having been driven from his kingdom far across the sea by a terrible
cataclysm. Ca-Mu is regarded as the man from whom all Arovac have since descended.
(See Mu)
Cayce, Edgar
Born in 1877, in Kentucky, he was known as “the Sleeping Prophet,” because
he uttered predictions and medical cures while in a deep trance. Until his death in
Virginia, 68 years later, Cayce dictated thousands of “life-readings” he allegedly
obtained from a kind of spiritual record he claimed to be able to read while
experiencing an altered state of consciousness. Until his 47th year, he never
uttered a word about Atlantis. But in 1922, he suddenly began recalling life in a
place with which he was otherwise allegedly unfamiliar. Cayce’s descriptions of
the doomed civilization are sometimes remarkable for their uncanny credibility.
For example, his portrayal of the migration of Atlanteans into the Nile Valley
following the destruction of their Empire is entirely convincing. Many otherwise
obscure names of persons and places he associates with the Atlantis experience
likewise seem to reflect real events.
His son, Hugh Lynn Cayce, knew his father “did not read material on Atlantis,
and that he, so far as we know, had absolutely no knowledge of the subject.” The
evocative, often verifiable detail of his readings in which Atlantis was described is
all the more astounding when we realize he knew little about the vanished culture
in his waking hours. As his son wrote:
They are the most fantastic, the most bizarre, the most impossible
information in the Edgar Cayce files. If his unconscious fabricated
this material or wove it together from existing legends and writings,
we believe that it is the most amazing example of a telepathic clairvoyant scanning of existing legends and stories in print or of
the minds of persons dealing with the Atlantis theory.
Edgar Cayce’s conscious ignorance of the sunken civilization is not surprising.
His formal education was meager, and his points of reference were more spiritual
than historical or academic. His grasp of the past was often biblical, rather than
scholastic. It seems clear then, that the subject was outside the purview of both his
background and essentially Christian view of the world. But his readings are self evidently plausible, because they often contain information that made little or no
sense at the time they were uttered, but have been since confirmed by subsequent
verification.
Perhaps most impressive of all is that obscure, even fleeting, references he
made to Atlantis during the early 1920s were occasionally repeated only once, but
within an exact same frame of reference, after more than two decades. Persuasive elements of Cayce’s “life-readings” such
as these give even skeptics pause, and
encourage many investigators, regardless
of their spiritual beliefs, to reconsider
everything he had to say about Atlantis.
His prediction of finding its first physical
remains not far from the United States
was a case in point described in the
“Bimini” entry. Until Cayce spoke of
Bimini, and even long after some of his
“life-readings” were published, no researchers bothered to consider that small
island as a possible remnant of Atlantean
Civilization.
But how did the massive stone structure come to lie at the bottom of the sea?
According to Cayce’s “life-readings,” the
Atlantean lands underwent three major
periods of inundation. They did not disappear altogether in a single cataclysm.
The natural disaster described by Plato
represented only the final destruction of
Atlantis. A typical reading exemplifying these various epochs of upheaval took
place in 1933, when Cayce told a client that he once dwelt “in the Atlantean
land before the third destruction.” The first seismic unrest dropped much of its
territory beneath sea-level, followed several millennia later by renewed geologic
violence which sank the remaining dry land, save for the tops of its tallest mountains.
These volcanic peaks became known in historic times as Madeira, the Azore and
Canary Islands, together with Atlas, on which the city of Atlantis arose. The ultimate
destruction took place when Mount Atlas detonated, scoured and hollowed itself
out with ferocious eruptions, then collapsed into the sea. Present interpretation
of this evidence confirms the accuracy of Cayce’s clairvoyant view of the Atlantean
catastrophe. As he said, “the destruction of this continent and the peoples was far
beyond any of that as has been kept as an absolute record, that record in the rocks
still remains.”
For someone of no formal education, Cayce’s grasp of archaeology and
geology was extraordinary, even prophetic. When he said in the 1930s that the
Nile River flowed across the Sahara Desert to the ocean in early Atlantean times,
no scientist in the world would have considered such an apparently outlandish
possibility. Yet, in 1994, nearly half a century after his death, a satellite survey of
North Africa discovered traces of a former tributary of the Nile that connected
Egypt with the Atlantic Ocean at Morocco in prehistory. Persuasive elements of
Cayce’s “life-readings” encourage many investigators to reconsider his documented
statements about Atlantis. But they are troubled by his characterization of the Atlanteans as the builders of a technology superior to 20th-century accomplishments. Because Cayce has been verified in at least some important details, other
researchers believe he was telling the whole truth, however difficult it may be for
some to grasp, about the sunken civilization.
Regardless of the response he elicits, an important part of Edgar Cayce’s legacy
is the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) he founded and which
continues to prosper in his home at Virginia Beach. It contains the largest library
of its kind in the world, featuring not only all of his “life-readings,” but many
hundreds of books, papers, feature articles, and reference materials about Atlantis.
The A.R.E. is also deeply involved in scientific investigation and study on behalf
of the lost realm, including lectures and expeditions to various parts of the world,
particularly at Andros and Bimini.
(See Andros Platform, Bimini Road)
Ce-calli
Described in the Aztec Anales de
Quahititlan as “the Great Water,” the
world-class deluge that destroyed a former
age of greatness and wickedness.
Celaeno
In Greek myth, daughter of the sea goddess Pleione hence, one of the Pleiades,
or “Atlantises.” Celaeno taught occult science
to mortals. From her name derive all words
pertaining to things “celestial,” not only because she herself became a star in the night
sky, but through her knowledge of astrology
invented by her father, Atlas. Celaeno’s myth
tells of arcane spirituality and practices invented in Atlantis, as carried by survivors of
its destruction to the reestablishment of civilization in new lands. She married Lycus, a
king of the Blessed Isles, whose name was a
term in circulation throughout classical times referring to any unspecified group
of Atlantis islands, such as the Canaries or Madeira.
Chatwin, C.P.
A leading 20th-century naturalist, who stated in 1940 that the migratory
behavior of certain butterflies and birds in the North and South Atlantic strongly
suggested the former existence of the island civilization described by Plato.
(See Heer)
Cellarius, Christophe
A prominent late 18th-century French geographer who made a public statement supporting the historical credibility of Plato’s Atlantis based on evidence he
found in the fragments of ancient maps.
(See de Gisancourt)
Cerne
A name by which Atlantis was once known, according to the 1st-century B.C.
geographer Diodorus Siculus. “Cerne” is also the name of a prehistoric hill-figure
in Dorset, England. The 180-foot image of a naked man wielding a club in his
right hand probably was made to represent Gogmagog, a giant said to have been
armed with an immense war club. If so, then the bioglyph’s Atlantean identity
comes into focus. In Celtic myth, Gogmagog was a leader of Britain’s first
inhabitants, descendants from the Titan Albion, brother of Atlas, like the giant
Fomors, the earliest residents of Ireland. Culture-bearers from Atlantis arriving
in several other parts of the world, as far away.
Chac
A rain-god, or more appropriately, the sky-god worshiped by the Mayas. They
portrayed him in temple art as a bearded man with a long nose and supporting the
heavens on his shoulders, like the eponymous and sacred mountain from which
the island of Atlantis derived its name: Atlas. Chac sometimes appears Christ-like
in wall paintings, as he bears a cross on his back. But it was actually a symbol for
the four cardinal directions, defining Chac’s origin at the center of the world, just
as Atlantis was located between of the Old and New Worlds. Chac is perhaps
identical to Bacab, because he also was four divine persons in one, each “chac”
representing a particular point of the compass. They appeared in symbolic red
for east, black for west, white for north, and yellow for south. These colors
corresponded to the directions personified by the chacs. White seems associated
with the snow and ice far above the Rio Grande River. Yellow perhaps signified
the intense heat of the sun toward the Equator. If these interpretations are
correct, then the Mayas possessed far wider knowledge of the world beyond their
home in the Lowland Yucatan than credited by conventional archaeologists.
The West is universally regarded as a place of death (the dying sun, etc.),
hence its black characterization. Red is a color often associated with Atlantis,
where Plato wrote that its public and even some of its private buildings were made
of red stone, or volcanic tufa. The Atlanteans themselves were said to have been
red-haired. But the color more probably refers to sunrise.
Chac-Mool
A representation of the Maya rain- and sky-god in a reclining position, while
holding a bowl over his navel, usually in the medium of sacred statuary. As visitors
ascend the grand staircase to the Temple of the Warriors, at Chichen Itza, in
Yucatan, they come face to face with the life-size statue of a chac-mool resting at
the top. Nearby, inside the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, they climb a rising
passageway that terminates at the center of the structure in a chamber containing
another life-size chac-mool, extraordinary for its blue eyes. This racial anomaly,
together with the bearded, Atlas-like figures carved in the walls of the shrine
just above, identify the chac-mool as an Atlantean concept—and a particularly
important one it is, too. The manner in which the chac-mool at the Pyramid of
the Feathered Serpent is holding a bowl over its stomach and its position at the
center of the building define an early mystery cult in Atlantis.
(See Navel of the World)
Chalchiuhtlicue
The Aztec goddess who changed victims of the Great Flood into fish. The same
transformation appears in the deluge myths of the Babylonians and American
Lakota Sioux. Chalchiuhtlicue was honored during an annual ceremony in which
priests collected reeds, dried them out, then placed them inside her shrine. The
reeds symbolized wisdom, as writing utensils, but also “the Place of Reeds,” Aztlan,
her overseas’ homeland. Temple art represented Chalchiuhtlicue seated on a
throne, around which men and women were shown drowning in huge whirlpools.
Her name, “Our Lady of the Turquoise Skirt,” refers to the feminine Atlantis,
the “Daughter of Atlas,” in the midst of the sea. Chalchiuhtlicue’s myth is a selfevident evocation of the natural catastrophe.
(See Aztlan, Sekhet-aaru)
Chief Mountain
Located in northern Montana, Chief Mountain is especially revered by North
America’s Blackfoot tribes, who believe its summit alone stood above the waters
of the Great Flood, which rose to drown the rest of the world in the deeply
ancient past. Shamans ascend its slopes to annually commemorate the escape of a
single survivor, who later became the first ancestral chief of the Blackfoot, after
marrying a Star Maiden sent from the Great Spirit.
(See Nowah’wus)
Chien-Mu
Described in the Chou-li, an ancient Chinese book of rites, as a place where
Earth and sky met at the cosmic axis. Here, time and space became irrelevant, the four seasons merged into each other, pairs of opposites were resolved, and the
alternating principles of yin and yang no longer strove against each other, but
grew peaceful in balanced harmony. Chien-Mu signifies the sacred center, the
still-point reached in deep meditation. Its name implies that these concepts are
to be associated with the Pacific Motherland of Mu, the original Navel of the
World, where they were first developed and employed in reaching high levels of
spiritual attainment.
(See Navel of the World)
Chikubujima
Shrine to Benten, or Benzaiten, the goddess who brought civilization to
Japan in a great ship from across the sea. Chikubujima’s location on the shores of
Lake Biwa, or Biwa-ko, is not entirely legendary, because along its shores are
found the earliest evidence for human habitation in the islands. It was here that
culture-bearers from Lemuria probably first landed in Japan.
(See Benten, Lemuria, Shinobazu)
Chimu
A pre-Inca people who raised a powerful civilization, Chimor, that dominated
the Peruvian coast from circa 900 A.D., until their defeat by the Incas during the
late 15th century. The capital, Chan-Chan, lies just north of Trujillo, and was
founded, according to Chimu historians, by Taycana-mu. He had been sent on a
culture-founding mission by his superior, who ruled a kingdom in the Pacific Ocean.
Another important Chimor city was Pacatna-mu, christened after an early Chimu
general who became the regional governor. The so-called “Palace of the Governor”
at Chan-Chan features a wall decorated with a frieze depicting a sunken city—
fish swimming over the tops of contiguous pyramids. The scene memorializes the
drowned civilization of Mu, from which the ancestors of the Chimu—literally, the
“Children of Mu”—arrived on Peruvian shores after the catastrophe. Their
Lemurian heritage likewise appears in other significant names, such as Taycana-mu,
Pacatna-mu, and so on.
(See Mu)
Chintamani
Also Cintimani, Sanskrit for “magical stone from another world.” Now at the
Moscow Museum, the Chintamani is an exceptionally clear quartz crystal, once in
the possession of Nicholas Roerich, a German-American Russian, prominent artist,
mystic, and world-traveler of the early and mid-20th century. His paintings are
still valued for their stark, though pure numinosity. Most of them are on public
display at New York’s Roerich Museum. Childress writes, “ancient Asian chronicles
claim that a divine messenger from the heavens gave a fragment of the stone to Emperor Tazlavoo of Atlantis. According to legend, the stone was sent from Tibet to King Solomon in Jerusalem, who split the stone and made a ring out of one
piece” (A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Armageddon, 216–217).
The Chintamani is also known in China and Japan as the “Jewel-That-Grants-All-Desires,” and was believed to have originally belonged to the Makara, a dragon or dolphin-god, living in a palace at the bottom of the sea, underscoring its
Atlantean provenance.
(See Tuoai)
Chronology
There are three primary chronologies for the history of Atlantis. Plato writes
that its destruction took place 11,400 years ago, although he provides no date for
its foundation. The origins of Atlantean Civilization should have preceded its end
by at least five centuries, in order for it to have attained the cultural heights he
wrote that it enjoyed, thereby placing its
beginning sometime after the turn of the
13th millennium B.C. Edgar Cayce said that
Atlantis was far older, emerging about
100,000 years ago. In another 50,000 years,
the Atlanteans had developed a technologically advanced civilization. The first of
three major cataclysms occurred at this
time, followed by another about 30,000
years ago. The final destruction took place
around 10,000 B.C., roughly the same period Plato reported.
Most serious Atlantologists today find
these time parameters unrealistic. While
at least some investigators believe Cayce’s
“life-readings” may shed light on the story
of Atlantis, they point out that persons in
trance states, while capable of recalling
vivid, even accurate images, enter into a
timeless consciousness, just as a sleeper,
when awake, may remember the clear details of a dream, but his sense of time
while dreaming is totally unlike anything when he is awake. Modern man (Homo
sapiens-sapiens) had only just evolved 100,000 years ago and was in no condition
to found civilization. Plato’s 11,4000-year-old date for the destruction of Atlantis
is also troubling.
Anthropologists have learned much about the level of human accomplishment during the mid-12th millennium B.C., but they found not the merest hint that
anything resembling a civilization existed then. As even that prominent
Atlantologist, Lewis Spence, remarked as long ago as 1924, “I would suggest that no city or civilized state of Atlantis existed at the period alluded to by Plato—
9600 B.C.” Moreover, geologists know that the mid-ocean tropical island Plato
describes would not have been possible when he wrote it existed, because the
North Atlantic was, at that time, plunged into the final phase of the last Ice Age.
They realize, however, that the Alleroed Interstadal was a warm phase during the
Devensian glaciation in Europe’s Pleistocene Ice Age, when massive, catastrophic
flooding did indeed occur about the time of a literal reading of Plato’s date for
the destruction of Atlantis. Even so, enough of at least the general outlines of
human culture and the level of material achievement during the Pleistocene
reveal that the sophisticated civilization described by Plato, let alone Cayce, bore
nothing in common with post-glacial society.
Researchers need to ask, “What kind of years was Plato writing about? We
assume they were solar years, identical to our own calendar. But what if he was
using a different calendrical system? What would that make of his date for
Atlantis?” This, in fact, is the root of the problem that was solved as long ago as
the early 1950s, when a German Atlantologist, Juergen Spanuth, pointed out that
the Egyptian priests who relayed the Atlantis story to Solon (and almost certainly
Plato himself) used a lunar, not a solar calendar. When they spoke of time it was
always in terms of the cycles of the moon. Indeed, their temple in which they
preserved Atlantean records was dedicated to a moon-goddess, Neith.
Recalibrating Plato’s solar date into its original lunar years, a more realistic
period for the destruction of Atlantis is revealed circa 1200 B.C. As soon as Atlantologists
learned of the corrected time scale, they were themselves deluged by a wealth of
confirming evidence that placed Atlantis squarely in the Bronze Age. Pre-Columbian
traditions, Egyptology, climatology, geology, even astronomy, all combined to underscore the revised date, and thereby provided more quality arguments for the credibility of Atlantis than ever before. Moreover, Plato’s own description of Atlantis
belongs to an arch-typical Late Bronze Age capital. Indeed, the Classical Greek writer
Apollodorus maintained the tradition that Zeus, depicted by Plato as the destroyer of
Atlantis, endeavored to annihilate mankind at the end of the Bronze Age.
igins from and upon which the city grew over thousands of years. These deeply
prehistoric beginnings are far more difficult to define than the Atlantean cataclysm. Based on the known dates of megalithic sites in the British Isles and Spain,
Atlantis perhaps began its rise as a Neolithic settlement more than 6,000 years
ago. By the mid- to late fourth millennium B.C., it may have reached a high level
of civilization.
Both Plato and Cayce mentioned more than one Atlantean deluge preceding
the final disaster, and there does appear to have been at least one major upheaval
before obliteration took place. Berosus, the Chaldean historian who wrote of the
Great Flood from which his Babylonian ancestors came, stated it occurred on the
15th day in the month of Daisios—around June 15, 3116 B.C. This date compares
almost exactly with the origin of the Maya calendar, said to have been brought
to Yucatan by a white-skinned, yellow-bearded flood survivor—Kukulcan, the Feathered Serpent—on August 10, 3110 B.C. The First Egyptian Dynasty, set up
by gods and men fleeing their sacred mound sinking in the Distant West, began
around 3100 B.C. So too, the earliest manifestations of arts and cities in the Cyclades
Islands and Troy date to sudden arrivals from the west around 3000 B.C. Ireland’s
greatest megalithic site, New Grange, was built before 3100 B.C. Even work on
Britain’s Stonehenge began around the same time.
Such abrupt, simultaneous developments in various parts of the world, where
traditions tell of founding fathers fleeing some terrible cataclysm, bespeak an
Atlantean upheaval serious enough to generate mass evacuations, without utterly
destroying the island. This 5,000-year-old event appears to have been associated
with flood heroes among various societies—the Egyptian Thaut, the Sumerian
Utnapishtim, the Babylonian Xiuthtros, the Hebrew Noah, the Greek Deucalion,
the Maya Itzamna, and so on. Severe as the late fourth-millennium B.C. upheaval
may have been, Atlantis survived, was rebuilt, and eventually prospered for another
1,900 years.
Being closer to us in time, the final catastrophe is provided with more precise
dating information. Scribes at Medinet Habu, in Thebes, Upper Egypt, recorded
the invasion of Atlantean “Sea Peoples” at the Nile Delta in 1190 B.C., eight years
after the loss of their western homeland to the sea. “Day of the Dead” festivals
around the world correlate with archaeo-astronomy to place the cataclysm in early
November. An abundance of supporting evidence tends to confirm that Atlantis
was finally destroyed on or about November 3, 1198 B.C.
Chumael-Ah-Canule
Described as “the First after the Flood,” in The History of Zodzil—a 16th century collection of Maya oral traditions heard firsthand by Juan Darreygosa—
he escaped the deluge that engulfed his island kingdom in the Atlantic Ocean,
arriving first at the island of Cozumel, off the Yucatan coast. Proceeding to the
Mexican mainland, Chumael-Ah-Canule and his immigrating fellow countrymen built Chichen Itza, or “Mouth of of the Well of Itza,” and 149 other cities,
including Mayapan, Izamel, Uxmal, and Ake. His account suggests that not only
these ceremonial centers, but Mesoamerican civilization itself was founded by
Atlantean culture-bearers.
Cichol Gricenchos
King of the Fomorach, the earliest Atlantean inhabitants of Ireland. He opposed
the arrival of a later Atlantean settlers, the “Family of Partholon,” survivors of
the 2100 B.C. cataclysm that wracked Atlantis.
(See Fomorach)
The Codex Chimal-Popoca
An Aztec version of the Great Flood from which their ancestors arrived on
the eastern shores of Mexico. It reports, in part, “There suddenly arose mountains
the color of fire. The sky drew near to the Earth, and in the space of a day, all was
downed.” The Codex Chimal-Popoca reads almost identically to Plato’s Timaeus
and Kritias dialogues, where he states that Atlantis was destroyed “in a single day
and night.”
Collins, Andrew
British author of Gateway to Atlantis, in which he identifies the lost civilization with Cuba. Five years after its release in 1997, mineral prospectors probing
the waters off the island’s northwest coast claimed to have picked up sonar images
of what appeared to be a sunken city more than 2,000 feet beneath the surface.
Coronis
An Atlantis, one of seven daughters born to Atlas and the ocean-nymph Aethra.
Coronis was the mother of Aesculapius by the god of healing, Apollo, after whom
the modern word “scalpel” is derived. The Greeks revered Aesculapius as the
founder of modern medicine. He in turn fathered two sons, Machaon and Podaliris,
who were the earliest physicians after their father, and spread his scientific
principles throughout the world. His only daughter, Hygeia, was the goddess of
health.
This lineage demonstrates an important theme common to all the daughters
of Atlas; namely, that their offspring were the first in their fields of high endeavor
and the progenitors of civilization. Through poetic metaphor, these founding father myths preserve national memories of culture-bearers who escaped the
destruction of Atlantis to reestablish civilization in new lands. As such, the story
of Coronis reminded the Greeks that they received the tenets of their medical
science from an Atlantean immigrant.
Cosmas
A sixth-century Alexandrian monk who endeavored to prevent his fellow
Christian theologians from anathematizing Plato’s account of Atlantis by drawing
parallels between the Atlantean catastrophe and the biblical flood. Cosmas failed,
and anything about the sunken city was condemned as “demonically inspired,”
along with the rest of classical civilization.
Coxcoxtic
He and his wife, Xochiquetzal, were sole survivors in one of several Aztec
versions of the Great Flood. During the previous era in which they lived, humanity
spoke the same language. But their offspring in post-diluvial times received the
gift of speech from a variety of birds. The children of Coxcoxtic and Xochiquetzal
grew up speaking many different tongues. Later, they left their parents to wander
over the face of the Earth, spreading new languages around the world. Their myth
refers to the cultural unity of Atlantean times destroyed by a natural catastrophe,
and scattered around the globe.
(See Xochiquetzal)
Coyolxauqui
Aztec version of the earlier Maya Ixchel, the White Lady, who brought civilization to Middle America from a lost kingdom in the Atlantic Ocean after a great flood.
(See Ixchel)
Crannog
Also known as “the ruined city of Kenfig,” Crannog is familiar in both Irish
and Scottish traditions as a sunken city. “Og” is a derivative of the Atlantean
catastrophe in the British Isles, Greece, and South America.
(See Ogma, Ogriae)
next- Crow Deluge Story
92S
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a journalist, I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of artistic, cultural, historic, religious and political issues. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Copyrighted material can be removed on the request of the owner.
No comments:
Post a Comment