At-ach-u-chu

The premiere founding father of Andean civilization, revered from deeply
prehistoric times to the Spanish Conquest of the 16th century. He was consistently
described as the tall, red-haired, bearded, fair-skinned culture-bearer from
a distant land in the East who arrived on the shores of Lake Titicaca after surviving
some terrible deluge. The Peruvian natives called him “The Teacher of all Things,”
and knew him as the man who established the arts of civilization in South America,
including agriculture, religion, astronomy, weights and measures, social organization,
and government.
He was the elder of five brothers, known collectively as Viracochas, or “white
men.” At-ach-u-chu is better remembered by his title, Kontiki-Viracocha, or
“White Man of the Sea Foam”; in other words, he was a foreigner who arrived by
ship, “sea foam” being a poetic description of its bow wave. All features of this
supremely important figure in Andean tradition, beginning with the At in the
head of his name, clearly define him as the leader of survivors from the final
destruction of Atlantis, who reestablished themselves by creating a hybrid civilization,
a mix of local cultures with Atlantean technology, in Peru and Bolivia.
At-ach-u-chu was said to have moved on after a few years, traveling to the
west. A curious variation of this folk memory from Nazca, site of the great lines
and effigies seen properly only from altitude, has him rising into the air and flying
toward the setting sun. Other than this last suggestion of prehistoric aviation,
At-ach-u-chu’s resemblance to similarly fair-faced culture-bearers appearing
after a great natural disaster in the Atlantic Ocean are common throughout the
Americas, from the Menomonie Indians of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, to the
Aztecs’ Quetzalcoatl and the Mayas’ Kukulcan. These related founding heroes
from over the sea apparently represent the impact native peoples experienced
from the large-scale arrival of Atlantis refugees.
The South American At-ach-u-chu bears a striking resemblance to Atcha,
remembered by the ancient Egyptians as a far-off, splendid, but vanished city echoing
lost Atlantis. Here At-ach-u-chu could mean “The Man from Atcha (Atlantis).”