Atala

“The White Island” described in the great Indian epic Mahabharata and in
the epic poems, the Puranas, as the mountainous homeland of a powerful and
highly civilized race located in “the Western Sea” on the other side of the world
from India. Vishnu Purana located Atala “on the seventh zone” of heat, which
corresponds to 24 to 28 degrees latitude, on a line with the Canary Islands.
Mahabharata likewise locates Atala, “an island of great splendor,” in the North
Atlantic, where its inhabitants worshiped Narayana. This was the “Son of the
Waters”and “the blessed supporter” (Atlas, “the supporter”), who was later responsible
for a world-flood. Atala itself sank in a violent storm. All this unquestionably
bespeaks Atlantis and its destruction. In Hindu myth, Atala was the
center of seven realms. “They are embellished with the magnificent palaces in
which dwell great snake-gods [compare with Valum, “Kingdom of Serpents,”
from which Votan, the Quiche Mayas’ founding father, arrived in Middle
America]—and where the sons of Danu are happy. There are beautiful groves
and streams and lakes.” This description mirrors Plato’s description of Atlantis
in Kritias.
The six regions surrounding Atala correspond to another Atlantean allegory,
the Tower of Babel, which “was built after the model city in the sphere of Saturn.”
Saturn, or Kronos, was synonymous for the Atlantic Ocean in Greek and Roman
myth. Moreover, the fifth-century Greek poet Nonnus described “Atlas, in the
enclosure of the Seven Zones.” Among the sacred numerals of Atlantis, Seven
signified the completion of cycles, while Six stood for the perfection of human
forms. “The sons of Danu” recur in other parts of the world directly affected by
the Atlantis experience, such as the Irish Tuatha da Danann (“the Followers of
Danu”) and the Dananns (the sons of Danaus, himself a son of Poseidon, brother
of Atlas, and the founder of civilized Greece). Berber traditions likewise describe
Atala as an island of miners, wealthy in gold, silver, copper, and tin. Not content
with these riches, they launched a military invasion that swept eastward across
North Africa, a conquest cut short by a flood that drowned their homeland, the
same Atlantean War and inundation described by Plato. The Berbers predicted
that Atala will one day rise to the surface of the sea that long ago overwhelmed it.
Berber tribesmen of the Shott el Hameina, in Tunisia, still refer to themselves as
the “Sons of the Source, Atala.” A Norse version of Atala was Landvidi, similarly
known as the “White Land.”
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in the American South, Atala is the
word for “mountain” among the Cherokee Indians, who may have used it to
describe a 40-foot high pyramid found in Georgia. Etowah Mounds is today an
archaeological park including a prehistoric ceremonial center of large earthen
temple-mounds built around 900 A.D., and abandoned in the early part of the 14th
century, but whose earliest origins are still undetermined. The Cherokee also preserve
a deluge legend that tells of survivors arriving on the shores of Turtle
Island (North America) from “a great lodge” drowned in the Eastern Sea. The
survival of this term, Atala, and its undeniably Atlantean details among peoples as
widely separated as India, Morocco, and Georgia comprise persuasive evidence
on behalf of a historic Atlantis.