Thursday 14 August 2008

Atlahua

Aztec sea-god with apparent Atlantean provenance.

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’s 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.

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)

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.

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’s foundation by Atlantean colonizers.

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.

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)

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)

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.

Ateste

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

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.

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.

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’s
philological resemblance to Atemet, the Egyptian deluge figure, is clear.

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.

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.

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.

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.).

Atauro

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

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.

Atarantes

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

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.

Atapaska

The Ascohimi Indians’ flood-hero, who arrived on the shores of North America
after some oceanic catastrophe. They relate that the world was deluged as the
result of a powerful earthquake, during which the air became extremely hot,
followed by a prolonged period of intense cold. Their tribal memory accurately
describes a celestial collision of a comet or associated meteoric debris with the
Earth, preceding the aftereffect of a so-called “dust veil event,” wherein thousands
of cubic kilometers of ash are extruded into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight
and drastically lowering world temperatures. Just such a catastrophe connected
with the final destruction of Atlantis and simultaneous close of the Bronze Age
did indeed take place around the start of the 13th century B.C.
The Athabascan Indians of Alaska derived their tribal name from their
Atlantean ancestor, Atapaska.

Atao

According to archaeo-linguists, a masculine name in Linear A,the language
spoken by the Minoans, who raised a great civilization on Crete from 3000 to 1500
B.C. “Atao” may be the Minoan version of the Greek “Atlas,” the eponymous
Titan of Atlantis.

Atanum

The Indian name for a river in Washington State. It means “water by the long
mountain.” Here, as elsewhere throughout the world, a name appears among a
native people, combining the “At” prefix to describe a mountain bounded by water.
In this instance, “Atanum” suggests the ancient Egyptian Atum (god of the Primal
Mound) and/or Nun (the sea-god who sank it), both intimately connected with
the Egyptian version of the Atlantis story.

Atanua

The Marquesans’ memory of Atlantis, described in their oral epic “Te Vanana
na Tanaoa”: “Atanua was beautiful and good, adorned with riches very great. Atanua
was fair, very rich and soft. Atanua produced abundantly of living things. Atea [and
his brothers] dwelt as kings in the most beautiful palaces supported on thrones.
They ruled the space of heaven and the large, entire sky and all the powers thereof
[astrology]. The first lords dwelling on high. Oh, throne placed in the middle of the
upper heavens! The great lord Atea established in love to love the fair Atanua. A
woman of great wealth is Atanua. From within Atea came forth Ono [a terrible
sound, the explosion of Mt. Atlas erupting]. Atea produces the very hot fire.”
These lines from “Te Vanana na Tanaoa” vividly compare with Plato’s description
of Atlantis and its destruction. Atea’s, like that of Atlas’s association with a
volcanic mountain, was recognized by the early 20th-century anthropologist
Abraham Fornander: “In this sense, it would appropriately convey the idea of the
lurid light which accompanies an eruption of the volcano.”

Atana

Meaning a “cultic center” or “sacred site” in Linear B, Atana is a linguistic
term archaeologists use to describe a Greek language spoken on the island of
Crete after 1500 to about 1200 B.C. “Atana” is comparable to sacred places around
the world identified with variants of “Atlantis.”

Atami-san

Mt. Atami, on the northeastern coast of Japan’s Izu-hanto, the Izu Peninsula
(Shizuoka prefecture ken, Honshu), facing Sagami-nada (the Gulf of Sagami), an
enormous but extinct volcano, the ancient source from which the city of Atami,
built within the crater, derives its name. Almost half sunk into the sea, Atami-san
presents an Atlantean appearance.
Atami was an important resort as early as the fifth century A.D., although
Neolithic finds in the crater prove the site has been occupied from much earlier
times, when the name originated. “Atami,” an Atlantean linguistic survivor, has
no meaning in the Japanese language.

Atalya

An important proof for Atlantis found in various parts of the world, specifically
and appropriately, within the Atlantean sphere of influence. “Italy” is a derivation
of its more ancient name, used even in late Roman times, “Italia”—a corruption
of “Atalya,” or “Land of Atlas,” the eponymous king of Atlantis, who likewise
brought civilization to the Italian peninsula. An alternative but closely related
Roman myth describes the origin of “Italy” from the country’s earliest ruler, Italus,
a brother of Atlas. In Kritias, Plato mentions that the Atlanteans occupied Etruria,
the homeland of the Etruscans in western Italy.
Atalya is also the name of an ancient, ceremonial mound in Biarritz. The
Basque still revere this mound as symbolic of the Great Ancestral Mountain in
the sea, from which their seafaring forebears traveled into the Bay of Biscay after
the sinking of “the Green Isle.”
Atalya appears on the “Opposite Continent” among the Aztecs, who similarly
venerated a holy mountain in the Valley of Mexico by the same name. Atalaia is the
name of a small Quechua Indian town in the High Andes about one day’s journey
from Cuzco, formerly the capital of the Inca Empire. A pre-Inca civilization was the
Chavin de Huantar, and in the ruins of Atalya, one of its early cities, archaeologists
found important collections of ancient
ceramics. Chavin de Huantar began
suddenly after 1200 B.C., coinciding with
the final destruction of Atlantis. Some
survivors apparently migrated to Peru,
where they established this ceremonial
center of Atalya.
Near Lake Atitlan, in Guatemala,
stands a round, Atlantean-style tower
in a ruined fortress known as Atalaya.
Similarly, the nuraghe stone towers of
the Balearic Isles in the western Mediterranean
are talayots, “a diminutive of
Atalaya, meaning ‘Giant’s Burrow’”
(Tyndale, quoted in Blackett). Southern
Portugal was the Atlantean kingdom of
Elasippos, featuring Bronze Age tumuli,
or domed tombs, dating to the height of
Atlantean civilization (1500 to 1200 B.C.).
Atalya is a Kritias-like mountainous
valley found at Gran Canaria, one of the
Canary Islands, anciently the Atlantean
kingdom of Diaprepes.

Atali

In Cherokee tradition, the place from which their ancestors disbursed
throughout the world immediately after the Great Flood that brought a former
age to a close.

Atalanta: A Story of Atlantis

A 1940s musical by British composer Sir Gerald Hargreaves, who also wrote
the libretto and designed its lavish sets. The story is set in the Atlantean court,
where two factions of aristocrats argue for and against war. At the height of their
debate, the Greek hero, Achilles, fresh from his triumph over the Trojans, arrives
to plea for peace. But a warlike faction carries the day, and he flees with his lover,
the princess Atalanta, as Atlantis sinks beneath the sea, as punishment by the gods.

Atalanta

Modern Talanto, a rocky islet west of the entrance to the Greek port city of
Piraeus. Also the name of another Greek island in the fjord of Euboea, whose
name was changed to Talandonisi.
In Greek myth, Atalanta was a virgin huntress, who vowed to marry the man
able to beat her in a foot race. There were many suitors, but she outran them all,
save Hippomenes, who cunningly dropped three golden apples, one by one, which,
in her desire for the fruit, she stopped to pick up, thereby forfeiting her victory
and virginity. Almost immediately after this contest, however, she and Hippomenes
incurred the wrath of Zeus by copulating in the god’s sacred precinct. He turned
the couple into a lioness and a lion. Their son, Pathenopaeus, grew up to become
a leader of the Argives (one of the Seven Against Thebes).
While outwardly the story of Atalanta appears to have nothing to do with
Atlantis, Rene Guenon wrote that the three golden apples dropped by Hippomenes
were from the Hesperides, the three daughters of Atlas (that is, Atlantids or
“Atlantises”). Guenon also concludes that Atalanta’s role as heroine of the
Caledonian bear hunt signified change from a solstitial to an equinoctial method
of measuring time; from reckoning the starting point of the annual cycle with the
appearance of the Pleiades (Hesperides), instead of the Great Bear, thus implying
the ascendancy of Atlantean civilization over a former culture.
The Atlantean character of Atalanta’s name and her punishment at the hands
of Zeus (who likewise condemned the Atlanteans in Plato’s version for their immorality)
parallel Atlantis in a garbled mythic tradition. Her husband, Hippomenes,
is likely Atlantean as well, because at least some names in Plato’s account are
similarly equine: Elasippos (“Knightly Horse-Rider,” one of the original 10
Atlantean kings), Leukippe (“White Mare,” the first lady of Atlantis), and so on.
Like all the other daughters of Atlas, Atalanta gave birth to a foremost culturebearer,
signifying the Atlanteans who voyaged to other lands, where they became
the progenitors of new societies.

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.

Ataka

Described in the Harris Papyrus, a 133-foot long document dated April 14
(Epiphi 6), circa 1180 B.C., summarizing in detail the political, cultural, religious,
and military accomplishments of Ramses III, Pharaoh of the XX Dynasty, who
defended his kingdom from invading “Sea Peoples” identified with Plato’s
Atlanteans. After their defeat, he declares in the Harris Papyrus, “I sent out an
expedition to the land of Ataka for the great foundries of copper which are in that
place. Our transport ships were loaded. Having located the foundries loaded with
metal, loaded as myriads upon our ships, they sailed back to Egypt, arriving safely.
The cargo was piled in stores as hundreds of thousands of the color of gold. I let
the people see them like marvels.”
Ataka appears to be an Egyptian linguistic inflection of the Atlanteans’ original
name (the prefix “At” often designated Atlantean holdings) for Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula, in North America, where they engaged in extensive copper
mining. Plato describes them as preeminent miners of the world’s highest-grade
copper (orichalcum). Ramses mentions “foundries,” implying the large-scale
mining operations that went on in Ataka, and which certainly existed throughout
the Upper Great Lakes area up until his time, when they were abruptly and
coincidentally shut down. The great quantities of copper his expedition took from
Ataka required transport ships sailing a great, hazardous distance (they returned
“safely”), while their “color of gold” suggests Plato’s gold-like orichalcum and
Michigan’s high-grade copper. Only from the Upper Peninsula could Ramses have
obtained such large amounts of exceptional copper. The Egyptians were wellaccustomed
to seeing riches of all kinds, but the prodigious stores of the world’s
best copper made even them “marvel.”
It would appear that, after the Atlanteans’ defeat and capture by Ramses,
they divulged the location of their copper sources in North America. His transports
ventured a transatlantic crossing, “located the foundries loaded with metal, loaded
as myriads upon our ships, they sailed back to Egypt.” He does not indicate any
trade negotiations or military operations in Ataka, but simple seizure of the vast
amounts of copper, as though there was no one there with whom to barter or
fight. Historians know that at this time, the early 12th century B.C., the Michigan
mines were likewise abandoned. With the sudden, simultaneous collapse of Atlantean
Civilization, their copper treasure was easy pickings for the victorious Egyptians.
In the name Ataka may survive the closest reference to the Atlanteans’ coppermining
region in the Upper Great Lakes.

Ataka

Described in the Harris Papyrus, a 133-foot long document dated April 14
(Epiphi 6), circa 1180 B.C., summarizing in detail the political, cultural, religious,
and military accomplishments of Ramses III, Pharaoh of the XX Dynasty, who
defended his kingdom from invading “Sea Peoples” identified with Plato’s
Atlanteans. After their defeat, he declares in the Harris Papyrus, “I sent out an
expedition to the land of Ataka for the great foundries of copper which are in that
place. Our transport ships were loaded. Having located the foundries loaded with
metal, loaded as myriads upon our ships, they sailed back to Egypt, arriving safely.
The cargo was piled in stores as hundreds of thousands of the color of gold. I let
the people see them like marvels.”
Ataka appears to be an Egyptian linguistic inflection of the Atlanteans’ original
name (the prefix “At” often designated Atlantean holdings) for Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula, in North America, where they engaged in extensive copper
mining. Plato describes them as preeminent miners of the world’s highest-grade
copper (orichalcum). Ramses mentions “foundries,” implying the large-scale
mining operations that went on in Ataka, and which certainly existed throughout
the Upper Great Lakes area up until his time, when they were abruptly and
coincidentally shut down. The great quantities of copper his expedition took from
Ataka required transport ships sailing a great, hazardous distance (they returned
“safely”), while their “color of gold” suggests Plato’s gold-like orichalcum and
Michigan’s high-grade copper. Only from the Upper Peninsula could Ramses have
obtained such large amounts of exceptional copper. The Egyptians were wellaccustomed
to seeing riches of all kinds, but the prodigious stores of the world’s
best copper made even them “marvel.”
It would appear that, after the Atlanteans’ defeat and capture by Ramses,
they divulged the location of their copper sources in North America. His transports
ventured a transatlantic crossing, “located the foundries loaded with metal, loaded
as myriads upon our ships, they sailed back to Egypt.” He does not indicate any
trade negotiations or military operations in Ataka, but simple seizure of the vast
amounts of copper, as though there was no one there with whom to barter or
fight. Historians know that at this time, the early 12th century B.C., the Michigan
mines were likewise abandoned. With the sudden, simultaneous collapse of Atlantean
Civilization, their copper treasure was easy pickings for the victorious Egyptians.
In the name Ataka may survive the closest reference to the Atlanteans’ coppermining
region in the Upper Great Lakes.

Atago

A hill lying at the center of Tokyo is described in myth as the place where the
gods brought civilization to Japan.
(See Atagi, Atami)

Atagi

Members of a tiny group of highly select and enigmatic Shinto priests, said to
preserve the most deeply ancient wisdom from Japanese prehistory, as embodied
in their ceremonial robes, which are primitively cut to deliberately suggest profound
age. Their arcane rituals open with the members of the priesthood blowing
conch-shell trumpets, the only such example in all Japan. The Atagi philological
resemblance to “Atlantis,” their emphasis on the great antiquity of their cult, and
its unique sea-oriented symbolism bespeak the continuing survival of early
Atlantean religious influences in Japan.

Ataentsik

The ancestor-hero of the Algonquian Passamaquoddy Indians, Ataentsik
arrived on the eastern shores of Turtle Island (North America) from “the first
island in the sea.” His name, function as a founding father, and origin define him
as an Atlantean visitor. Among the Hurons, however, Ataensik is the name of
“Sky Woman,” who, perishing, gave life to all creatures.

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).”

Ata

An extinct volcanic mountain of the Tongatapu group in the southwest Pacific,
and revered by the Tonga islanders as a natural memorial to red-haired, fairskinned
gods who arrived long ago to somehow “bless” the natives.

At

Found in cultures around the world where traditions of Atlantis-like experiences
have been preserved in folk memory, and usually denoting a sacred mountain
(from the Mount Atlas of Atlantis), often volcanic and sometimes symbolized by a
holy altar, such as the Samoan Atua. Throughout the prehistoric New World of the
Americas, At invariably defines an eastern location (Aztlan, etc.), while, in Old World
traditions, it is associated with western places (Atum, etc.)—appropriately enough,
because mid-ocean culture-bearers sailed from Atlantis to both east and west. As
such, in numerous cultures around the world, At is a prefix, a word, or a name in
itself, defining a sacred mountain associated with ancestral origins, commonly after
a world-class deluge.

Astrology

Literally, the “language of the stars,” from the Greek logos astra, a scientific
analysis of the mathematical relationships linking human character and the
prediction of future events to positions and movements of the heavenly bodies.
In the ancient world, astrology and astronomy (the observation of celestial
events) comprised a single discipline. They finally split apart only in the early 19th
century, when astrology was banished by rationalists to the realms of metaphysics
or superstition.
Astrology undoubtedly emerged after and from astronomy, when correspondences
between cosmic activity and human behavior were first noticed. This interrelationship
was embodied in the mythic personality of Atlas, the founder of both
sciences. In Greek myth, he was the first astronomer-astrologer. Indeed, his capital
city, Atlantis, was the child (“Daughter of Atlas”) of his astronomical character,
in that its layout of concentric rings was a reflection of the cosmic order.
The city and the Titan were architectural and mythic expressions, respectively,
of the Atlanteans’ own founding of and excellence in astronomy-astrology, as
evidenced by the numerous stone structures that still survive in what was once the
Atlantean sphere of influence. Many of these monuments (Britain’s Stonehenge,
Ireland’s New Grange, America’s Poverty Point, etc.) not only conform to the era
and construction styles of the Atlanteans, but were skillfully aligned with significant
cosmic orientations and built to compute often sophisticated celestial data.

Asterope

One of the Pleiades, an Atlantis, daughter of Atlas by Pleione.

Asteroid Theory

G.R. Corli, a French astronomer in 1785, was the first researcher to conclude
that the fragment of a passing comet collided with the Earth to destroy Atlantis.
The earliest thorough investigation of the Atlantis Problem was begun nearly 100
years later by the father of Atlantology, Ignatius Donnelly. His second book on
the subject, Ragnarok: Age of Fire and Gravel (1884), proposed that the island
civilization had been annihilated by a comet’s collision with the Earth. At a time
when established scientists did not even recognize the existence of meteorites, his
speculation was roundly dismissed as untenable fantasy. He was supported by only
a few contemporary thinkers, such as the Russian physicist Sergi Basinsky, who
argued that a meteor impact with the Earth had been great enough for the simultaneous
destruction of Atlantis and rise of Australia.
But in the 1920s and 30s, Donnelly’s theory was revived and supported by the
German physicist, Hanns Hoerbiger, whose controversial “Cosmic Ice” paradigm
included the Atlantean catastrophe as the result of Earth’s impact with a cometary
fragment of frozen debris. His British contemporary, the influential publisher,
Comyns Beaumont, had already come to the same conclusion independently.
During the post-World War II era, Hoerbiger was championed by another wellknown
Austrian researcher, H.S. Bellamy. Meanwhile, Beaumont’s work was taken
over entirely by Immanuel Velikovsky in his famous Worlds in Collision (1950),
which elaborated on the possibility of a celestial impact as responsible for the
sudden extinction of a pre-Flood civilization.
As intriguingly or even as plausibly as these catastrophists argued, their proofs
were largely inferential. But the extraterrestrial theory began to find persuasive
material evidence in 1964, when a German rocket-engineer, Otto Muck, announced
his findings of twin, deep-sea holes in the ocean floor. They were caused by a
small asteroid that split in half and set off a chain reaction of geologic violence
along the length of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a series of subsurface volcanoes, to
which the island of Atlantis was connected.
In the late 1980s and early 90s, astronomers
Victor Clube and Bill Napier
affirmed an asteroidal or meteoric explanation
for the destruction of Atlantis.
They demonstrated, however, the
greater likelihood of a virtual Earthbombardment,
or “fire from heaven,”
as our planet passed through or near a
cloud of large debris that showered
down dozens or even hundreds of
meteoritic materials, as opposed to
Muck’s single collision.
Particularly since the publication of
Muck’s convincing evidence, leading
scholars—such as the world’s foremost
authority on Halley’ Comet, Dr. M.M.
Kamiensky (member of the Polish
Academy of Sciences); Professor N.
Bonev (Bulgarian astronomer at the
University of Sofia); and Edgerton Sykes
(the most important Atlantologist of the post-World War II era)—believed the
final destruction of Atlantis was caused by an extraterrestrial impact or series of
impacts. Preceding these scientific investigations by thousands of years are the
numerous traditions of a great deluge caused by some celestial event, recounted
in societies on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Many, if not most, of these worldwide folk memories invariably link a heavensent
cataclysm with the Flood. Beginning with the first complete account of
Atlantis, Plato’s Timaeus, the fall of an extraterrestrial object foreshadows the
island’s destruction when Psonchis, the Egyptian narrator of the story, tells
Solon, the visiting Greek statesman, about “a declination of the bodies moving
around the Earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the
Earth recurring at long intervals of time.”
Inscriptions on the walls of Medinet Habu (Upper Nile Valley), the “Victory
Temple” of Pharaoh Ramses III, tell how the Atlantean invaders of Egypt were
destroyed: “The shooting-star was terrible in pursuit of them,” before their island
went under the sea. Ibrahim ben Ebn Wauff Shah, Abu Zeyd el Balkhy, and other
Arab historians used the story of Surid, the ruler of an antediluvian kingdom, to
explain that the Great Flood was caused when a “planet” collided with the Earth.
In North America, the Cherokee Indians remembered Unadatsug, a “group”
of stars—the Pleiades—one of whom, “creating a fiery tail, fell to Earth. Where it
landed, a palm tree grew up, and the fallen star itself transformed into an old
man, who warned of coming floods.” As the modern commentator, Jobes, has
written of Unadatsug, “The fall of one star may be connected with a Deluge story;
possibly the fall of a Taurid meteor is echoed here.”
A complimentary version occurs in the Jewish Talmud: “When the Holy One,
blessed be He, wished to bring the Deluge upon the world, He took two stars out
of the Pleiades.” Similar accounts may be found among the Quiche Maya of the
Lowland Yucatan, the Muysica of Colombia, the Arawak Indians of Venezuela,
the Aztecs at Cholula, the classical Greeks, and so on.

Arnobious Afer



A Christian rhetorician and early Church founder famous for dramatizing the
fate of Atlantis in his sermons as a warning against the moral corruption of society.
His use of the sunken civilization as an historic object lesson illuminates late thirdcentury
Roman thought, because it demonstrates the general acceptance of
Atlantis as a real place.

Wednesday 13 August 2008

Arianrhod

Or Caer Arianrhod, the Celtic “Fortress of the Silver Wheel,” referring to
the concentric walls of Atlantis decorated, according to Plato, with precious
metals. In some versions of her myth, Arianrhod was a woman who was responsible
for the sinking of Caer Arianrhod, a Brythonic legend common along the
Carnarvon coast, where a reef out at sea is associated with the remains of her
sunken castle. According to Book I of Taliesin, a medieval collection of Welsh
traditions with deeply prehistoric roots, “There is a caer of defense (a fortified
city) under the ocean’s wave.” Artists and magicians went to Caer Arianrhod for
the most advanced instruction, a Welsh recollection of the sophisticated civilization
universally associated with Atlantis.

Arallu

In Babylonian tradition (circa 2100 B.C.), a great, mountainous island in the
Distant West, where freshwater springs and a year-round temperate climate were
enjoyed by the spiritually enlightened inhabitants. Arallu was the Babylonian version
of Atlantis.

Apaturia

“The Gathering of the Clans,” an ancient Greek religious festival lasting three
days and staged every year, during which the phratriai, or various clans of Attica,
met to discuss national affairs, celebrate their common culture, and publicly present
children born since the previous Apaturia. The name means “shared relationship,”
underscoring the Greek heritage shared with all the tribal groups of Ionia. In his
account of Atlantis (Timaeus), Plato wrote, “Now, the day was that day, the third
of the festival of Apaturia, which is called the Registration of Youth (the
Koureotis), at which, according to custom, our parents gave prizes for recitations,
and the poems of several poets were recited by us boys.” One youth, Amynander,
makes a speech in praise of Solon, which begins the story of Atlantis, as it was
brought to Greece from Egypt by the great Athenian law-giver.
Whether the tale was, in fact, recounted at each Koureotis (“Shearing Day,” a
ceremonial haircut; the last day of the festival and its climax) or Plato merely
used the occasion as a related backdrop for his narrative, the Apaturia made an
altogether appropriate setting for celebrating victory over the invading Atlanteans.
It was an annual affair of national patriotism, in which the common greatness of
the Greeks was honored. Interestingly, the previous day was known as Anarrhysis,
or “the Day of Rescue.” Nothing beyond its provocative name survives, but it may
have been a commemoration of survivors from the Atlantean disaster. Moreover,
the Apaturia was held in honor of Dionysus, whose myth portrays the god of rebirth
as a culture-bearer following some catastrophic flood. Each Apaturia took place
during the harvest time of Pyanopsion (the “Bean Month”), in late October/early
November; according to the Egyptians, Atlantis was defeated by the Greeks and
destroyed by a cataclysm of nature in their corresponding month of Aethyr (late
October/early November).
(See Plato, Solon, Timaeus)

Anubis

Greek for a funeral-god known to the Egyptians as Anpu. Although most
Egyptologists describe him as jackal-headed, his title, “The Great Dog,” demonstrates
he was canine cephalic. And, like the seeing-eye dog, Anubis loyally
guided the recently deceased through the darkness of death. He was a spirit-guide,
who comforted the ba, or soul, leading it to the Otherworld. Prayed to as “The
Westerner,” Anubis was said to have “written annals from before the flood”
which destroyed his island-home in the Distant West, from whence he arrived
to reestablish his worship in Egypt. He was also known as the “Great Five,” the
sacred numeral of Atlantis, according to Plato. Hence, the funeral rites associated
with his divinity became Egyptian mortuary practices after their importation
from the sunken civilization.
(See Plato)

Antaeus

Possibly a pre-Platonic mythological rendering of Greek victory over the forces
of Atlantis. Like Atlas, Antaeus was a Titan, the son of Poseidon and Gaia (Kleito,
described as the mother of Atlas in Kritias, was likewise an Earth Mother goddess).
Similar to the imperialist Atlanteans, he was everywhere invincible, until Heracles
overcame him on the Atlantic shores of North Africa, fronting the position of
Atlantis, “beyond the Pillars of Heracles,” according to Plato. Archaeological
finds throughout Atlantic coastal Morocco reveal consistent themes related to
Heracles. Also, a similarity appears to exist between the names Antaeus and Atlas.
(See Atlas, Kleito)

Annwn

From the Brythonic an (“abyss”) and dwfn (“world”), known throughout Celtic
myth as “Land Under Wave,” or the “Revolving Castle” (Caer Sidi); formerly a
fortified island of great natural beauty with freshwater streams and a circularshaped
city, at the center of which was a magic cauldron of immortality. These
details clearly point to Atlantis, while Annwn’s cauldron is a pre-Christian reference
to the Holy Grail—another legendary link with the sunken civilization.

Annals of Cuauhtitlan

An Aztec chronicle of earliest Mesoamerican beginnings, from when the first
civilizers arrived on the eastern shores of Mexico after a destructive flood. “For
fifty two years the waters lasted,” it reports. “Thus, they [an ancestral people]
perished. They were swallowed by the waters, and their souls became fish. The
heavens collapsed upon them, and in a single day they perished. All the mountains
perished [under the sea].”
These “Annals” compare with the Babylonian deluge story of Ishtar (the
Sumerian Inanna), wherein the goddess laments how her people were “changed
into fish” by a great flood that overwhelmed a former kingdom. So too, the Aztecs
chose virtually the same words Plato used to describe the destruction of Atlantis
“in a single day and night.” That “the heavens collapsed upon them” also suggests
a celestial event as part of the Deluge.
(See Asteroid Theory, Berosus, Inanna)

Andros Platform

Andros is the largest of the Bahama Islands, south of Bimini, where an underwater
feature discovered in 1969 has been associated with Atlantean civilization
ever since. Floridians Dr. Gregory Little and his wife, Lora, found a sunken site in
Nicolls Town Bay, near the extreme northeast end of Andros 34 years later. They
learned of its general position from a former dive operator, Dino Keller, who
claimed to have navigated his boat inside a coral reef usually approached on the
outside. There, in 1992, Keller observed a large structure similar to the so-called
“Bimini Wall,” under some 10 feet of water.
Following Keller’s directions, in March, 2003, Dr. Little snorkeled about 600
yards from shore to find a 1,375-foot long, 150-foot wide arrangement of cyclopean
blocks in three well-ordered sloping tiers interspersed by two bands of smaller stones.
Although standing 15 feet beneath the surface, its top section is 10 feet deep, as
described by Keller. The large stones comprising the tiers average 25 × 30 feet, and
2 feet thick. Each of the three tiers is 50 feet wide. Some suggestion of a ramp was
discerned leading from the floor of the harbor lagoon to the top of the platform.
The feature’s regular appearance and almost uniformly square-cut blocks,
given its location at a natural harbor in the North Atlantic Current, suggest it
may have been a quay, breakwater, or port facility of some kind. Underscoring
this characterization, together with the ramp, are a number of 5-inch wide and
deep rectangles resembling post-holes cut into some of the cyclopean stones
just below the uppermost tier. These holes may have held mooring pylons used
to tie up docked ships. Most if not all of the blocks themselves appear to have
been quarried from local beach rock and deliberately set in place, a marine
construction practice common in the ancient Old World.
Dr. Little believes the formation could only have been built 10,000 years ago,
when sea levels were low enough for its creation. But archaeologists are certain
that nothing of the kind existed in the post glacial epoch. Sea levels would have
dropped sufficiently, however, between 1600 and 1500 B.C., during the middle to
late Bronze Age—a far more likely period for construction, if only because similar
harbor works were already in use throughout the eastern Mediterranean by that
time. Moreover, Lake Superior copper mining was simultaneously nearing the
zenith of its output. A port located off the North American coast, situated in the
heart of the North Atlantic Current, would have been a valuable asset for freighters
carrying cargos of mined copper back to their headquarters in Atlantis.
An Atlantean connection is, after all, suggested in the Andros platform’s six
alternating bands of stone: 6 was the sacred numeral of Atlantis, whose cityplanners
incorporated the holy number in the capital’s alternating stone walls,
according to Plato’s description of the sunken civilization.
(See Bimini Road, Kritias)

An

In Sumerian tradition (circa 3500 to 2500 B.C.), a capital city on the island of
Atu, which was overwhelmed by a cataclysmic deluge.

A-Mu-ru

In Colombian native traditions, the great oceanic kingdom destroyed by a natural
catastrophe from which the culture hero, A-Mu-Ra-Ca, led his followers to South
America. In Akkadian, the language of Sumer’s Semitic conquerors at the close of
the third millennium B.C., A-Mu-ru means “Western Lands.” The name, in both
Colombian Muysica and Akkadian, refers to the lost Pacific Ocean civilization of Mu.
(See Mu)

A-Mu-Ra-Ca

In the early 16th century, when they first walked ashore at what is now Colombia,
the Spaniards were informed by their Indian hosts that they had appeared in “the
Land of A-Mu-Ra-Ca.” Bearing the royal title, “Serpent,” A-Mu-Ra-Ca, they said,
was a bearded white man not unlike the Conquistadors themselves. He had long ago
arrived after a terrible flood out at sea forced him and his followers to seek refuge.
He afterward taught the natives the benefits of agriculture, medicine, and religion,
then built the first of several stone cities. A-Mu-Ra-Ca’s resemblance to the “Plumed
Serpent,” known by the identical name to the northerly Mayas and Aztecs, means
that the same set of Old World culture-bearers arrived throughout the Americas.
It suggests, too, that the name given to the New World did not derive from
a contemporary Italian mapmaker, but rather the Atlantean flood hero. The
Europeans did not use native names for lands they conquered, because they sought
to lend greater legitimacy to their New World holdings by rechristening them with
Old World names. Thus, the Atlanto-Colombian “A-Mu-Ra-Ca” was changed to
the “America” of Amerigo Vespucci for political reasons. It does indeed seem strange
that the New World would have been christened after the first name of the cartographer.
Supporting the indigenous provenance of “America,” Columbus himself,
on his third voyage to the New World, met Indian natives who introduced themselves
as “Americos” (Jimenez and Graeber, 67). The same tribe was identified by
Alonso de Ojeda on his second voyage to Hispaniola. Moreover, the “land of perpetual
wind,” reference to a mountain range in the province of Chantoles, between
Juigalpa and Liberdad, in Nicaragua, was known to the Mayas as “Amerisque,” and
so recorded in the sailing logs of Columbus, as well as the writings of Vespucci.
Intriguingly, A-Mu-Ra-Ca appears to mean “Ra’s Serpent from Mu.” Ca (“Serpent”)
describes a powerful wise man, most likely a priest-king. The appearance of
Ra, the Egyptian sun-god, is hardly less amazing than that of Mu, the Pacific Ocean
land said to have perished in a natural catastrophe before the destruction of Atlantis.
(See Mu)

Amphictyonies

Term for political confederations of sometimes large kingdoms in classical Greece,
derived from “Amphictyon,” son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the couple who survived
the Great Flood. Deucalion was a nephew of Atlas and, therefore, an Atlantean.
Amphictyon helped reestablish civilization by reading omens, particularly in dreams.
He was also the first post-deluge survivor to mix water and wine, which means he
preserved the antediluvian Dionysiac mystery religion in Greece. The amphictyonies
reflect not only his name, but the political organization of Atlantean civilization,
which was a confederation of kingdoms, as described by Plato in Timaeus and Kritias.

Ampheres

One of the 10 original Atlantean kings listed by Plato (in Kritias). His name
means “he who encompasses,” or “fitted or joined on both sides,” suggestive of a
power center located midway between Western Europe and the Outer Continent
of the Americas, such as the Azore Islands, where possible Atlantean remains
have been found. Ampheres might be linked to the amphora, or drinking vessel of
King Gradlon, king of Ys, in Brittany’s pre-Christian tradition of a sunken island.
(See Azores, Outer Continent)

Ammianus Marcellinus

A fourth-century Roman historian who classified the destruction of Atlantis
as a chasmatiae, a natural disaster in which seismic violence breaks open great
fissures in the Earth to swallow large tracts of territory during a single event.

Amma

In Yoruba and Benin traditions, she was among the few royal survivors of a
great flood when the Atlantic Ocean overflowed very long ago. Amma arrived
safely on the shores of West Africa, where she became the first ruler.

Amimitl

“The Harpoon” or “Harpooner,” a title applied to the Aztec god of the sea,
Atlahua. His name is an apparent derivative of Atlas. He was also known as “He
Who Divides the Waters” and “Inventor of the Trident,” both of which clearly
define Atlantean associations. Plato told how the sea-god Poseidon “divided the
waters from the land” to create Atlantis. Moreover, the trident was Poseidon’s
emblem of maritime power. Brundage reports that Atlahua was “venerated in
a temple on the legendary island of Aztlan,” Atlantis, obviously enough (93).
Remarkably, the ancient Egyptians remembered the Mesentiu, “The Harpooners,”
a culture-bearing people who arrived by sea from the Distant West to establish
dynastic civilization at the Nile Delta.

Ami

A tribal people of Taiwan, whose flood story shares details in common with
deluge accounts in other parts of the world. As explained by John Canon MacCullow:
“They say at that time [in the remote past] the mountains crumbled down, the
Earth gaped, and from the fissure a hot spring gushed forth, which flooded the
whole face of the Earth. Few living things survived the inundation.” The Tsuwo
version describes birds dropping many thousands of stones into the cataclysm,
suggesting a meteor bombardment. The only persons to survive were a brother
and sister, whose responsibility it was to repopulate the planet.
Their first offspring were living abortions, which became fish and crabs, because
the pair committed the sin of incest without asking dispensation from the
sun-god. Having angered him, they applied to the moon-goddess. She forgave
them, and the woman gave birth to a stone, from which sprang new generations of
mankind. In this final detail of the Ami deluge myth is the rebirth of humanity
from a stone, the same theme encountered in Greek myth and numerous other
flood accounts around the world.
(See Asteroid Theory, Deucalion)

Ambrosia

As a daughter of Atlas, she was an Atlantis, one of the five Hyades. Her name
means “immortality.”
(See Hyades)

Amaiur

The legendary first king of the Basque is equated with biblical parallels of
Tubalcain, a grandson of the flood hero in Genesis, Noah. Amaiur means, “Monarch
of Maya,” a kingdom referred to as the Green Isle, swallowed by the Atlantic
Ocean. In Greek myth, Maya was one of the seven Pleiades, daughters of the
goddess Pleione and the Titan Atlas, and hence, an “Atlantis.”
(See Maia, Pleiades)

Amaicaca

Remembered by the Carib Indians of Venezuela as a deluge hero who escaped
some natural catastrophe in “a big canoe” that settled at the top of Mount Tamancu
after the flood waters receded. Amaicaca resembles Edgar Cayce’s Amaki and
the Colombian Amuraca.

Amadis

This opera by the French composer Jules Massenet premiered in Monte
Carlo, in 1927, and was based on the Breton folk legend of King Perion who,
with his family, barely escaped before his island kingdom was swallowed up by
the sea with its wicked inhabitants. The story of Amadis belongs to “the Green
Isle” oral traditions of a sunken island city still preserved among various western
coastal populations in Belgium, the Netherlands, Brittany, Biscay (among the
Basque), Spain, and Portugal.

Ama

A Japanese tribe, of numerical insignificance, with genetic links to populations
directly descended from the Jomon Culture of the ninth millennium B.C.
Today, the Ama live around the Saheki Gulf (Ohita prefecture). Their oldest
known settlements were at Minami Amabe-gun (Ohita prefecture), Amabe-cho
(Tokushima prefecture), Kaishi-cho in Sado (Niigata prefecture) and Itomancho
(Okinawa prefecture). These areas coincide with some of the country’s oldest
habitation sites. The Ama believe they are direct descendants of foreigners from a
high civilization across the sea in the deeply ancient past. The visitors, remembered
as the Sobata, preached a solar religion, and its symbol, a rising sun, became the
national emblem of Japan. It also signified the direction from which the Sobata
came; namely, the eastern Pacific Ocean. Their island kingdom, Nirai-Kanai, was
eventually overwhelmed by a great flood and now lays at the bottom of the sea.
To commemorate these events, the Ama still conduct an annual ceremony at
the eastern shores of Japan, held in early April or October. At dawn, the celebrants
gather on the beach to face the dawn and pray for the souls of their ancestors, the
Sobata. Following purification with seawater, a designated leader walks into the
ocean, up to his neck, bearing a small tree branch in his hand. After a pause, he
turns to face the shore. Emerging from the water, he is greeted with the wild
beating of drums and joyful chanting, as though he had survived some catastrophe.
In The Lost Continent of Mu, James Churchward stated that the sunken civilization
of the Pacific was symbolized by the Tree of Life. The word for “timber” in
Chinese is mu. In Japanese and Korean, mu signifies that which does not exist,
referring perhaps to the vanished Nirai-Kanai signified by the tree branch carried
through the water by the Ama celebrant.
(See Mu, Nirai-Kanai, Sobata)

Alkyone

An “Atlantis,” a daughter of Atlas and the sea-goddess Pleione; leader of her
divine sisters, the Pleiades. Alkyone may be a mythic rendering of Kleito, the woman
in Plato’s account of Atlantis, who likewise bore culture-bearers to the sea-god
Poseidon. Her title was “The Queen who wards off Storms.” To the Druids at
Boscawen-Uen, Mea-Penzance, Scotland’s Callanish, and other megalithic sites
throughout Britain, the Pleiades represented fearful powers of destruction through
the agency of water.
The same dreadful association was made by the Egyptians. The so-called
“Scored Lines” of the Great Pyramid at Giza were in alignment with the star
Alkyone of the Pleiades, in the constellation of Taurus the Bull, at noon of the
spring equinox (March 21) in 2141 B.C. Suggestion that the Alkyone alignment
was deliberately intended by the pyramid’s designer is supported by the fact that
the feature corresponding to the Scored Lines in the so-called “Trial Passages” is
a flat surface that could have been used as a pelorus for stargazing (Lemesurier, 193).
In view of the Great Pyramid’s function, at least partially, as a monument to
Atlantis, the third-millennium B.C. date may commemorate some related anniversary,
either of the Atlantis catastrophe itself or an Atlantean arrival in the Nile
Valley. Lemesurier suggests as much: “The Pleiades were firmly linked in the
Egyptian tradition with the goddess Hathor, the ‘goddess of the Foundation’, and
instigator of the primeval ‘deluge’.” Hathor, or Aether, was, after all, the Egyptian
version of Alkyone, herself the personification of Atlantis (151).
“The Egyptians observed three solemn days that ended when these stars [the
Pleiades] culminated at midnight. These days were associated with a tradition of a
deluge or other race-destroying disaster. The rites began on the seventeenth day
of Aethyr, which agrees with the Mosaic deluge account, namely, the seventeenth
day of the second month of the Jewish year” (154). Both the Egyptian Aethyr
and the second month of the Jewish year correspond to our late October/early
November. With the year provided by a proper lunar calculation of the date given
by Plato in Kritias and Egyptian records of the XX Dynasty, we arrive at a date for
the final destruction of Atlantis: November 3, 1198 B.C.

Alkynous

The king of Phaeacia (Atlantis) in Homer’s Odyssey. The monarch’s name is a
derivative of the leading Pleiade most directly associated with Atlantis, Alkyone.

Algonquian Flood Myth

Native tribes of the American Northeast preserved a tribal memory of their
ancestral origins on a large island in the Atlantic Ocean. After many generations,
signs and portents warned the inhabitants of impending disaster. Some magnitude
of the evacuation that took place is suggested in the 138 boats said to have been
prepared for the emergency. According to Algonquian elder Sam D. Gill, it began
when “the Earth rocked to and fro, as a ship at sea.” The quakes became so powerful
the island “was cut loose from its fastenings, and fires of the Earth came forth in
flames and clouds and loud roarings.” As the flotilla of refugees made good their
escape, “the land sank down beneath the waters to rise no more.” The survivors
eventually landed along the eastern seaboard of North America, and married among
the indigenous peoples to become the forefathers of the Algonquian tribes. There is
no more succinct and credible version of the Atlantis catastrophe and its aftermath.

Albion

The ancient name for Britain, “The White Island,” derived from the twin brother
of Atlas. Albion was said to have introduced the arts of shipbuilding and astrology,
the leading material features of Atlantis. “The White Island” concept associated
with Atlantis is also found in Aztec Mexico, North Africa, and India. The spiritual
arts Albion brought to Britain were believed to have formed the basis for Druidism.
(See Atala, Aztlan, Blake)

Alatuir

A magic stone, the source of ultimate power, at the very center of Bouyan, the
sunken island-kingdom from which the ancestors of the Slavic peoples migrated to
the European Continent from the Western Ocean. Alatuir was a sacred omphalos,
a large, egg-shaped stone symbol of the primeval mystery cult in Atlantis.
(See Navel of the World)

Alas, That Great City

Francis Ashton’s popular 1948 novel about Atlantis, influenced by Hanns
Hoerbiger’s Cosmic Ice Theory.
(See Hoerbiger)

Alalu

The Hurrians were a people who occupied Anatolia (Turkey) from the early
third millennium B.C. Many of their religious and mythic concepts were absorbed
by their Hittite conquerors, beginning after 2000 B.C. Among these traditions
was the story of Alalu, the first king of heaven, a giant god who made his home
on a mountainous island in the sea of the setting sun. His son, Kumarbi, was
synonymous for the Greek Kronos, a mythic personification of the Atlantic Ocean
through Roman times. In Alalu survives a Hurrian memory of the mountainous
island of Atlantis.
(See Arallu, Arallu, Kronos)

Ainu Deluge Myth

The Ainu are mixed descendants of a Caucasian population that inhabited
Japan before Asian immigrations from Korea. They may have belonged to the
same white population that inhabited the kingdom of Mu and dispersed across
the Pacific Ocean after it was overwhelmed by a great flood. Remnants of this lost
race also appear among 9,000-year-old skeletal remains found in Washington State
(the so-called “Kennewick Man”), the untypically bearded Haida of coastal British
Columbia, and in parts of Polynesia.
The Ainu recall a time when the sea suddenly rose over the land, drowning
most humans. Only a few survived by climbing to mountaintops.
(See Mu)

Ainu Deluge Myth

The Ainu are mixed descendants of a Caucasian population that inhabited
Japan before Asian immigrations from Korea. They may have belonged to the
same white population that inhabited the kingdom of Mu and dispersed across
the Pacific Ocean after it was overwhelmed by a great flood. Remnants of this lost
race also appear among 9,000-year-old skeletal remains found in Washington State
(the so-called “Kennewick Man”), the untypically bearded Haida of coastal British
Columbia, and in parts of Polynesia.
The Ainu recall a time when the sea suddenly rose over the land, drowning
most humans. Only a few survived by climbing to mountaintops.
(See Mu)

Aintzine-Koak

Literally “those who came before,” the forefathers of the Basque. The ancestral
Aintzine-Koak are still remembered as former inhabitants of “the Green Isle,”
a powerful maritime nation that sank into the Atlantic Ocean after a terrible cataclysm
and from which the few survivors sailed into the Bay of Biscay, eventually
bringing the holy relics of their mystery religion into the Pyrenees Mountains.
(See Atlaintika)

Aiken, Conrad

Renowned 20th-century American author and master poet who wrote of
Atlantis in his 1929 works, Priapus and the Fool and Senlin.

Ahson-nutli

Among the Navajo Indians in the American Southwest, Ahson-nutli was a
god who, in the days before the Great Flood, created a quartet of twin giants to
support the four corners of the sky. In Plato’s account of Atlantis, supreme
leadership of the antediluvian civilization belonged to twin brothers, likewise
Titans, or giants. Atlas, the first of these, was mythically perceived as supporting
the sky on his shoulders. His name derives from the Sanskrit atl, “to support or
uphold.”
(See Atlas, Ayar-aucca)

Ah-Auab

Literally “white men,” or “foreigners to the land,” a term by which the
Mayas of the Lowland Yucatan distinguished themselves from native Indian
populations, because they claimed descent from fair-skinned survivors of the
Great Flood.
(See Halach-Unicob, Tutulxiu)

Agadir

A city on the Atlantic coast of
Morocco. Its name may have been
derived from the Atlantean king mentioned
in Plato’s Kritias, Gadeiros.

Aethyr

The Egyptian month corresponding
to our late October/early November,
during which a world deluge associated
with the final destruction of Atlantis
was caused by the goddess Hathor.

Aelian

Roman biologist (third century A.D.) and author of The Nature of Animals, in
which he reported, “The inhabitants of the shores of the Ocean tell that in former
times the kings of Atlantis, descendants of Poseidon, wore on their heads, as a mark
of power, the fillet of the male sea-ram [a dolphin], and that their wives, the queens,
wore, as a sign of their power, fillets of the female sea-rams [perhaps narwhals].”

Aegyptus

In Greek myth, an early king of Egypt, from whom the country derived its
name. He was the grandson of Poseidon and Libya, which is to say his lineage was
Atlanto-African. Aegyptus was descended from Atlantean royalty who, on their
passage through the Nile Valley, married native North Africans.

Aegeon

In Greek myth, a Titan who carried civilization into the eastern Mediterranean,
which he named after himself: the Aegean Sea. Aegeon is associated with Atlantean
culture-bearers during the 12th century B.C. He was also known as Briareus.
(See Hecatoncheires)

Aegle

An Atlantis, or “Daughter of Atlas,” one of the Hesperides, a trio of divine sisters
who guarded the golden apples of eternal life in a sacred grove on Atlas’s island.
(See Garden of the Hesperides)

Aditi

In Indian myth, the mother of Vishnu, who conquered the Earth for the gods
and became the first Aditaya, or “Upholder” of the sky (the moral order of the
cosmos), and is therefore identified with Atlas. His offspring were the Aditayas
(or Daityas), who supported the heavens.
(See Aditayas, Atlas)

Aditayas

Also known as the Daityas, offspring of Vishnu. Water-giants somewhat equivalent
to the Titans of Greek myth (like Atlas and the other kings of Atlantis), the
Aditayas are mentioned in Vishnu Purana and Mahabharata, two of the oldest and
most revered ancient Indian literary traditions. The latter work describes them as
the inhabitants of Tripura, the Triple City in the Western Ocean, doubtless the
Atlantic island of Poseidon (of the trident). The Aditayas were destroyed after
they engaged in a war that culminated in the sinking of Tripura, the same story
retold by Plato in his account of Atlantis.

Ad-ima

In Indian myth, the first man to arrive in the subcontinent, with his wife (Heva),
from an island overwhelmed by a natural catastrophe that forever cut off all communication
with his homeland. In Sanskrit, the word for “first” is Adim, surprisingly like
the biblical Adam. Later versions of the story identify the lost island with Sri Lanka,
but in that the former Ceylon still exists, Atlantis was undoubtedly the location from
which Ad-ima came. His name, moreover, is identifiably Atlantean, apparent in the
philological relationship between “Ad-ima” and the Greek variant, “Atlas.” This
association is underscored by the antediluvian setting of the Ad-ima myth.
(See Heva)

Ades

Sacred mountain where the
Atlantean Navel of the World mystery
cult originated. Ades was later known as
“Hades”—the realm of the dead in
Greek myth—but associated with the
death-rebirth mystery cult of Atlantis in
the story of Persephone, the “Corn
Maiden” daughter of the Earth Mother,
Demeter.
(See Navel of the World)

Adena

Named after an Ohio mound group dating from ca. 1000 B.C., Adena represents
the earliest known civilization in the American Midwest and along the eastern
seaboard. Its people built colossal ridge-top or linear burial mounds of stone,
often longer than 100 feet, and great conical structures; the greatest, at 66 feet
high, is West Virginia’s Creek Grave Mound. The Adena people also laid out
sprawling enclosures oriented to various celestial phenomena. Their prodigious

feats of ceremonial construction imply high levels of labor management, astronomy,
and surveying. They were able metalsmiths who worked copper on a large scale,
and they demonstrated carving skills in surviving stone effigy-pipes.
Their sudden, unheralded appearance after the previous and primitive Archaic
Period represented a major break with the immediate past. Such a transformation
can only mean that the Adena were newcomers who brought their already
evolved culture with them from outside the American Midwest. Their starting
date coincides within two centuries of the final destruction of Atlantis and the
abrupt closure of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula copper mines, which had been
consistently worked for the previous 1,800 years. Given these parallel events, it
appears the Adena were former Atlantean copper miners, who settled throughout
the Middle West to the East Coast, following the loss of their distant homeland
and the abandonment of copper mining in the Upper Great Lakes.
A majority of the Adena monuments were dismantled and their stone used
by early 19th-century settlers to build wells and fences. Only a few examples still
survive, because they were naturally concealed by their obscure locations, such
as those at the bottom of Rock Lake, in Wisconsin, and in the wooded areas of
Heritage Park, Michigan.
(See Bronze Age, Rock Lake)

Adapa

In Babylonian myth, Ea, the god of the seas, destroyed the great city of Ad with
a catastrophic deluge, killing all its sinful inhabitants except his virtuous high priest,
Adapa. This “Man from Ad” arrived in the Near East as a culture-bearer to pass
on the arts and sciences, principles of government, and religion, from which all
subsequent Mesopotamian civilizations traced their development. The Babylonian
Ad is equivalent to the drowned capital preserved in Arabic traditions, and both are
clear references to the same primeval civilization of Atlantis.
(See Ad)

Adad

The Atlantean concept of Atlas imported into Sumer (after 3000 B.C.). Adad was
a fire-god symbolized by an active volcano, its summit wreathed by the constellation
of the Pleiades—the “Atlantises,” or daughters of Atlas. Oppenheimer writes that
the Sumerian version of the flood was “catastrophic. The storm came suddenly with a
loud noise and darkening the sky and a raging wind from Adad...One of the gods,
Anzu, is described as tearing the sky with his talons.” According to the Sumerian
version of the Deluge, “No one could see anyone else. They could not be recognized
in the catastrophe. The flood roared like a bull. Like a wild ass screaming, the winds
howled. The darkness was total, and there was no sun.”

Ad

A palatial island capital punished for the wickedness of its inhabitants by a
terrible flood. The story of Ad is preserved in pre-Islamic traditions and mentioned
in the Holy Koran, which condemned its inhabitants for building “high
places for vain uses.” The Adites were said to have “worshiped the sun from the
tops of pyramids,” a singularly un-Arabic practice more evocative of life in Atlantis.
Ad was known as “the City of Pillars,” or “the Land of Bronze.” Plato similarly
described the pillar cult of the Atlanteans, while their city was the pre-classical
world’s foremost clearinghouse for the bronze trade.
In Arabic tradition, the Adites are portrayed as giants (the Atlantean Titans
of Greek mythology), superior architects and builders who raised great stone
monuments. Even today, rural tribes of Saudi Arabia refer to any ancient ruins
of prodigious size as “buildings of the Adites,” and apply the expression “as old
as Ad” to anything of extreme age. In the 19th century, the royal monarch of the
Mussulman tribes was Shedd-Ad-Ben-Ad, or “Descendant and Son of Ad.” The
progenitor of the Arab peoples was Ad, grandson of the biblical Ham.


The Adites are still regarded as the earliest inhabitants of Arabia. They were
referred to as “red men,” for the light color of their hair. Several accounts of
Atlantis (Egyptian, Irish, Winnebago, etc.) depict the Atlanteans, at least in part, as
redheads. The Adites had 10 kings ruling various parts of the world simultaneously—
the same number and disposition described by Plato in his Atlantis account, Kritias.
The Adites arrived in the country after Ad was annihilated by a colossal black
cloud with the ferocity of a hurricane, an obvious reference to the volcanic eruption
that accompanied the destruction of Atlantis.
“Ad” is still the name of a Semitic tribe in the province of Hadramut, Saudi
Arabia, whose elders claimed descent from their eponymous ancestor, the greatgrandson
of Noah.
(See Adapa)

Aclla Cuna

In Quechua, the language of the Incas, “The Chosen Women,” or “The Little
Mothers.” They referred to the seven visible stars in the constellation of the
Pleiades, associated with a great deluge, from which Con-Tiki-Viracocha (“White
Man of the Sea Foam”) arrived in South America to found Andean Civilization.
Aclla Cuna was also the name of the Incas’ most sacred mystery cult composed
exclusively of the most beautiful, virtuous, and intelligent women, who
orally preserved the high wisdom and ancestral traditions of the red-haired
Con-Tiki-Viracocha. They dressed in Atlantean colors (red, white, and black)
and were provided magnificent estates at Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire,
and the mountain citadel of Machu Picchu. The Chosen Women identified with
the Pleiades, or “Atlantises,” as they were known similarly in Greek myth.

Abnakis

Algonquian tradition tells how the eponymous founding father, from whom
this North American tribe derived its name, came “from the rising sun,” the
direction of the Abnakis (“our white ancestors”), after he was forewarned in a
dream that the gods would sink their land beneath the sea. In haste, he built “a
great reed raft” on which he sailed away with his family. Aboard were a number of
animals that, in those days, could speak. The beasts grew impatient with the
long voyage, ridiculed the Father of the Tribes, and were about to mutiny, when
land was finally sighted. Everyone disembarked safely, but the formerly rebellious
animals, as punishment for their onboard behavior, were deprived by the gods
of their ability to converse with humans.
(See Noah)

Ablach

In Celtic and pre-Celtic myth, an Atlantic island whose name meant “rich in
apple trees.” It was ruled by the Irish version of Poseidon—the sea-god,
Manannan. Ablach is paralleled by the Garden of the Hesperides, a sacred grove
of apple trees at the center of Atlas’s island, tended by the Hesperides, who
were Atlantises—“daughters of Atlas.”
(See Garden of the Hesperides)

Aalu

Ancient Egyptian for “The Isle of Flame,” descriptive of a large, volcanic
island in the Distant West (the Atlantic Ocean). It physically matches Plato’s
Atlantis virtually detail for detail: mountainous, with canals, luxuriant crops, a
palatial city surrounded by great walls decorated with precious metals, etc. Aalu’s
earliest known reference appears in The Destruction of Mankind, a New Kingdom
history (1299 B.C.) discovered in the tomb of Pharaoh Seti-I, at Abydos. His city
was the site of the Osireion, a subterranean monument to the Great Flood that
destroyed a former age of greatness.

On the other side of the world from Egypt, the Apache Indians of the American
Southwest claim their ancestors arrived after the Great Flood destroyed their
homeland, still remembered as the “Isle of Flames,” in the Atlantic Ocean.