106 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
Electra
An Atlantis, the mother of Dardanus, founder of Trojan civilization. The myth
is in common with those of her sisters, the Pleiades, in that they were mothers of
culture-creators, who restarted civilization after the Great Flood. Interestingly,
“Electra” means “amber,” a medium for ornamentation much prized in the
ancient world, but available from only two major sources: the shores of the Baltic
Sea, largely from what is now Lithuania, and the Atlantic islands of the Azores,
Madeiras, and Canaries. Because Atlas has never been associated with the
north, Electra’s amber name and the Atlantic source for the mineral combine to
reaffirm her Atlantean provenance.
(see Dardanus)Ele’na
“Land of the Star (or Gift),” one of three versions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Atlantis.
(See Numinor)Elephants
According to the Kritias, there were “numerous elephants” on the island of
Atlantis. Later, when describing the palace of the king, Plato writes that the
entire ceiling of the structure’s meeting hall was made of sculpted ivory. His brief
but important mention of the creature simultaneously establishes the veracity of
his narrative and confirms the near-Atlantic location of the sunken kingdom. A
1967 issue of Science magazine reported the discovery of elephant teeth from the
Atlantic Continental Shelf running 200 to 300 miles off the Portuguese coast.
Multiple specimens were recovered from at least 40 different underwater sites
along the Azore-Gibraltar Ridge, sometimes at depths of only 360 feet. The tusks
were taken from submerged shorelines, peat deposits, sandbanks caused by sur-
face waves crashing against ancient, long submerged beach-lines and depressions
which formerly contained freshwater lagoons. These features defined the area
as formerly dry land standing above sea level. The Science writer concluded,
“Evidently, elephants and other large mammals ranged this region during the
glacial stage of low sea level at least 25,000 years ago.”
Moreover, African elephants are known to have inhabited the northwestern
coastal areas of present-day Morocco, fronting the position of Atlantis, and at the
junction of a vanished land bridge leading out into the ocean, as late as the 12th
centuryB.C., if not more recently. Homer, too, wrote that the Atlanteans worked
in great quantities of ivory, fashioning ornately carved ceilings from this precious
medium. The presence of a native population of elephants on the island of Atlantis
would have been a ready source for the material.