42 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
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,
orAtoni, from the monotheistic solar god, Aton.Atlahua
Aztec sea-god with apparent Atlantean provenance.Atlaintika
In Euskara, the sunken island, sometimes referred to as “the Green Isle,”
from which Basque ancestors arrived in the Bay of Biscay. Atlaintika’s resem-
blance to Plato’s Atlantis is unmistakable.
(See Belesb-At)Atlakvith
A 13th-century Scandinavian saga preserving and perpetuating oral traditions
going back 1,500 years before, to the late Bronze Age. Atlakvith (literally, “The
Punishment of Atla[ntis]”) poetically describes the Atlantean cataclysm in terms
of Norse myth, with special emphasis on the celestial role played by “warring comets”
in the catastrophe.Atlamal
LikeAtlakvith, this most appropriately titled Norse saga tells of the “Twilight
of the Gods,” or Ragnarok, the final destruction of the world order through
celestial conflagrations, war, and flood. Atlamal means, literally, “The Story of
Atla[ntis].”Atlan
Today’s Alca, on the Gulf of Uraba, it was known as Atlan before the Spanish
Conquest. Another Venezuelan “Atlan” is a village in the virgin forests between
Orinoco and Apure. Its nearly extinct residents, the Paria Indians, preserve
traditions of a catastrophe that overwhelmed their home country, a prosperous
island in the Atlantic Ocean inhabited by a race of wealthy seafarers. Survivors
arrived on the shores of Venezuela, where they lived apart from the indigenous
natives. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, “Atlan” meant, literally, “In
the Midst of the Sea.” Atlan’s philological derivation from Atlantis, kindred