46 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
La Atlantida
Literally “Atlantis”; an opera (sometimes performed in concert form) by Spain’s
foremost composer, Manuel de Falla (1876 to 1946). When a youth, de Falla heard
local folktales of Atlantis, and learned that some Andalusian nobility traced their
line of descent to Atlantean forebears. De Falla’s birthplace was Cadiz, site of the
Spanish realm of Gadeiros, the twin brother of Atlas and king mentioned in Plato’s
account (Kritias) of Atlantis.
La Atlantida describes the destruction of Atlantis from which Alcides (Hercules)
arrives in Iberia to found a new lineage through subsequent generations of Spanish
aristocracy. One of the opera’s most effective moments occurs immediately after
the sinking of Atlantis, when de Falla’s music eerily portrays a dark sea floating
with debris moving back and forth upon the waves, as a ghostly chorus intones,
“El Mort! El Mort! El Mort!” (“Death! Death! Death!”).
Atlantida is also the title of a Basque epic poem describing ancestral origins at
“the Green Isle” which sank into the sea.Atlantika
In their thorough examination of the so-called “Aztec Calendar Stone,”
Jimenez and Graeber state that Atlantikameans “we live by the sea,” in Nahuatl,
the Aztec language (67).Atlantikos
Ancient Greek for “Atlantis,” the title of Solon’s unfinished epic, begun circa
470 B.C.Atlantioi
“Of Atlantis.” The name appears in the writings of various classical writers
(Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, etc.) to describe the contemporary inhabitants of
Atlantic coastal northwestern Africa.Atlantis
Literally “Daughter of Atlas,” the chief city of the island of Atlas, and capital
of the Atlantean Empire. From the welter of accumulating evidence, a reason-
able picture of the lost civilization is beginning to emerge: As Pangea, the original
supercontinent, was breaking apart about 200 million years ago, a continental mass
trailing dry-land territories to what is now Portugal and Morocco was left mid-ocean,
between the American and Eur-African continents pulled in opposite directions.
This action was caused by seafloor spreading, a process that moves the continents