K: Ka’ahupahau to Kuskurza 157
mythic traditions of numerous cultures in various parts of the world about a great
flood. “I confess for a long time I had regarded all this,” he said of various Euro-
pean traditions of Atlantis, “as pure fables to the day when, better instructed in
Oriental languages, I judged that all these legends must be, after all, only the
development of a great truth.”
His research led him to the immense collection of source materials at the
Vatican Library, where, as Europe’s foremost scholar, its formidable resources
were at his disposal. It was here that he discovered a single piece of evidence
which proved to him that the legend was actually fact. Among the relatively few
surviving documents from Imperial Rome, Kircher found a well-preserved, treated-
leather map purporting to show the configuration and location of Atlantis. The
map was not Roman, but brought in the first century A.D. to Italy from Egypt,
where it had been executed. It survived the demise of Classical Times, and found
its way into the Vatican Library. Kircher copied it precisely, adding only a visual
reference to the New World, and published it in his book, Mundus Subterraneus:
The Subterranean World, in 1665.
His caption states it is “a map of the island of Atlantis originally made in Egypt
after Plato’s description,” which suggests it was created sometime following the
4th century B.C., perhaps by a Greek mapmaker attached to the Ptolemies. More
probably, the map’s first home was the Great Library of Alexandria, where
numerous books and references to Atlantis were lost, along with another million-
plus volumes, when the institution was burned by religious fanatics. In relocating
to Rome, the map escaped that destruction.
Similar to modern conclusions forced by current understanding of geology in
the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Kircher’s map depicts Atlantis, not as a continent, but an
island about the size of Spain and France combined. It shows a large, centrally
located volcano, most likely meant to represent Mount Atlas, together with six
major rivers, something Plato does not mention. Kritiasdescribes large rivers on
the island of Atlantis, but does not indicate how many. Although the map vanished
after Kircher’s death in 1680, it was the only known representation of Atlantis to
have survived the Ancient World. Thanks to his research and book, it survives
today in a close copy. Kircher was the first to publish a map of Atlantis, probably
the most accurate of its kind to date.
Curiously, it is depicted upside down, contrary to maps in both his day and
ours. Yet, this apparent anomaly is proof of the map’s authenticity, because
Egyptian mapmakers, even as late as Ptolemaic times, designed their maps with
the Upper Nile Valley located in the south (“Upper” refers to its higher elevation)
at the top, because the river’s headwaters are located in the Sudan.Kitchie Manitou
The Muskwari Indians of North America recounted that this widely known
god destroyed the world first with heavenly fire, then a great flood. The Potawatomi
version, like Plato’s account, cites the immorality of the inhabitants of a great
island. Kitchie Manitou had made their homeland a veritable paradise, but because