178 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
after its inhabitants, grown corrupt, had offended heaven, the same cause pre-
sented in Plato’s account of Atlantis.Mai-Ra
Still venerated by the Ge-speaking Indians as the “Walker,” or “Maker,”
Mai-Ra was the last and former king of the “Land Without Evil.” Its inhabitants
did not live up to his high standards of morality, however, so he set the island on
fire, then sank it beneath the sea. Before these calamities, Mai-Ra left with a small
fleet of survivors chosen for their goodness. In time, they landed on the shores of
Brazil, where they interbred with native peoples to sire the present Indian race.
The story of Mai-Ra is a clear folk memory of the final destruction of Atlantis.Makila
The ancestral hero of North America’s Pomo Indians. Makila and his son,
Dasan, leaders of a bird clan, arrived from “a great lodge” across the Atlantic Ocean
to teach wisdom, healing, and magic. The Atlantean features of this myth are clear.Makonaima
In Melanesian tradition, the last king of Burotu before it sank beneath the
Pacific Ocean. He survived with his son, Sigu.
(See Burotu, Lemuria, Mu)Maler, Teobert
An important Mayanist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who discov-
ered physical evidence for an Atlantean presence in Mesoamerica. Over the
course of several decades, he accumulated a vast treasury of exceptionally
skillful photographs depicting numerous, previously unrecorded Maya sites in
Mexico and Guatemala. These provided a seminal stimulus to the development
of Mesoamerican archaeology, and still remain a unique source of material for
epigraphic, iconographic, and architectural studies prized by modern archaeolo-
gists. Maler has long been recognized as one of the two great archaeological
explorers active in the Maya area at the dawn of professional studies in Middle
American history, the other being Alfred Maudslay. Had it not been for them,
later scholars would have been seriously handicapped by a lack of reliable data,
and the development of Maya archaeology would have been delayed by decades.
Austrian-born Teobert Maler came to Mexico in 1864 as a volunteer in an
Austrian military expedition supporting the imperial claims of Archduke
Maximilian. Although Maximilian was toppled in 1867, Maler made Mexico his
adoptive home, where he became a professional nature photographer. His subject
matter eventually included the country’s pre-Columbian ruins, which so fascinated