M: Macusis to Mu-yu-Moqo 179
him that he was eventually recognized as a self-taught but brilliant expert in
local archaeology. Documenting these structures soon evolved into his life’s
work, and he traveled widely throughout Mexico and Central America in search
of ancient sites, some of which he discovered himself.
During 1885, he settled in the quiet little Yucatan town of Ticul, and there
established a photographic studio, while becoming proficient in the Mayan
language. Throughout the course of his studies and explorations, he was a
valued contributor to the German geographic-ethnographic magazine, Globus,
and other scientific journals. His sets of large prints, uniformly mounted, supple-
mented by site plans and other information, were sought after by museums and
universities in both Europe and America, including Harvard’s Peabody Museum,
which sponsored his survey—the first ever—of Palenque and its environs.
Although vaguely familiar with Plato’s account of Atlantis, Maler, like most
scholars, then and now, dismissed the lost civilization as mere fantasy. How-
ever, while photographing the so-called “acropolis” at the ninth century Maya
ceremonial city of Tikal, in Guatemala, he discovered, in his words, “a water
scene with a volcano spouting fire and smoke, buildings falling into the water,
people drowning.” It was at the start of a sculpted frieze that ran around the
uppermost part of the building in an apparent visual representation of Maya
history. Until Maler’s photographic expedition to Tikal, the extensive ruins there
were virtually unknown to the outside world. Astounded by the “water scene,”
he was convinced it depicted Maya origins in Atlantis, and removed the panel to
the Voelkerkunde Museum, in Vienna. It was part of the institution’s perma-
nent Mesoamerican display until 1945, when it disappeared among the general
looting by invading Soviet troops at the end of World War II. Fortunately, his
photograph of the Atlantean panel survives at the University of Pennsylvania.
Long after his death on November 22, 1917, in the Yucatan city of Merida,
Maler is still recognized by the academic community for his invaluable photo-
graphic and surveying services to Mesoamerican archaeology, although deplored
for his courage in describing evidence of Atlantis among the Mayas he knew so
well for most of his adult life.Mama Nono
Before their extinction through exposure to European diseases against which
they had no immunity, Caribs of the Antilles told the Spaniards that Mama Nono
created the first new race of human beings. She achieved this act of regeneration
by planting stones in the ground after a great flood that wiped out all life on Earth.
In Greek myth, the deluge heroes, Deucalion and Pyrrha, were counseled to
repopulate mankind by throwing stones over their shoulders. As the stones fell to
the ground, men and women sprang up in their place. This myth, known in its
variants among widely scattered cultures around the Earth, is a shared metaphor
for the repopulation of a badly wounded world by survivors of the Atlantean
holocaust. In Britain, local traditions often recount that the standing stones of
megalithic circles are petrified humans, such as the “Whispering Knights.”