A: Aalu to Aztlan 21
whole face of the Earth. Few living things survived the inundation.” The Tsuwo
version describes birds dropping many thousands of stones into the cataclysm,
suggesting a meteor bombardment. The only persons to survive were a brother
and sister, whose responsibility it was to repopulate the planet.
Their first offspring were living abortions, which became fish and crabs, be-
cause the pair committed the sin of incest without asking dispensation from the
sun-god. Having angered him, they applied to the moon-goddess. She forgave
them, and the woman gave birth to a stone, from which sprang new generations of
mankind. In this final detail of the Ami deluge myth is the rebirth of humanity
from a stone, the same theme encountered in Greek myth and numerous other
flood accounts around the world.
(See Asteroid Theory, Deucalion)Amimitl
“The Harpoon” or “Harpooner,” a title applied to the Aztec god of the sea,
Atlahua. His name is an apparent derivative of Atlas. He was also known as “He
Who Divides the Waters” and “Inventor of the Trident,” both of which clearly
define Atlantean associations. Plato told how the sea-god Poseidon “divided the
waters from the land” to create Atlantis. Moreover, the trident was Poseidon’s
emblem of maritime power. Brundage reports that Atlahua was “venerated in
a temple on the legendary island of Aztlan,” Atlantis, obviously enough (93).
Remarkably, the ancient Egyptians remembered the Mesentiu, “The Harpooners,”
a culture-bearing people who arrived by sea from the Distant West to establish
dynastic civilization at the Nile Delta.Amma
In Yoruba and Benin traditions, she was among the few royal survivors of a
great flood when the Atlantic Ocean overflowed very long ago. Amma arrived
safely on the shores of West Africa, where she became the first ruler.Ammianus Marcellinus
A fourth-century Roman historian who classified the destruction of Atlantis
as a chasmatiae, a natural disaster in which seismic violence breaks open great
fissures in the Earth to swallow large tracts of territory during a single event.Ampheres
One of the 10 original Atlantean kings listed by Plato (in Kritias). His name
means “he who encompasses,” or “fitted or joined on both sides,” suggestive of a
power center located midway between Western Europe and the Outer Continent
of the Americas, such as the Azore Islands, where possible Atlantean remains