W: Wai-ta-hanui to Wotan 289
whose material culture never exceeded the construction of a tepee, would have
even known about an architectural feature as sophisticated as a dome.
Their deluge story tells that violent earthquakes caused the mountains of their
ancestral island to catch fire. The flames rose so high they melted the stars, which
fell to Earth, spreading the conflagration around the world. Some fell into the
sea, and caused a universal flood that extinguished the flames, but threatened
humanity with extinction. The Washo ancestors tried to escape the rising tide by
climbing to the top of the sea-god’s temple, but were changed into stones. This
transformation is reminiscent of the Greek Deluge, in which Deucalion and his
wife, Pyrrha, threw stones over their shoulders; as the stones struck the ground,
they turned into men and women—an inverse of the Washo version.Wegener, Alfred L.
Austrian founder of the continental drift hypothesis, which transformed
established notions of geology more than any other theory in modern times. While
Wegener was advocating his ideas in the early 20th century, he was no less
ridiculed by his scientific contemporaries for insisting that Plato’s Atlantis was a
victim of the same violent earth changes associated with plate tectonics.Wekwek
In the North American Tuleyone Indian deluge account, Wekwek, in the guise of
a falcon, was sent by a sorcerer to steal fire from heaven. But the gods pursued Wekwek,
who, in his fright, dropped a burning star to Earth, where it sparked a worldwide
conflagration. The Coyote-god, Olle, extinguished the flames with a universal flood.
The celestial catastrophe associated with the destruction of Atlantis appears
in this Tuleyone account.Westernesse
One of three versions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Atlantis.
(See Numinor)Wesucechak
Alaska’s Cree Indians of the Subarctic Circle preserve traditions about a
catastrophic flood that destroyed most of the world long ago. Wesucechak was a
shape-shifting shaman who escaped the flood he caused when he got into a fight
with the water-monsters who murdered his brother, Misapos.Widapokwi
The Yavapai Indians of the American Southwest preserve a folk memory of
Lemurian origins in their most important mythic figure, the Creatrix, or “Female