The Caribs of Central America remember a large group that sailed to the west from their island home of Atlantis about 28,000 B.C. The entourage consisted of seven extensive families, enough to fill ships for seven fleets. When the refugees finally found an island for their settlement they called it Caraiba. The Carib legends refer to Atlantis as "the old, red land" in the sunrise sea, now covered by water.
In a similar way, the Toltecs, predecessors of the Aztecs in Mexico, characterize the homeland of their ancestors as the old, old, red land. During glacial times red clay was more abundant in the area above the surface in the Atlantic Ocean than it is now, which accounts for this widespread nomenclature in old stories of Atlantis. The Caribs told Hansen that descendants of Atlanteans dwelt happily in Caraiba for a very long time. Priests who visited from Atlantis taught the people the religion of Tupan and called them the Tupi, meaning the sons of Pan, which was another name for the old, red land.The Caribs' account relates that many generations later, after a particularly devastating natural catastrophe on Caraiba, the Tupi were compelled to leave their sinking island home. They sailed a little further to the west in seven even larger fleets and came to a sea they called "Caribbean," after Caraiba, their initial island refuge. Here they separated. Some settled on nearby mountainous ground which they farmed by terracing, a technique their distant forebears employed on the steep mountainsides of Atlantis. Other Tupi moved to the south and sailed up the Amazon River. The Guarahis of Paraguay continue to worship the god Tupan. At least one of the seven groups of these Atlantean descendants from Caraiba went north to the Mississippi River Valley. For a long time representatives of the seven extended families met every 104 years to coordinate calendars and compare adventures, but communication became an increasing problem, and they gradually lost touch with one another.
