Clavigero describes how the Chiapenese people claimed that Votan came to their lands after a great flood, which wiped out previous civilizations.
According to their tradition, Votan was a significant cultural figure who helped to reorganize society after the deluge.
In the first volume, he recounts the legend of Votan, a cultural hero for the Chiapenese.
Clavigero describes Votan as the grandson of the man who built an ark to save himself and his family from a deluge.
According to the Chiapenese version, Votan founded their civilization.
In the broader discussion of Votan, Clavigero explores the origins of indigenous peoples, their migrations, and their mythological accounts of world events, especially the deluge myth.
The flood myth provides a key example, and he relates the Chiapenese story of Votan to this theme.
Clavigero describes how the Chiapenese people claimed that Votan came to their lands after a great flood that wiped out previous civilizations.
According to their tradition, Votan acted as a significant cultural figure who helped reorganize society after the deluge.
Votan not only survived the flood but also established key social and religious structures in the region.
He suggests that the Chiapenese tradition of Votan connects to broader global traditions, particularly the biblical flood.
In the same context, Clavigero describes Votan as the founder of Palenque, a major ancient Maya city.
Votan's link to Palenque connects him to the broader Maya civilization, which achieved great architectural, mathematical, and astronomical feats.
By aligning figures like Votan with flood myths and cultural heroes, he highlights how Mesoamerican peoples understood the world, nature, and the divine.
They viewed Votan as a survivor of the flood who brought civilization and order after chaos.
Clavigero sought to defend the intellectual and cultural achievements of pre-Columbian civilizations when he discussed figures like Votan.
i.) that according to the traditions of the Chiapenese there was a Votan who was the grandson of the man who built the ark to save himself and family from the Deluge; he was one of those who undertook to build the tower that should reach to heaven., The Lord ordered him to people America.
He states that "he is the third of the Votans; that he conducted seven families from Valum-Votan to this continent, and assigned lands to them; that be determined to travel until he came to the root of heaven and found his relations, the Culebres, and made himself known to them; that he accordingly made four voyages to Chivim; that he arrived in Spain; that he went to Rome; that he saw the house of God building; that be went by the road which his brethren, the Culebres, had bored; that he marked it, and that he passed by the houses of the thirteen Culebres.
He thinks the Chivim of Votan were the Hivim, or Givim, who were descended of Heth, son of Canaan, Phœnicians; they were the builders of Accaron, Azotus, Ascalon, and Gaza.
Votan may not, possibly, have passed into Europe; be may have travelled altogether in Africa.
But it is interesting to find in this book of Votan, however little reliance we may place in its dates or details, evidence that there was actual intercourse between the Old World and the New in remote ages.
"We have fixed the special attention of our readers upon this Votan, or Wodan, an American who appears of the same family with the Wods or Odins of the Goths and of the people of Celtic origin.
Since, according to the learned researches of Sir William Jones, Odin and Buddha are probably the same person, it is curious to see the names of Bondvar, Wodansday, and Votan designating in India, Scandinavia, and in Mexico the day of a brief period." ("Vues des Cordilleras," p.
We see Votan, a hero in America, become the god Odin or Woden in Scandinavia; and when his worship as a god dies out Odin survives (as Dr.
Then I treat American Votan as a separate Mesoamerican tradition that nineteenth-century writers sometimes equated with Odin.
Mixing Germanic philology, Chiapenese Votan, and Atlantis into one flat identity claim is how a name-page loses the visitor who only asked about Odin and Wotan.
American Votan and Atlantis come after that, as separate labeled trails.
A second name trail uses Votan, not Wotan.
American Votan is a Mesoamerican culture-hero and founder tradition.
i.) that according to the traditions of the Chiapenese there was a Votan who was the grandson of the man who built the ark to save himself and family from the Deluge; he was one of those who undertook to build the tower that should reach to heaven.
What Clavigero, as Donnelly reports him, describes is a Chiapenese Votan.
This Votan is grandson of the ark-builder.
It is not proof that Chiapenese Votan is Norse Odin.
Votan makes four voyages to Chivim.
The sound-alike Votan / Wotan invited nineteenth-century equations.
Donnelly also glosses Votan’s “road the Culebres had bored” with African tunnel reports: Livingstone on underground houses in Rua, and Captain Grant on a tunnel near the Kaoma.
It is not evidence that American Votan dug those passages.
I do not flatten American Votan into the Germanic yes.
“We have fixed the special attention of our readers upon this Votan, or Wodan, an American who appears of the same family with the Wods or Odins of the Goths and of the people of Celtic origin.
Since, according to the learned researches of Sir William Jones, Odin and Buddha are probably the same person, it is curious to see the names of Bondvar, Wodansday, and Votan designating in India, Scandinavia, and in Mexico the day of a brief period.” (“Vues des Cordilleras,” p.
American Votan or Wodan “appears of the same family” as the Wods or Odins of the Goths and of Celtic-origin peoples.
Humboldt then finds it curious that Bondvar, Wodansday, and Votan name a weekday-scale period in India, Scandinavia, and Mexico.
Curious parallels are not a demonstration that Chiapenese Votan is Norse Odin.
It explains why an Old World and New World section belongs on a Votan page.
It does not upgrade American Votan into Germanic fact.
The American Votan trail, and Humboldt’s family-likeness sentence, are the diffusion research layer already native to this Donnelly chapter.
American Votan is a separate tradition that Donnelly, Humboldt, and Jones placed in a diffusion frame.
Is American Votan Odin?No as proven identity.
American Votan is a separate Chiapenese founder tradition reported through Clavigero.
The American Votan trail and the Humboldt-Jones weekday parallels give labeled diffusion hooks, including Phoenician and serpent readings.
I use those hooks as source-critical research, not as proof that Votan was Odin or that Asgard has been dug at Atlantis.
The destruction of Atlantis described in the deluge legends: Donnelly’s flood and destruction spine beside the Votan ark-and-Deluge trail.