ABSTRACT
A common misconception concerning the Greek god Atlas is that he was forced to hold up the Earth forever after he sided with the losing Titans in the war with the victorious Olympians. The “great” traditions also profoundly affect ideologies, cosmologies, structures, rules, and behaviors of people at local levels. Among the great traditions worldwide are Chinese, Indo-European, Arabic, Turkic, Bantu, Southeast Asian, and more, and that people of the great tradition often dominate the local. The Atlas Mountains, which are firmament, are named for Atlas, as is the Atlantic Ocean, which is water. The ancient historian Hesiod also claimed that Atlas bookended the entire world by holding up both east and west. The preeminence of the greater culture more often today seems to be eroding the deep cultural structure of the little one. R. E. Barrios states that frequently the communities judged the most vulnerable and susceptible to alteration are instead the communities that are most resilience and immutable.
