Talokan

When European colonizers arrived in the Americas, their violent ways and the diseases they brought devastated the local Maya people. In 1571, a group of Maya were led by their shaman to eat parts of a vibranium-infused plant that grew in the water nearby (where Shuri hypothesized another vibranium meteorite had fallen). The mutagenic properties of the plant greatly increased the strength of the people who took it, but also altered their physiology so that they could only breathe in water and not in the air. Forced to flee into the water permanently, they established Talokan on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Namor, who was still in his mother's womb when she ate the plant, was mutated the most, gaining the ability to breathe both above and below the sea, and born with feathered wings on his ankles, which the people of Talokan likened to the feathered serpent god of their faith, K'uk'ulkan. Because of this, Namor was made King of Talokan from his birth.

After the vibranium-rich nation of Wakanda was revealed to the world, the United States of America began searching the Earth for vibranium of their own, leading them to drill the Atlantic sea floor with technology developed by college student Riri Williams. To protect their hidden city, the people of Talokan were forced to kill the miners, and Namor sought out the Wakandans to help kill Williams and fight off the outside world, even taking Shuri and Williams to their city as the first ever outside visitors. When Wakanda and its royal family refused to capitulate, the two peoples were forced into war, from which Wakanda emerged the victor.^[1]

Alternate Realities

Earth-616

The cenote city of Talokan was one of the Secret Seas, Atlantean communities founded all over the world by those rejected from joining New Atlantis after it was founded on the underwater ruins of Old Atlantis. Like other communities, they interacted, influenced and were influenced by the neighboring peoples of the surface. In Talokan, by the Modern Age, the customs of the Mayans lived on.^[2]

• Talokanil
  • Namor
  • Namora
  • Attuma

• Talokan replaces Atlantis in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to avoid comparisons with DC Comics' Aquaman, another monarch of seas featured prominently in film. The Mesoamerican elements may be inspired by Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882) by Ignatius L. Donnelly,^[3] which suggests that Aztlan, the legendary ancestral land of the Aztecs, was another name for Atlantis. The name Talokan comes from Tlalocan, a paradise ruled by the rain deity Tlāloc in Aztec mythology.^[4]

• Namor's Talokanil name comes from Kukulkán, a Mayan deity^[5] sometimes said to be mistaken for the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl.^[6]