u/EleanorKalatheraine

https://butterflywebsite.com/articles/saybut.cfm

This website is passionately devoted to expanding awareness of butterflies. Amongst its projects is a collection of translations for butterfly from more than 300 languages (!)

Most of them I can't even tell how to pronounce, from the English spellings. But here is a sample of the more readable ones, that appealed to me.

kupukupu
Balinese (Indonesia)

tètfètuth
Berber (North Africa)

balafenn
Breton (Brittany and Loire-Atlantique)

marlimarlirni
Djingli (Australian N.T.)

billambilloot
Gurage (Ethiopia)

lepke
Hungarian (Hungary)

kobelek
Kazakh (Kazakhstan)

pilimpiko
Moré (Burkina Faso)

limpempele
Mukuni (Zambia)

lepetka
Roma (Slovakia)

kimimi
Sioux (Native American)

serurubele
Setwana (Botswana), Sepedi (South Africa)

kalpakalpay
Wik-Ngathan (Australia)

(You might notice a pattern of repeated syllables; this is also true for many of the languages I didn't include. It seems to occur all over the world, without any obvious relations in the languages. Apparently humans have a genetic inclination for naming butterflies this way? Or else the rumors of a global collective subconscious have some basis in reality... I'm not claiming anything either way.)

This is an alternate timeline to ours.

Ancient Egypt developed seafaring capacities, and sent out explorers all over the world (pre-empting European conquests). For various reasons, settlers weren't obsessed with ownership and domination, but co-existed with the existing residents.

When they reached Australia, they found cultures that were rather alien to them, but which turned out to have mythology and practical knowledge that was complementary to their own--a whole different set of ways to deal with living in a desert.

Gradually a syncretic culture developed, enriched by human genius from two very different cultures, that when combined led to a different kind of progress than in our timeline.

Over some thousand years or so, this morphed into something a bit like what Atlantis feels like in our own collective imagination. Except it's not as imaginary as we assume.

The End