Bryant ("Mythology," iii. 405) says--"I have shown that Gaia, in its original sense, signified a sacred cavern, a hollow in the earth, which, from its gloom, was looked upon as an emblem of the ark. Hence Gaia, like Hasta Rhoia Cybele, is often represented as the mother of mankind." The following is very important with reference to my argument above:--The Scholiast upon Euripides says--"[Greek: Meta ton kataklysmon en oresin oikountôn tôn Argeiôn prôtos autous synôkisen Inachos]. When the Argivi or Arkites, _after the Deluge_, lived _dispersed on the mountains_, Inachus first brought them together and formed them into communities."--Comp. _infra_, p. 157, 158, 193, 332. The instances adduced of myths connecting man with the monkey are, as a rule, traditions of degeneracy, _i.e._ of men turned into monkeys (_vide_ Tylor's "Primitive Culture," i. 340), and to which I would add the rabbinical tradition of men turned into monkeys at the Tower of Babel (De Quincey, Works, xiii. 235), and the classical epic of the Ceropes, "founded on the transformation of a set of jugglers into monkeys." But if compared with the above tradition, I think that the only two instances (Tylor, i. 341) which seem to bear out the opposite theory will wear a different aspect. I quote from Tylor as above--"Wild tribes of the Malay peninsula, looked down upon as lower animals by the more warlike and civilised Malays, have among them traditions of their own descent from _a pair_ of the "unka-putch" or _white_ monkeys, who reared their young ones _and sent them into the plains_, and there they perfected so well that they and their descendants became men, but those _who returned to the mountains_ still remained apes. The Buddhist legend relates the origin of the flat-nosed uncouth tribes of Tibet, offspring of _two miraculous apes_, transformed to _people_ the snow-kingdom. Taught to till the ground, when they had grown corn and eaten it, their tails and hair gradually disappeared, they began to speak, became men, and clothed themselves with leaves. The population grew closer, the land was more and more cultivated, and at last a prince of the race of Sakya, driven from his home in India, _united their isolated tribes_ into a single kingdom."--Comp. Cecrops, &c., p. 332, _infra_. Now, just as the tribes who said they were created "under the ground" implied the same tradition as those who said they were created _out of_ the ground, so, too, the tribes who said they were created "under the water" probably held the tradition that the creation of the race preceded the Deluge.