15.  All the traditions of the Mediterranean races look to the ocean as the source of men and gods.  Homer sings of

     “Ocean, the origin of gods and Mother Tethys.”

Orpheus says, “The fair river of Ocean was the first to marry, and he espoused his sister Tethys, who was his mothers daughter.” (Plato’s “Dialogues,” Cratylus, p. 402.) The ancients always alluded to the ocean as a river encircling the earth, as in the map of Cosmos (see page 95 ante); probably a reminiscence of the great canal described by Plato which surrounded the plain of Atlantis.  Homer (Iliad, book xviii.) describes Tethys, “the mother goddess,” coming to Achilles “from the deep abysses of the main:” 

     “The circling Nereids with their mistress weep,
     And all the sea-green sisters of the deep.”

Plato surrounds the great statue of Poseidon in Atlantis with the images of one hundred Nereids.

16. in the Deluge legends of the Hindoos (as given on page 87 ante), we have seen Manu saving a small fish, which subsequently grew to a great size, and warned him of the coming of the Flood.  In this legend all the indications point to an ocean as the scene of the catastrophe.  It says:  “At the close of the last calpa there was a general destruction, caused by the sleep of Brahma, whence his creatures, in different worlds, were drowned in a vast ocean. . . .  A holy king, named Satyavrata, then reigned, a servant of the spirit which moved on the waves” (Poseidon?), “and so devout that water was his only sustenance. . . .  In seven days the three worlds” (remember Poseidon’s trident) “shall be plunged in an ocean of death.” . . . “’Thou shalt enter the spacious ark, and continue in it secure from the Flood on one immense ocean.’ . . .  The sea overwhelmed its shores, deluged the whole earth, augmented by showers from immense clouds.” ("Asiatic Researches,” vol. i., p. 230.)

All this reminds us of “the fountains of the great deep and the flood-gates of heaven,” and seems to repeat precisely the story of Plato as to the sinking of Atlantis in the ocean.

17.  While I do not attach much weight to verbal similarities in the languages of the two continents, nevertheless there are some that are very remarkable.  We have seen the Pan and Maia of the Greeks reappearing in the Pan and Maya of the Mayas of Central America.  The god of the Welsh triads, “Hu the mighty,” is found in the Hu-nap-bu, the hero-god of the Quiches; in Hu-napu, a hero-god; and in Hu-hu-nap-hu, in Hu-ncam, in Hu-nbatz, semi-divine heroes of the Quiches.  The Phoenician deity El “was subdivided into a number of hypostases called the Baalim, secondary divinities, emanating from the substance of the deity” ("Anc.  Hist.  East,” vol. ii., p. 219); and this word Baalim we find appearing in the mythology of the Central Americans, applied to the semi-divine progenitors of the human race, Balam-Quitze, Balam-Agab, and Iqui-Balam.