This information by Alexander Von Humboldt comes from an original first edition in a library collection that I inherited years ago from my Great-Uncle Whit, who was an enthusiastic antiquarian. It is my opinion that the "Moon" referred to by these Greek Arcadians was the previous appearance and stationary positioning of The Cosmic Tree, or Night Sun, above our North Pole. And certainly there could have been no life on Earth, either in Greece or anywhere else, before the Sun (as we know it) appeared in the heavens. Thus, these are clearly references to something other than our ordinary Sun and Moon. Rob Solàrion

COSMOS: A Sketch Of A Physical Description Of The Universe
By Alexander Von Humboldt (London, 1851)
Translated From The German By E.C. Otté
Volume IV, Pages 438-439

The hypothesis of yet unknown members of the planetary series calls to mind the opinion of Hellenic antiquity that there were far more than five planets; these were, indeed, all that had been observed, but many others might remain unseen, on account of the feebleness of their light and their position. Such a doctrine was especially attributed to Artemidorus of Ephesus. Another old Hellenic, and perhaps even Egyptian, belief appears to have been that "the celestial bodies which we now see were not all visible in earlier times". Connected with such a physical or much rather historical myth is the remarkable form of the praise of a high antiquity which some races ascribed to themselves.

Thus, the pre-Hellenic Pelasgian inhabitants of Arcadia called themselves Proselenes, because they boasted that they came into the country before the Moon accompanied the Earth. Pre-Hellenic and pre-lunarian were synonymous. The appearance of a star was represented as a celestial event, as the Deucalionic flood was a terrestrial event. Apuleius (Apologia, vol. ii, p. 494, ed. Oudendorp; Cosmos, vol. ii, p. 557, note) extends the flood as far as the Gatulean mountains of Northern Africa. Apollonius Rhodius, who according to Alexandrian custom was fond of imitating old models, speaks of the early colonization of the Egyptians in the valley of the Nile: "The stars did not yet revolve in the Heavens; nor had the Danaides yet appeared, or the race of Deucalion." [30]

Footnote
30. Since the explanations which Heyne has given of the origin of the astronomical myth of the Proselenes, so widely diffused in antiquity (De Arcadibus Luna Antiquioribus, in Opusc. Acad., vol. ii, p. 332) were unsatisfactory to me, I was greatly rejoiced to receive from my acute philological friend, Professor Johannes Franz, a new and very happy solution of this much-debated problem, by simple combinations of ideas. This solution is unconnected with either the arrangement of the calendar by the Arcadians or their worship of the Moon. I restrict myself here to an extract from an unpublished and more extended work. This explanation will not be unwelcome to some of my readers in a work in which I have made a rule frequently to trace back the whole of our present knowledge to the knowledge of the ancients, and even to traditions believed generally or by very many.

"We shall commence with a few of the principal passages from the ancients, which treat of the Proselenes. Stephanus of Byzantium (v. 'Apkas) mentions the logographs of Hippys of Rhegium, a contemporary of Darius and Xerxes, as the first who called the Arcadians proselenous. The scholiasts, ad Apollon. Rhod. IV 264 and ad Aristoph. Nub. 397, agree in saying, the remote antiquity of the Arcadians becomes most clear from the fact of their being called proselenoi. They appear to have been there before the Moon, as Eudoxus and Theodorus also say; the latter adds that it was shortly before the labours of Hercules that the Moon appeared. In the government of the Tegeates, Aristotle states that the barbarians who inhabited Arcadia were driven out by the later Arcadians before the Moon appeared, and therefore they were called proselenoi. Others say, Endymion discovered the revolution of the Moon, but as he was an Arcadian, his countrymen were called after him proselenoi. Lucian expresses himself slightingly (Astrolog. 26). According to him it was from stupidity and folly that the Arcadians said they were there before the Moon. In the Schol. ad Aeschyl. Prom. 436, it is observed that proseloumenon is called ubrizomenon, whence, therefore, the Arcadians were called proselenoi, because they are arrogant. The passages in Ovid as to the existence of the Arcadians before the Moon are universally known. Recently, indeed, the idea has sprung up that all the ancients were deceived by the form proselenoi, and that the word (properly proellenoi) meant only pre-Hellenic, as Arcadia certainly was a Pelasgian country.

"If, now, it can be proved," continues Professor Franz, "that another people connected their origin with another cosmical body, the trouble of taking refuge in the deceptive etymological explanations will be obviated. This kind of testimony exists in the most suitable form. The learned rhetorician Menander says literally in his work, De Economiis (sec. ii, cap. a, ed. Heeren), as follows: 'A third motive for the praise of objects is the time; this is the case in all the most ancient nations: when we say of a town or of a country it was founded before this or that star, or with those stars, before the flood or after the flood; as the Athenians affirm that they originated at the same time as the Sunb, the Arcadians before the Moon, the Delphians immediately after the flood; these are epochs, and, as it were, starting points in time.'

"Therefore Delphi, the connection of which the flood of Deucalion is otherwise proved (Pausan. x, 6), is surpassed by Arcadia, and Arcadia by Athens. Apollonius Rhodius, who was so fond of imitating old models, expresses himself quite in accordance wit this passage, where he says (iv, 261), Egypt is said to have been inhabited before all other countries: 'The stars did not yet revolve in the heavens; the Danaides had not yet appeared, nor the race of Deucalion; the Arcadians alone existed, those of whom it is said that they lived before the Moon, eating acorns upon the mountains.' In the same manner, Nonnus (xli) says of the Syrian Beroë that it was inhabited before the time of the Sun.

"Such a habit of deriving determinations of time from epochs in the formation of the world is an offspring of the speculative period, in which all objects have still more vitality, and is most closely allied to the genealogical local poetry. So that it is not improbable that the tradition sung by an Arcadian poet of the battle of the giants in Arcadia, to which the above-quoted words of old Theodorus (whom some consider to be a Samothracian, and whose work must have been very comprehensive) refer, may have given occasion to the general application of the epithet proselenoi to the Arcadians."

With regard to the double name 'Arkades-Pelasgoi', and the opposition of a more ancient or recent peopling of Arcadia, compare the excellent work, Der Peloponnesos, by Ernst Curtius, 1851, pp. 160 and 180. In the New Continent also there is, as I have already shown in another place (see my Kleinen Schriften, Bd. i, p. 115), upon the elevated plain of Bogotá, the race of Muyscas, or Mozcas, who in their historical myths boast of a proselenic antiquity. The origin of the Moon is connected with the tradition of a great flood, which a woman who accompanied the miracle-worker Botschika had caused by her magical arts. Botschika drove away the woman (called Huythaca or Schia). She left the Earth and became the Moon, "which until then had never shone upon the Muyscas." Botschika, pitying the human race, opened a steep rocky wall near Canoas, where the Rio de Tunzha now rushes down, forming the famous waterfall of Tequendama. The valley, filled with water, was then laid dry -- a geognostic romance which occurs repeatedly: for example, in the closed Alpine valley of Cashmir, where the mighty drainer is called Kasyapa.