Garth Greenhand, Green Men, etc

[KingInTheBrothel]

I apologize if this has been touched on--I couldn't find anything on here.

Was doing a re-read of TWOIAF recently and noticed something that I hadn't noticed before and hadn't heard mentioned before:  In the descriptions of Garth Greenhand (p207) it says that various tales have him being green all over, simply wearing green robes, just having green hands, and that some even say he had ANTLERS LIKE A STAG....wtf?

A green man--be it skin, clothes, or otherwise--that has antlers, sounds like them fellas in the God's Eye. 

I'm not sure what the implications are, and that's really why I'm posting.  Was Garth taught by the children?  Did he found the order of the green men?  Is their existence a tribute, sort of, in his image?

Just trying to see what's out there.  Like I said, maybe this is touched on elsewhere.  If so, please be so kind as to point me in the right direction. 

[Targaryen Restoration]

Westeros did not have humans until the migration of the FM.  We can assume Garth was a First Man.  I doubt he learned farming from the Children.  It's the other way around.  He brought farming to the hunters and the farms displaced the Children. 

[aryagonnakill#2]

My own theory is that that gods the FM had before the old gods were in fact the ancient races themselves, whether they knew that or not.  We are told of gods of wind and gods of water, and separately are told of the cotf, who Osha tells us send the wind and the Deep Ones who we are told live in the water. 

It is my belief that the Old Ones are the offspring of the Deep Ones and COTF and that they are the Green Men.  They founded Old Town, hence the name, and Eleini who married into the Durandon family and was said to be the daughter of the god of sky and god of water was an Old One, hence the Durrandon/Baratheon horns as a sigil.

[Renly's Banana]

You have to take most -- if not all -- things from the Age of Heroes with a grain of salt. Because it happened more than ten thousand years ago, most of it is legend. Garth Greenhard was most likely just some moderately wealthy king that ruled a few rich green lands. Ten thousand years later he became some magical green elf demi-god. These things happen. Most people now think Cleopatra was the most beautiful woman in Egypt.. even though she was an incest baby with a huge hooked nose and a club foot. 

If you want to find people who MAY have been taught by and/or mated with the Children, I'd look towards the Neck. The crannogmen are most likely the closest you'll find. 

[Archmaester_Aemma]

@LmL's Sacred Order of Green Zombies series touches on some of these parallels and offers some pretty cool implications for it related to Summer king/Winter king mythological archetypes and how they relate to the series. I find the podcasts easier to digest, personally, but both are available from the link