I have sometimes wondered if ideas about dwarves, gnomes, trolls or other vaguely human-shaped mythical creatures might have originated in encounters with other, now-extinct human species.
Dwarves are short people, so there's really no mystery there. As for gnomes and trolls, they could be explained as birth defects. The myth of "changelings" are probably these birth defects that might not be noticeable in a newly born child, but later become obvious.
I think the real cultural memory of the Neanderthals and other species related to us is in the myths of Titans and Giants. People who were on earth first and who battled furiously with man-like gods for dominance.
No, probably not. The word “Zeus” is far older than Greek - it’s a Proto-Indo-European word, and he is an Indo-European sky god, with analogues from India to Iberia. (“Dios,” as in the Latin languages’ word for the Christian god, has this derivation.)
This all to say that the word (and the sacred culture attendant) is far older and far broader than can be ascribed to some just-so story of a prehistoric, let alone proto-Greek, warlord. If I were to look for origins of “Zeus,” the god, I would instead first contemplate how vast the sky appears when seen from the steppe (whence the Yamnaya, first speakers of this language family). How does one not imagine a sky father in that seeming infinity?
Nothing you wrote here negates what I wrote. Just that it goes far back, and probably originates in pre-history. Its not inconceivable to think about figures like Jesus existing 20-30-40k years ago. Over time they turn into legends, which are bigger and more vast than the living human ever was.
Are you sure? There is a convincing argument that Neanderthals were the original boogeyman, and carried down to the present through the stories we tell our children and works like Beowulf:
AFAIK the idea of neanderthals as original bogeymen is closer to anthropological fanfic than a credible hypothesis, but would love to have an anthropologist/paleonthologist to chime in.
I think it is beyond something we can know definitively. We know that our species interacted because we share DNA. The nature of that interaction is largely guesswork.
I like the argument that our time coexisting with neanderthals is the reason the uncanny valley exists: we have in the deep past had very good reason to be made uncomfortable by entities that almost, but not quite, seem like humans.
How far back do you think human cultural memory extends? The earliest writings would be preserving stories known at the time, but how far back did those stories go in prehuman history? I'm guessing most of prehistory was forgotten even before you get to neanderthals.
Probably, but there is some evidence that Australian aboriginal oral traditions have preserved information for at least 16,000 years or so, i.e. well into the last ice age. IIRC there are two specific instances, one involving astronomical observations that can be dated to about that long ago, and another involving geography, where the stories speak of an area of land as it would have appeared when sea levels where much lower during the ice age.
All we have left is modern speculation and imagination.