[helpfulmandrill]

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.

[carlosjobim]

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.

[ldjkfkdsjnv]

The same is true of greek gods. Some of them, like Zeus, were probably real people that existed a long time ago

[w0de0]

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?

[XorNot]

Or possibly several people: it's worth remembering that there were no photographs in most of human history.

The story of who a person was can easily be a combination of many.