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I believe Scandinavian myths about trolls were oral record of human interaction with neanderthal
by autokad 11y ago
I believe Scandinavian myths about trolls were oral record of human interaction with neanderthal
- prawn 11y agoAs in you personally believe, or you have read research/theories suggesting? I couldn't find any mention of neanderthal on the Wikipedia page for "troll". It wouldn't surprise me. Seems plausible at least.
- autokad 11y agopersonally believe for sure, would be interesting if there was any papers or research into it
- cactusface 11y agoNeanderthals died out about 40,000 years ago. Why would the Scandinavians have trolls in their stories but not other cultures?
- kbenson 11y agoA small isolated population of neanderthals in the area that survived quite a while after their contemporaries died off?
- prawn 11y agoThat's a long time to survive in isolation!
- kbenson 11y agoIt's relative. In this case, "isolation" means "around Scandinavia", and would still include contact with homo sapiens (thus the stories). If there were out-competed everywhere else by Homo Sapiens, but found a niche in that area, due to some geographic or cultural difference, then they may have survived for some time. In fact, it may have just been the lack of competition with Homo Sapiens until fairly recently in those areas (H. Sapiens apparently late to colonize Scandinavia and neighbors[1][2]. Iceland, in particular, didn't see a colonization of H.Sapiens until the 10th century. Occasional contact with Neanderthals by the people that would eventually move into Northern Europe, and possibly also the lack of anywhere for Neanderthals to retreat to, leading to more conflict, may have exacerbated the "otherness" with which they were seen (a natural extension of conflict/war), and solidified them under a different name for those peoples, which was then passed down through oral tradition. I'm not saying any of this is likely, just that I'm not aware of anything that makes it entirely implausible (but I'm by no means an expert in the area). It's an interesting "what if". 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_migration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_migration 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_islands_by_first_human_settlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_islands_...
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoApparently the caves of Gibraltar show Neanderthal occupation 25K years after all others died out in Europe. It can happen!
- JupiterMoon 11y agoI think that the Scandinavians moved into the area on the order of 2000 years ago (before that the Sami lived there from 11000 years ago). The neanderthal went extinct in the order of 40000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway Nice idea but it seems improbable
- danieltillett 11y agoNeanderthals aren't extinct, they just breed with the later immigrants from Africa so that all non-Africans are a mix of Neanderthal and African people's. The interesting thing is the gene flow from Neanderthal's all came from the male side.
- JupiterMoon 11y agoOK given that this is true which it may well be but is a matter of current research neanderthals ceased at some stage to be a separate group from homo spapians. The time was well before the Scandinavians appeared.
- danieltillett 11y agoWell since the Scandinavians are part Neanderthal there is no point at which the ceased to be separate, however, at the time that people with a majority Neanderthal genes ceased to exist Scandinavia was under 2km of ice and so nobody lived there. There never was a time when anyone, but humans lived there.
- gadders 11y agoIn Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead, he re-tells the story of Beowulf with the monsters as Neanderthals. He does also move the story forward several hundred years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaters_of_the_Dead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaters_of_the_Dead