Hi Richard - well first, number of readers is not a concern! Quality before Claps, right?

One last thing I found fascinating about Wild Men in Europe and trolls in Norway is the the fact that they are often depicted with a club. The other, or course, it there hairiness. Not that we have evidence Neanderthals carried clubs and were hairier than us--but these are traits that make this figure stand out from the people who told the tales about them.

My own feeling is that it's less likely a memory of neolithic farmers encountering Palaeolithic hunter gatherers. That transition went on with various tribes for thousands of years (the Sami in Norway were the last to lose their hunter-gatherer economy just a few short centuries ago). And what the Sami show is thousands of years of interaction with their settled neighbours.

It might be obvious that my own interests are in early European civilizations. I wrote a book about it several years (Savage Breast: One Man's Search for the Goddess). I loo forward to reading your other posts.