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Theory On The Origins Of Some Monsters

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Dark Chasm:
So I have a theory on how some of the stories on monsters came into existence.

As you can probably imagine, there were a lot more health problems back in the days of mythology, for various reasons. For one, they lived in more unsanitary conditions than we do today. First of all because they didn't have the cleaning technology and disinfecting chemicals we have today. They drank water straight from wells, which were most likely teeming with microbes. Their food was also exposed to microbes a lot more than ours is today. They also had a primitive way of understanding sickness and medicine. A lot of it was based on magic. In fact, most likely all of it was.

So you can imagine that more babies would be born with deformities than are today. It's sad, but most likely true. And unfortunately, society back then probably saw such children as the spawn of demons or creatures cursed by the gods to live as a monster. They were most likely not very accepting of them and probably either killed them or scalded them their entire lives. Enough to probably make them leave society.

They would have nowhere else to go but the wild. And it's difficult to live in the wild, especially when no one would get close enough to you to teach you how.

And of course, it would be rather easy to overpower a passing traveler, more so than it would be to tackle a quick-footed deer or a giant moose. And unfortunately, it would probably be rather easy to turn to cannibalism when the rest of your race treated you like an animal and kicked you whenever they could. So then rumors would start to pop up about a hideous creature living on the side of the road that would grab passing travelers and devour them. Then these monsters would be given names like "troll" or "ogre."

blow_fly:
An interesting and plausible theory.  It's not uncommon for monsters in ancient mythology to have been  inspired by actual mundane phenomena. Take the Gorgon for example. Its hideous appearance is actually based on the physical form of humans corpses that were in advanced states of decay.  Another possibility that we must take into account is that some monsters that continue to feature in the folklore of certain cultures were potentially mentally ill individuals who committed serious crimes. This certainly seems to be the case with many of the various assorted were-beasts that show in African folktales.

Dark Chasm:
Also, there's the fact that people from the age of mythology had a more primitive way of understanding things and a vocabulary not as advanced as ours is today. So whenever they would encounter phenomena that was strange to them, because they had a primitive way of understanding things, they would think of it as something that it's not, then go on to describe it with whatever words they could. For instance, let's pretend for some reason an airplane flies through a portal that sends them back in time to the age of mythology. Someone from that time period sees it and goes on to try and describe it. Because the only thing that someone from that time period would know of that flies is a bird, he might describe it as a giant metal bird that soared through the air with a tail of flame trailing behind its wings.

In the present, a scientist finds and ancient text written by that same person who saw the metal bird. He sees the way he described the airplane, but because of the words that were used, the scientist doesn't think of the word "airplane" at all. Instead he thinks of some sort of mythological monster that the writer claims he saw.

So you see much of mythology could actually be based on, as was said by blow_fly, mundane phenomena. But because the people in the age of mythology used completely different words than we do to describe the same thing, we would never realize they were actually talking about something we know of.

Moloch:
I too find this both interesting and plausible, as it has been theorized, and in some cases shown that many legendary heroes and monsters were never actually seen, and their legends were based on enormous bones that were unearthed by farmers and other plebeians. These folks did not understand that what they had found were actually fossils; so to make them fit their understanding of the world they put them together as best they could, made up fantastic stories about who they must have belonged to, and then reburied them or placed them in temples to be relics of worship.

AEUBERTI:
A high level of plausability for some tales.  Though it would be the Ancients' understanding not their language that would cause the fantastic nature of the expression.  The same is likely true for religions.  The text read in various places of worship  probably started as tales told around the fire to explain natural events; storms, wild fires, night.  As groups of nomads became villages then cities etc the tales of different groups were assimliated and codified and finally fell under the control of a select few (priests witch doctors or whatever)  and finally became religion. 

Not to pick nits hwever this topic is less a theory and more of a notion.  But it is a thoght provoking notion.;}

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