I was just drowning in tvtropes and in The Time of Myths description, I noticed this: "...the concept of such an age is Older Than Dirt. Much myth and literature was written about a supposed time period in the distant past (i.e. before the Iron Age) that was chock full of ten-foot-tall warriors and interesting monsters to kill."
I was wondering, then, how those before the Iron Age looked back on the past? Did Bronze Age folks see the Stone Age as a Time of Myth, or was it viewed as barbaric, or was it not regarded any particular way?
Were Stone Age people mythologized anywhere/by anyone? Are they referenced in creation myths?
Thanks.
You're asking about the whole world so obviously there's no definitive answer, of course. For example, the Greeks and Romans also conceptualised the deep past as a series of "Ages"--the Age of Gold, the Age of Silver, the Age of Bronze and the Age of Iron--which was the direct inspiration for our modern system of metallic ages and was perhaps some reflection of (Iron Age) Greeks' cultural memory that not so long ago everything was made from bronze. But where we associate the successive ages with technological advancement and "progress", the Greeks thought they were at the end of a long period of decline. That narrative obviously chimes with the Biblical narrative of the Fall from Paradise, and so it carried through to the Romans and then the Christian era, basically providing the framework fit European thought on deep history until the modern era.
In contrast, the Hadza of Tanzania, who archaeologists would still classify as "Stone Age" on the basis of their tools, have an oral tradition much closer to our understanding of the deep past. They talk about how their ancestors in successive epochs became less animalistic and more like themselves, both physically (they became smaller and less hairy), and by mastering technology like fire and tool making.
I suppose the only general answer I can think of is that oral traditions alone are not reliable enough to carry memories of prehistoric ages for more than a few generations, and the first historic records started well into the Bronze Age or afterwards. So the only real link later ages had to their prehistoric heritage were material remains - monuments, scattered artefacts, etc. They interpreted and mythologised these remains in diverse and culturally specific ways. Although for whatever reason, maybe because prehistoric objects were so different to their everyday experience, or the monuments that survived tended to be the big impressive ones, there is a trend to see them as the works of something other than ordinary humans: superhuman ancestors, monsters, or just natural forces.