Where did mermaid myths start?

Answer 1

Overactive imagination and sailors on long voyages - perhaps coupled with wishful thinking. I have heard that the manatee might be the source of the legends in the Caribbean, but you'd really have to be hallucinating or blind drunk to mistake one of these things for a beautiful woman with a tail.

Answer 2

The legends of mermaids begun when people started to boat, surf, and swim. They say fish that flopped around in the water and in their sight they thought it was half women half fish. Some people on docks while fishing, saw heads poking out of the water and thought a girl was getting air.

Dagon, the major God of the Phoenicians was a merman therfore the legend goes all the way back to the early bronze age if not earlier.

Answer 3

The ancient Greek and Celts both had mermaid myths.

Answer 4

Mermaids appear to have originated in Greek Mythology and other mythologies, depicting them as sea spirits or sea goddesses.

Answer 5

The manatee.