groups

For 'children' not to resist the will of their elders? (extrapolate that to mean people should accept the will of the rulers that are?) I don't know.

never looked at it that way, interesting thought. but then why does the yunger generation win?

I believe that those peoples saw their gods as people , with all of the foibles and faults common to people , but who just happened to have extraordinary powers . The young supplanting the old is the natural order of things .

I think you're right about that, Dirck.

Then too, whenever one people or creed emerged new in an area, more than likely some elements of the subject peoples' beliefs would be incorporated into theirs to make them more palatable to the locals and to maintain a historical continuity to enhance their emergence. The Dorians, the last and less civilized of the Greek tribes, displaced most of the earlier Indo-European Hittitic Pelasgians towards Anatolia and absorbed the rest (Sparta's 'subhuman' serfs?) as well as Aoelian Greeks and the decimated Minoans. They may well have created cruel Cronus to succeed Uranus (who had inherited from his father Elyun, the Most High) so as to be pushed out by their Olympian Zeus. view link
They incorporated this concept of successive divine groups and elements like Adonis, Aphrodite and El from Caucasian Hurrians and Semitic Cyprus and Phoenicia. Romans did the same regarding Greek deities. The Jewish Bible borrowed elements from the Mesopotamians (the Flood and Creation); Christianity from pagan Romans (Dec. 25th), Teutons (fir tree) and Anatolia (the Mother goddess); Islam from both the Old and New Testaments, the ancient Kaaba, and Zoroastrians; Tibetan Buddhism from the local panthenon of gods. And so on.

from my reading of the greek concept of the gods they did not see them as people but as the reason why people act as people. when they became angry aries was around, when a male cheated on his wife an actual taboo in grek culture although it happened often their desire was triggered by a god.when you read about their interacting with their gods I never got the impression they saw them as super people they seemed to be able to link the "myth with their reasoning something so many people cannot do today.