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Neanderthals have been depicted in popular culture since the early 20th century. Early depictions conveyed and perpetuated notions of proverbially crude, low-browed cavemen; since the latter part of the 20th century, some depictions have modeled more sympathetic reconstructions of the genus Homo in the Middle Paleolithic era.[1][2] In popular idiom, people sometimes use the word "Neanderthal" as an insult - to suggest that a person so designated combines a deficiency in intelligence and a tendency to use brute force. The term may also imply that a person is old-fashioned or attached to outdated ideas, much in the same way as the terms "dinosaur" or "Yahoo".[3]
A number of sympathetic literary portrayals of Neanderthals exist, as in the 1955 novel The Inheritors by William Golding, Isaac Asimov's 1958 short story "The Ugly Little Boy", or the more serious treatment by Finnish paleontologist Björn Kurtén (in several works including Dance of the Tiger (1978)) - compare British psychologist Stan Gooch's non-fiction works on the hybrid-origin theory of humans.
The contemporary perception of Neanderthals and their stereotypical portrayal has its origins in 19th century Europe. Naturalists and anthropologists were confronted with an increasing number of fossilized bones that did not match any known taxon. Carl Linnaeus' Systema Naturae of 1758, in which introduced Homo sapiens as a species without diagnosis and description, was the authoritative encyclopedia of the time. The notion of species extinction, which would have contradicted the paradigm of an immutable world and its unchangeable species, all the infallible products of a single and deliberate creator god, was unheard of at that time. Most scholars simply declared the early Neanderthal fossils to be representatives of early "races" of modern man. Thomas Henry Huxley, a future supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution, saw in the Engis 2 fossil a "man of low degree of civilization". He interpreted the discoveries in the Neanderthal Valley as within the range of variation of modern humans.[4]
Rudolf Virchow, who dominated mid-19th century Germany biological sciences, described the bones as a "remarkable individual phenomenon" and as "plausible individual deformation".[5] This statement led to the perception for many years in German-speaking countries that Neanderthal characteristics were merely a form of pathological skeleton change of modern humans to come.
August Franz Josef Karl Mayer, an associate of Virchow, emphasized disease, prolonged pain and struggle on comparison with modern human features.[6] "He confirmed the Neanderthal's rachitic changes in bone development[...]. Mayer argued among other things, that the thigh - and pelvic bones of Neanderthal man were shaped like those of someone who had spent all his life on horseback. The broken right arm of the individual had only healed very badly and the resulting permanent worry lines about the pain were the reason for the distinguished brow ridges. The skeleton was, he speculated, that of a mounted Russian Cossack, who had roamed the region in 1813/14 during the turmoils of the wars of liberation from Napoleon."[5]
Arthur Keith of Britain and Marcellin Boule of France were both senior members of their respective national paleontological institutes and among the most eminent paleoanthropologists of the early 20th century. Both men argued that this "primitive" Neanderthal could not be a direct ancestor of modern man. As a result, the museum's copy of the almost complete Neanderthal fossil of La Chapelle-aux-Saints was inaccurately mounted in an exaggerated crooked pose with a deformed and heavily curved spine and legs buckled. Boule commissioned the first illustrations of Neanderthal where he was characterized as a hairy gorilla-like figure with opposable toes, based on a skeleton that was already distorted with arthritis.[7][8][9][10][11]
Screenplays and short stories
| Title | Year
Written/Pub |
Author | Anthology | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "The Grisley Folk"[12] | 1921 | H. G. Wells | The Complete Short Stories | |
| "The Gnarly Man"[13] | 1939 | L. Sprague de Camp | Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond | A Neanderthal finds himself in a peculiar time-traveling colony mixing people from various time periods and locations. He plays a crucial role in forging an alliance of people from different backgrounds to fight the story's villains - bandit adventurers from Medieval Norman Sicily aided by 20th-century Nazis. Eventually he is able to return to his own era, but finds Neanderthal society too boring and so settles on a career of time-traveling adventure with the Russian woman he loves. |
| "The Long Remembering"[14] | 1957 | Poul Anderson | Trips in Time | A modern man undertakes a "mental time travel" enabling him to experience the life of a very remote ancestor, a Cro-Magnon hunter setting out to rescue his mate who was kidnapped by the "Goblins" (Neanderthals) living across the river. |
| "The Ugly Little Boy"[15] | 1958 | Issac Asimov | The Time Travelers: A Science Fiction Quartet | A Neanderthal child is brought into the present via time travel. Neanderthals are sympathetically depicted as having an articulate and sophisticated society and language, in conscious rebuttal of the above stereotype. |
| "The Ogre"[16] | 1959 | Avram Davidson | Worlds of IF | A 20th-century archaeologist, who discovered the traces of Neanderthals who survived into historical times and came to a tragic end in a remote valley of 16th-century Germany, came to an equally tragic end himself. |
| "Wolves Beyond the Border"[17] | 1939 | Robert E. Howard | ||
| "Heal Thyself"[18] | 2008 | Orson Scott Card | Neanderthals are accidentally resurrected during testing of an immune system enhancement. |
Novels
| Title | Year Written/Pub | Author | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dian of the Lost Land[19] | 1935 | Edison Marshall | Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons are traditional enemies surviving in a warm valley of Antarctica |
| The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike[20] | 1960/1984 | Philip K. Dick | The discovery of a Neanderthal skull in the United States is a plot device. |
| The Bull from the Sea[21] | 1962 | Mary Renault | Kentaurs are portrayed as Neanderthals. |
| The Simulacra[22] | 1964/1977 | Philip K. Dick | Neanderthals living in primitive towns in the rural areas of the former United States are happy at the outbreak of nuclear war, hoping that self-destruction of Homo sapiens might give them another opportunity to dominate Earth. |
| The Goblin Reservation[23] | 1968 | Clifford D. Simak | Twenty years after a Neanderthal named Alley Oop (after the eponymous comic strip) is brought into the present for study purposes he is educated enough to be working on a doctoral thesis but still has trouble with certain social aspects, possessing, for example, a habit of breaking into closed stores when hungry and paying compensation later. |
| Eaters of the Dead[24] | 1976 | Michael Crichton | A small Neanderthal population in Northern Europe is the source of the battles recorded in Beowulf. This story was also the basis for a motion picture The 13th Warrior (1999), though the word "Neanderthals" was never mentioned in the movie. |
| Dance of the Tiger | 1981 | Björn Kurtén | This book follows interactions between European Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, possible worldviews and origins for troll mythology |
| Glory Lane[25] | 1987 | Alan Dean Foster | Spacefaring Neanderthals removed from Earth by powerful aliens return to save them from extinction. |
| Unsolved Mysteries Past and Present | 1993 | Colin Wilson | This book discusses evidence and theories of Neanderthal survival into the modern age, including the possibility of their recent breeding with humans, in his book Unsolved Mysteries. |
| Hunting the Ghost Dancer[26] | 1992 | Attanasio | Early humans clash with the last of the neanderthals. |
| Down in the Bottomlands[27] | 1988 | Harry Turtledove/L. Sprague de Camp | In an alternate timeline the Mediterranean Sea has stayed dry since the Miocene and Europe is still inhabited by Homo neanderthalensis, referred to in the story as "Strongbrows" and described as "shorter, stockier, fairer", than the "Highhead" people (presumably analogous to Homo sapiens). |
| Neanderthal[28] | 1996 | John Darnton | A group of surviving Neanderthals discovered in the mountains of Afghanistan is said to possess the ability to read minds due to their larger cranial capacity, but unlike Cro-Magnons, lack the capability of deception on more than two levels at a time. The author blamed the near-extinction of the Neanderthals on this shortcoming. |
| Circles of Stone[29] | 1997 | Joan Dahr Lambert | A band of early Homo sapiens team up with a remnant band of Neanderthals to defeat a hostile band of H.sapiens who are trying to take over their territory. Set in the Pyrenees, Neanderthals are dying out because they cannot give birth to enough children; their infant's heads are often too big. |
| The Silk Code[30] | 1999 | Paul Levinson | Neanderthals are still living in Basque country in 750 AD, and a few survive in the present world. |
| Raising Abel[31] | 2002 | W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear | Neanderthals, cloned back into existence in modern times, are the targets of assassination attempts by a Christian fundamentalist creationist sect. |
| Darwin's Radio[32] | 2003 | Greg Bear | A phenomenon which caused the Neanderthals to die off now threatens modern humans. |
| Manifold: Origin[33] | 2002 | Stephen Baxter | This novel prominently features Neanderthals from an alternate timeline. This is a sequel to Manifold: Space where Neanderthal characters also appear, in a narrower context, as genetically engineered slave laborers. |
| Heaven[34] | 2004 | Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen | This book features spacefaring Neanderthals who were removed from Earth by powerful aliens for unspecified reasons. |
| The Sky People[35] | 2006 | S. M. Stirling | Neanderthals inhabit an alternate-history Venus. |
| N-words[36] | 2013 | Ted Kosmatka | Neanderthals are resurrected by South Korean scientists en masse and intermarry with humans. |
| The Bone Labyrinth[37] | 2015 | James Rollins | The Watchers are a superior hybrid species of early humans and Neanderthals who disseminated knowledge and possibly interbred with people throughout the world. They also created the protected, hidden city of Atlantis, located in Ecuador. |
| The Last Neanderthal[38] | 2017 | Claire Cameron | |
| L'homme de Grand Soleil | 2018 | Jacques Gaubil | A novel about the discovery of a Neanderthal living in the frigid northern Quebec and the chain of events that ensues, effectively a portrait of modern humans |
Novel series
| Series | Author | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Riverworld | Philip José Farmer | A prominent Neanderthal character named Kazz (short from Kazzintuitruaabemss), who interacts with modern humans. |
| Earth's Children | Jean M. Auel | Neanderthals appear as characters including in the 1986 movie adaptation of the first book, The Clan of the Cave Bear |
| Quest for Tomorrow | William Shatner | Neanderthals were a primitive psychic species which caught the eye of a large alien empire, which decided to isolate the telepathic gene and transplanted several experimental subjects to another world. The original Neanderthals were then eliminated so that no one else could reproduce the experiment. The Homo sapiens were not modified. The transplanted Neanderthals eventually evolved into an industrial society; this took much longer than it did for humanity, as a telepathic species would have problems inventing complex technology without the use of writing, which would be an unnecessary tool for telepaths. In the story, Neanderthals eventually joined and transcended their physical shape, becoming a god-like being. |
| Thursday Next | Jasper Fforde | Neanderthals are brought back from extinction by cloning to act as medical test subjects thanks to their close relation to Homo sapiens but lack of legal status as human beings. |
| Neanderthal Parallax | Robert J. Sawyer | On an alternate world Neanderthals became the dominant species while Homo sapiens died out. |
Comics and manga
| Genre | Year | Publisher | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comic | 1968 | DC Comics | Anthro is the first Cro-Magnon boy, born in the Stone Age to Neanderthal parents. His father, Neanderthal caveman Ne-Ahn is the chief of his tribe, his mother a captive member of another tribe. |
| Comic | 1982 | Dark Horse Comics | A main character in Alfredo Castelli's comic book Martin Mystère is a Neanderthal called Java. Martin Mystère found him in Mongolia, home to the last population of Neanderthals. He is named after the Java Man, which are actually much earlier Homo erectus remains. |
| Manga | 2016 | Studio Gokumi | In Seton Academy: Join the Pack! the character Anne Anetani initially pretends to be a modern human, but is eventually revealed to be a Neanderthal. |
| Comic | 2005 | DC Comics | In Seven Soldiers of Victory, the New Gods (Metron, Lightray and Orion) came to Earth and adapted the pre-Neanderthal hominids, giving them "fire, inspiration and magic" and creating a semi-immortal king named Aurakles. The resulting Neanderthals then create a scientific civilization which covers the world, until it is destroyed by future time-travellers. They then revert to cave-dwelling and evolve into modern humans. |
| Title | Director | Format | Info |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Neanderthal Man | E. A. Dupont | 1953 film | Professor Groves turns himself into a Neanderthal man. |
| Looney Tunes: Mad as a Mars Hare | Chuck Jones | 1963 cartoon episode | Bugs Bunny is turned into a "Neanderthal Rabbit" after getting hit by a ray from a time-projector gun by Marvin the Martian. |
| Korg: 70,000 BC | Irving J. Moore and Christian Nyby | 1984–1985 TV series | features a family of Neanderthals during the Ice Age. |
| Caveman | Carl Gottlieb | 1981 film | Ringo Starr plays a Neanderthal-like caveman in the year "one zillion BC." He and the other characters speak in a "caveman language" and encounter dinosaurs, invent cooking, and learn to walk upright. |
| Quest for Fire | Jean-Jacques Annaud | 1981 film | features Neanderthals and a Cro-Magnon attempting to carry a vessel containing fire to the Neanderthal's tribe. |
| Iceman | Fred Schepisi | 1984 film | from a screenplay written by John Drimmer, depicts a frozen Neanderthal coming to life again in the 1980s at an arctic research station. |
| Clan of the Cave Bear | Michael Chapman | 1986 film | novel by Jean M. Auel about prehistoric times. It is the first book in the Earth's Children book series |
| Ghost Light | Alan Wareing | TV series | a 1989 three-part serial in the television series Doctor Who, a Neanderthal called "Nimrod" (Carl Forgione) is the butler of a Victorian era household. |
| Cro | TV series | Short-lived animated series centered around a Cro-Magnon child being adopted by a tribe of Neanderthals. | |
| Night at the Museum | Shawn Levy | 2006 film | four Neanderthals were put on display in the American Museum of Natural History. An ancient Egyptian tablet, the Tablet of Akhemrah, causes everything on display in the museum to come to life at night. The Neanderthals showed an interest in fire after it was shown to them by the night guard, Larry Daley. |
| The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest | Sherry Gunther | TV series | the mythical yetis are stated to be a relict population of Neanderthals. |
| Dinosaurs | Brian Henson | TV series | Generic "cavemen" have appeared in multiple episodes notably season 3 episodes, "The Discovery," and "Charlene and Her Amazing Humans." |
| You Can't Do That on Television | Geoffrey Darby | TV program | A Neanderthal-like family was a frequent recurring sketch in the children's show, In keeping with the theme of that particular episode, the sketch often parodied modern issues with coarse, overbearing parents outside of a pre-historic cave setting.[39] |
| GEICO Cavemen | Joe Lawson | advertisement | trademarked characters in a series of television advertisements for the auto insurance company GEICO that have aired from 2004 to present, featuring Neanderthal-like cavemen in a modern setting |
| The Croods | Chris Sanders Kirk DeMicco | 2013 animated film | features the titular family as they embark on a journey to find a new home along with a Cro-Magnon boy who has mastered fire and other "technologies" they had never previously encountered. |
| Walking with Beasts | Tim Haines | Documentary | One is charged by a woolly rhinoceros, but escapes, in part because of his stocky constitution. The climax of the episode is when the clan of Neanderthals attack the herd of mammoth as they turn back to the north. |
| Ao: The Last Hunter Ao, le dernier Néandertal | Jacques Malaterre | prehistoric film | Ao is the protagonist in a 2010 French prehistoric film[40] |
| Minions | Pierre Coffin Kyle Balda | 2015 animated film | A Neanderthal is one of the Minions' bosses. |
| The Armstrong & Miller Show | BBC | Comedy sketch show | Various sketches featuring Neanderthals dealing with modern-day situations such as marriage, dating, baby naming and job interviews. In one sketch they discover wine. They are also frequently trying to hunt mammoth, this despite the location being forest and thus unsuitable for such creatures. |
| William[41] | Tim Disney | 2019 film | In 2019, a Neanderthal is cloned using somatic cell nuclear transfer by two scientists. Various stages of his life are portrayed through age 18. His cognitive abilities and differences are studied and many conflicts arise due to his differences with homo sapiens society. |
| Primal | Genndy Tartakovsky | 2019 Adult Swim TV series | The main character, who is a Neanderthal caveman that goes by the name of Spear, tragically begins his story when his mate and two children are attacked and devoured by a pack of Tyrannosauroids that also evoked the traits of Alioramus and Ceratosaurus. Although he overcomes his initial urge to commit suicide, Spear is still learning to cope with the loss. Eventually, he develops a deep bond with Fang, a female Tyrannosaurus who lost her babies by the same pack, and is willing to make any personal sacrifice to protect her |
| Title | Year | Publisher | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Titan Quest' | 2006 | THQ Nordic | Neanderthals appear as enemies in an Ancient World where mythology and legends are real. In contrast to their real-world extinction, the Neanderthals of Titan Quest continue to thrive in central Asia where they attack and plunder caravans along the Silk Road.[42] |
| Far Cry: Primal | 2016 | Ubisoft | Neanderthals are among the primary factions in .[43] The game is set in an isolated valley around 10,000 BC during the end of the Epipalaeolithic and beginning of the Mesolithic period in Europe.[44] The game's Neanderthals are a remnant group that has survived long after other Neanderthals have gone extinct,[43] though they too are afflicted by a disease and slowly dying out.[45] |
President Joe Biden condemned Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) and Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves (R) for ″Neanderthal thinking″ in ignoring health considerations in dropping mask mandates and removing other restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in March 2021.[46][47]
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