Neanderthals in popular culture

An early (1888) conception of what a Neanderthal male may have looked like; reconstructions such as this greatly influenced the portrayal of "Neanderthals" in popular culture.
Artist's conception of a Neanderthal (date unknown)
Le Moustier Neanderthals by Charles R. Knight (1920)
Neanderthal statue in Veringenstadt, Germany (1960s)
Sculptural family group at Krapina Neanderthal Museum (Croatia)
A 21st-century portrayal commissioned by NASA

Neanderthals have been portrayed in popular culture since the early 20th century. Early depictions were based on notions of the proverbially crude caveman; since the latter part of the 20th century, some depictions were modeled on more sympathetic reconstructions of life in the Middle Paleolithic era.

In popular idiom, the word "Neanderthal" is sometimes used as an insult, to suggest that a person combines a deficiency in intelligence and a tendency to use brute force. It may also imply that the person is old-fashioned or attached to outdated ideas, much in the same way as the terms "dinosaur" or "Yahoo" are also used.

There are a number of sympathetic literary portrayals of Neanderthals, as in the novel The Inheritors by William Golding, Isaac Asimov's short story "The Ugly Little Boy", or the more serious treatment by Finnish palaeontologist Björn Kurtén (in several works including Dance of the Tiger), and British psychologist Stan Gooch in his hybrid-origin theory of humans.

Novels and short stories

Science fiction has depicted Neanderthals in novels and short stories in several ways:

Films and TV series

References

  1. "The Adventures of Cletus". Archived from the original on January 17, 2014.
  2. [YCDTOTV.com FAQ "31. Which sets were used for YCDTOTV sketches?" - see "The cave" under Miscellaneous sets. Note: do not correct url formatting as per Wikipedia's Blacklist, June 2010]
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