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.

Wax model of a Neanderthal, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. 1929

Le Moustier Neanderthals by Charles R. Knight (1920) by Charles R. Knight (1920)

Neanderthal statue in Veringenstadt , Germany (1960s)

Neanderthals have been portrayed in popular culture since the early 20th century. Early depictions were based on notions of the proverbially crude, low-browed caveman; since the latter part of the 20th century, some depictions were modeled on more sympathetic reconstructions of life in the Middle Paleolithic era.[1][2]

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 It may also imply that the person is old-fashioned or attached to outdated ideas, much in the same way as the terms "dinosaur" or "Yahoo" are also used.[3]

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.

Origins [ edit ]

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 he had Homo sapiens introduced as a species without diagnosis and description, was the authoritative encyclopedia of the time. The notion of extinct species was unheard of and if so, would have contradicted the paradigm of the immutability of species and the physical world, which was the infallible product of a single and deliberate act of a creator god. 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". The discovery in the Neandertal he interpreted as to be within the range of variation of modern humans.[4]

In mid 19th century Germany biological sciences were dominated by Rudolf Virchow, who described the bones as a "remarkable individual phenomenon" and as "plausible individual deformation".[5] This statement is the reason why the characteristics of the Neanderthals were perceived as a form of pathological skeleton change of modern man in German-speaking countries for many years to come.

August Franz Josef Karl Mayer, an associate of Virchow emphasizes 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]

Novels and short stories [ edit ]

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





Films and TV series [ edit ]

Video games [ edit ]

Neanderthals appear as enemies in Titan Quest which is set 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. [20]

which is set in an Ancient World where mythology and legends are real. In contrast to their real-world extinction, the Neanderthals of continue to thrive in central Asia where they attack and plunder caravans along the Silk Road. Neanderthals are among the primary factions in Far Cry: Primal.[21] The game is set in an isolated valley around 10,000 BC during the end of the Upper Paleolithic and beginning of the Mesolithic period in Europe.[22] The game's Neanderthals are a remnant group that has survived long after other Neanderthals have gone extinct,[21] though they too are afflicted by a disease and slowly dying out.[23]

See also [ edit ]