Caveman
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| Cavemen are portrayed as wearing butty animal hides, armed with rocks or cattle bone [[club (weapon)|clubs]], unintelligent, and [[aggressive]]. Cavemen are often shown as living in caves, possibly because that is where the preponderance of ritual paintings and artifacts have been found. Although it is probable that Neanderthals and early humans lived elsewhere as well as in caves, artifacts proving this would have been destroyed over millennia, while that which had been left in caves survived to be discovered. Nevertheless, expressions such as "living in a cave" have become cultural metaphors for a modern human who supposedly displays traits of brutishness or extreme ignorance. See also [[troglodyte]]. | Cavemen are portrayed as wearing butty animal hides, armed with rocks or cattle bone [[club (weapon)|clubs]], unintelligent, and [[aggressive]]. Cavemen are often shown as living in caves, possibly because that is where the preponderance of ritual paintings and artifacts have been found. Although it is probable that Neanderthals and early humans lived elsewhere as well as in caves, artifacts proving this would have been destroyed over millennia, while that which had been left in caves survived to be discovered. Nevertheless, expressions such as "living in a cave" have become cultural metaphors for a modern human who supposedly displays traits of brutishness or extreme ignorance. See also [[troglodyte]]. | ||
| - | ==Stereotypes in culture== | ||
| - | In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ''[[The Lost World (Conan Doyle novel)|The Lost World]]'' (1912) ape-men are depicted in a fight with modern humans. [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]] adapted this idea for ''[[The Land That Time Forgot]]'' (1915). A genre of [[caveman movies]] emerged, typified by [[D. W. Griffith]]'s ''[[Man's Genesis]]'' (1912); they inspired [[Charles Chaplin]]'s satiric take, in ''[[His Prehistoric Past]]'' (1914) as well as ''[[Brute Force (1914 film)|Brute Force]]'' (1914), ''[[The Cave Man]]'' (1912), and later ''[[Cave Man]]'' (1934). From the descriptions, Griffith's characters can't talk (handy for a silent film), and use sticks and stones for weapons, while the hero of ''Cave Man'' is a [[Tarzan]]-like figure who fights dinosaurs. | ||
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A caveman is a popular stock character based upon stereotyped concepts of the way in which early prehistoric humans or homininans may have looked and behaved. The term is sometimes used colloquially to refer to the Neanderthals or Cro-Magnon (i.e., Homo sapiens of the Paleolithic era). The term has been discouraged in serious use, due to its inaccuracy and dependence on certain misconceptions about early humans.
Archetype
Popular conceptions of cavemen can be seen as reflecting either the brutal savage image of the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who famously held that the life of the human being without civilization was "...poore, nasty, brutish and short"; or, on the other hand, the noble savage vision of uncivilized man, popularly associated with Rousseau.
Caveman-like Heraldic "wild men" were found in European iconography for hundreds of years. During the Middle Ages, these creatures were generally depicted in art and literature as bearded and covered in hair, and often wielding clubs and dwelling in caves. While wild men were always depicted as living outside of civilization, there was an ongoing debate as to whether they were human or animal.
Cavemen are portrayed as wearing butty animal hides, armed with rocks or cattle bone clubs, unintelligent, and aggressive. Cavemen are often shown as living in caves, possibly because that is where the preponderance of ritual paintings and artifacts have been found. Although it is probable that Neanderthals and early humans lived elsewhere as well as in caves, artifacts proving this would have been destroyed over millennia, while that which had been left in caves survived to be discovered. Nevertheless, expressions such as "living in a cave" have become cultural metaphors for a modern human who supposedly displays traits of brutishness or extreme ignorance. See also troglodyte.
See also
- Cro-Magnon
- Human evolution
- Neanderthal
- Paleolithic
- Neanderthals in popular culture
- Cavemen in popular culture
