Neandertals and Humans in Popular Culture
Neandertals and “Cro-Magnon” (early AMH) have long held the popular imagination. From Boule’s unfortunate depiction of the old man at La Chappelle as a stopped, brooding primitive, to the tyranny of the Paleodiet, pop culture is frequently drawing attention on our hominin cousins and early forms of our species to make sense of our place in the world. This paper provides a critical analysis of Neandertals and humans in the popular culture. This critical analysis will be based on the film The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), which is one of the films that provides a representation of pop culture of Neandertal and/or anatomically modern humans. Peer reviewed journal articles relating to the topic will also be incorporated in this critical analysis of the film’s depiction of Neandertals, AMH, and their interactions.
Film Depictions of Neandertals and AMH
The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986) is a classic, historical novel that was written by Jean M. Auel as the first book series in Earth’s Children. The author of the book, Auel, conducted archaeological and paleontological research for the book from her public library and through other measures. Some of these measures that helped in developing content for the book include attending archeological conferences/workshops and conducting tours on sites with information from active field archeologists. The film, which is derived from this book, provides significant...
Bibliography
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Villa, Paola & Roebroeks, Wil. “Neandertal Demise: An Archaeological Analysis of the Modern Human Superiority Complex.” PLOS One 9, no. 4 (2014).
Neandertal Share Planet with Modern HumanNeandertal�s physical formation differed from modern humans in terms of muscles, skeletal structure, and height. They were stronger, had muscular bodies, and a height of 1.50 m to 1,75 m (Hendry). They weighed approximately between 64-82 kg on average. Even if their height extended to even taller meters in later life, their weight remained almost the same. They had wide hips and shoulders. Also, they
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Human evolution is the origin and evolution of Homo sapiens as a species that can be distinguished from other hominids, great apes, and mammals. Neanderthals are a unique species as they can be either classified as a subspecies of Homo sapiens as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, or can be classified as a distinct and separate species as Homo neanderthalensis. Though Neanderthals are presently considered an extinct species, evidence indicates that H.
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A 1400-year-old volcanic or other induced "winter" likely spurred the divergence possibly even later than 150,000 years ago, brought about by an explosion of Toba in Sumatra. The elimination of this bottleneck 10, 000 years later allowed another wave of emigration from Africa. Volcanic winter may have succeeded in the reductions of populations to levels low enough for founder effects, genetic drift and local adaptations to produce rapid population
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