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A talk with my cousin made me rethink the whole 'caveman' idea
He's a grad student in anthropology and said the term 'caveman' is a huge oversimplification that makes us think of dumb brutes. He pointed out that Neanderthals in Spain were making complex glue from birch bark tar 200,000 years ago, which is a pretty advanced tech. Anyone else have a simple idea about ancient people that got totally flipped?
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bencampbell5mo ago
I saw a Nat Geo article that said Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers and tools, not just dump them in a hole. That suggests they had rituals and beliefs about an afterlife, which is way more complex than the grunting brute image. So yeah, your cousin's point about their social structures makes total sense when you look at stuff like that.
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theagarcia7mo ago
But come on, they still lived in caves. The glue is cool, but it's one trick. It doesn't mean they had cities or wrote books. Calling them cavemen just points out the huge gap between them and us.
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kevin_roberts417mo ago
Your cousin is right on the money. We picture them just hunting and gathering, but forget the social complexity needed to pass that glue recipe down through generations. That's a whole chain of teaching and learning we never talk about. It makes you wonder what other skills, like storytelling or basic medicine, were being shared around those fires. The "caveman" label really does rob them of their culture.
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