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Early Humans in Pop Culture

  • By Evan Hadingham
  • Posted 10.26.09
  • NOVA

In popular culture, our ancient ancestors are usually depicted either as noble savages or savage brutes—with Neanderthals often featuring as the brutes. In this slide show, take a look at portraits from the 1870s to today, and see how over the past century, despite advances in the scientific understanding of early humans, the image of the shaggy caveman endures.

Launch Interactive

For 150 years, pop culture has offered distorted images of our ancestors.

Evan Hadingham is NOVA’s Senior Science Editor.

Credits

Images

(L'Homme Primitif)
Courtesy Evan Hadingham
(caveman sketch from Harper's Weekly)
© Bettmann/CORBIS
(sketch from The Illustrated London News)
© Chris Hellier/CORBIS
(Neanderthal boy)
© Bettmann/CORBIS
(Field Museum display)
© Bettmann/CORBIS
("Nature's Evolutionary Design in Noses")
© Photolibrary
(Buster Keaton)
© Bettmann/CORBIS
("The Neanderthal Man" movie poster)
from movieposterdb.com
(Neanderthal painting)
© Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
(Ron Perlman)
© JP Laffont/Sygma/Corbis
(Geico caveman)
© Joshua Gates Weisberg/epa/Corbis

Related Links

  • Becoming Human Part 1

    First Steps: Six million years ago, what set our ancestors on the path from ape to human?

  • Building Faces From Fossils

    Paleoartist Viktor Deak works from casts of fossil skulls to put faces to Turkana Boy and other ancient hominids.

  • Who's Who In Human Evolution

    Meet your increasingly distant cousins in this clickable illustration of the past seven million years.

  • Depicting Our Ancestors

    In this audio slide show, filmmaker Graham Townsley describes what it takes to bring ancient hominids to life.

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