The Neanderthals: From Dawn to Decadence

Larry G. writes:

Neanderthals are extinct, and there is little or none of their DNA in the human genome. Anthropologists don’t like to talk about it, but the paintings on the walls of caves in France tell the story.

Neanderthals were a large, big-brained and robust species. They had colonized Europe, invented fire, discovered the sacred, and thrived for thousands of years. But eventually, their hunter-gatherer society began to break down. The females began to reject their traditional roles, insisting they be allowed to hunt game with the men. This caused problems, not the least of which was a declining population, and the few children that were born having no one to rear them. The elders decided to fill the gap by allowing members of a primitive, low-brow species of Homo living in Africa to immigrate to their territory. The newcomers raised the Neanderthal children, but were soon found cleaning caves, gathering fruits and vegetables and tending to overgrown plants as well. Many of the tribes objected, but the elders insisted the newcomers were needed to perform “jobs Neanderthals won’t do.”

You know the rest. The newcomers had children of their own, and soon began to outnumber the Neanderthals in many areas. They began to demand full Neanderthal rights, which they just used to agitate for the immigration of more of their own species. In time, the newcomers became the majority, displacing and—eventually—exterminating the Neanderthals.

Luckily for us, we can learn from history, and will never let anything like that happen to us.

- end of initial entry -

John B. writes:

I see Larry G. has made a joke in which the Neanderthals are spoken of as the creators of the cave paintings of Europe.

I’m not well-versed in these topics, but I think he has this backwards. It’s Cro-Magnon man who is “white” and who created the cave paintings. Neanderthal is a more-primitive type—a type that was displaced by Cro-Magnon.

LA replies:

Of course the Neanderthals were more primitive, and of course Cro-Magnon man created the cave paintings. Larry G.’s post was a piece of humor. He was portraying the Neanderthals as being like us, becoming decadent, adopting feminism, and welcoming the Other, the Cro-Magnon.

John replies:

Yes—I knew it was supposed to be humorous; but it struck me as Rush-Limbaughesque—dangerously getting things backwards. In my mind, I was hearing one of your critics or opponents say:

“Meanwhile, at VFR, the Out of Africa theory is being disproved by Lawrence Auster, a blogger whose astute correspondents enlighten us with quips about the Neanderthals and their cave paintings.”

LA replies:

But the whole thing is a satire. Even the title (from the title of Jacques Barzun’s book about the history of the West) is obviously satirical. Since the statement, “Neanderthals became fat and lazy and let the women hunt with the men instead of taking care of the children and let in Cro-Magnon immigrants to care for their children and so were dispossessed by them,” is obviously satirical, wouldn’t people see that the statement, “Neanderthals made cave paintings,” is satirical as well? And if some people don’t get that the first statement is satirical, they’re hopelessly clueless and we can’t do much for them in any case.

John B. replies:

A joke of the sort Larry G. wanted to make would have worked if he’d done it the other way around:

TEXT OF CRO-MAGNON CAVE PAINTING TRANSLATED:

“AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR NEANDERTHALS VOTED DOWN”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 17, 2009 09:51 PM | Send