HG Wells is probably best known for his story about an alien invasion, “The War of the Worlds” and his other fantastic science fiction stories. But he also worked on some lesser-known prehistoric fiction. In 1921, he published a story about early modern humans and Neanderthals called “The Grizzly Folk“
A group of primitive modern people are walking around in it. Wells makes it clear that he doesn’t think they’re particularly sophisticated. They engage in anxious dialogue such as:
“Whoops!” One suddenly pointed out.
“Whoops!” cried his brother.
But though these “true men,” as Wells calls them, were “still savage, prone to violence, and convulsed in their lusts and desires,” they claimed, they were recognizably human.
“We can understand something of what was going on in their minds, those of us who can remember our childhood fears, desires, fantasies and superstitions,” he says.
In contrast, the antagonists of this particular story, the “terrible men,” are not recognizable people at all. These are Neanderthals, and, Wells imagines, they were less intelligent than “true men”; They “had no idea” and “did not understand.” They were less social than true men, and unconsciously violent. In the story, they like to make out with the children of “real men”.
And, in Wells’ version of events, they don’t treat their own children any better. He wrote descriptions such as:
“A man may have gone with a woman; Perhaps they parted in winter and came together in summer; When his sons grew old enough to bother him, the horrible man killed them or drove them away. If he killed them, he might have eaten them. If they let him escape, they might come back to kill him. Horrible people can have long irrational memories and very specific motives.”
In short: Wells assumed Neanderthals were mindless brutes. And he wasn’t quite alone. For nearly a century, this was the prevailing narrative about Neanderthals. It was present not only in Wells’ imagination, but also in scientific papers.
In recent decades, we have come to understand that this description almost of course wrong. Researchers have reexamined old Neanderthal bones and tools and realized that our preconceived notions about this early human population were misguided.
Still, the myth of the ignorant Neanderthal is so pervasive that often the headlines lead with it. “Neanderthals were no less intelligent than modern humans, scientists have found” read a Guardian headline. Or, from HowStuffWorks: “More proof Neanderthals weren’t stupid: They made their own strings“
The question is: Where did this idea come from? Why did researchers think Neanderthals were initially so unintelligent?
“It turns out it has a deep past,” said Paige Madison, a science writer who wrote A journal article on this topicand is writing a forthcoming book on human origins. “There’s a reason why we think of Neanderthals as such brutish, dumb, inferior Homo sapiens.”
We spoke to Madison as part of its latest episode inexplicableVox’s science podcast, which shows how hard it is to really know anything about Neanderthals.
My conversation with Madison follows, edited for clarity and length.
Bird Pinkerton
Don’t leave me in suspense. What is the deep, dark reason we thought of Neanderthals as dumb?
Paige Madison
Hence the first Neanderthal fossils [recognized as such] came out of the ground in the 1850s. And you have a combination of these elements that shaped how people thought about Neanderthals and even how they thought about themselves.
This was [a time] You had all these assumptions about colonialism, and what diversity meant to people, and what it meant to take over other cultures and extract wealth from them. There have been many assumptions about some groups of living people being superior to other groups. These hypotheses entered the science of Neanderthals. [They] It was like taking [their] Worldviews on humans and applying it to these fossils in the past.
Bird Pinkerton
Is there a specific example that helps explain how late 19th century culture viewed bones?
Paige Madison
At that time you had this new science that was really trying to put living people into categories and understand their characteristics and differences. The form it took was the measurement of the skull. There scientists collected skulls from around the world and tried to measure these variations. One was the presence of a frown, which is something that varies somewhat with living people, and the idea that [a brow ridge] were more primitive.
And then the presence of a straight forehead. They thought it had to do with an area of the brain that was more developed. And so they would generally classify most Europeans, for example, as having these steep foreheads, and they would use that as evidence that these groups were superior.
These differences are minor and certainly not meaningful in terms of intelligence and knowledge, but at the time they were seen as incredibly meaningful and a way you could differentiate these groups.
So the Neanderthals then came out of the ground and fell into that worldview. These European scientists have been classified as the lower end of human intelligence where they fit right in. More “primitive” ends. And this automatically carries with it the implication that these were primitive creatures.
Bird Pinkerton
Where did the perception of humpbacked Neanderthals come from? Beyond just their stupidity, I think they’re pulling this puzzle. Slumping.
Paige Madison
Yes! So this is the story you find in textbooks, where basically this French scientist, Marceline Boule, Neanderthal skeleton misinterpreted. And as the story goes, he caught one of the first truly complete specimens and he looked at it and decided they were these hunched-over brutes that were so dumb they couldn’t really stand up straight.
But I think he took this cruel idea that was already there and applied it to their posture. And so of course it is significant. It partly shapes how we think about them. But he certainly didn’t invent it by any means.
Bird Pinkerton
understood So a variety of European scientists created this narrative of Neanderthals as dummies, who were somehow inferior to other early modern humans. How did we begin to push back that story?
Paige Madison
It certainly wasn’t just one thing. Rarely in the history of science do we ever see big ideas change because of one thing. So just as Baul did not create this image [of the brutish Neanderthal] Alone, it was not destroyed by one scientist alone, rather it was a confluence of factors that happened at the same time.
One of these was that World War II was coming to an end, and the consequences of race science’s participation in World War II were really clear. So, for a historian, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that you see people starting to go back to these dumb, brute, primitive ideas. [of Neanderthals] Just at a time when people are rejecting even the racial concept of living people.
Another thing was, the scientists actually went back to the museum in Paris, where the skeleton that Marceline Boule had seen was kept… and they looked at it a second time. They noticed that it was an elderly man, and it was very obvious that the bones had signs of arthritis.
Bird Pinkerton
So basically it was like if you took people 10,000 years in the future like a super arthritic old man and were like, “Yeah, every person in the 2000s was just like this 72-year-old man.”
Paige Madison
exactly And it’s also worth noting, the symptoms of skeletal arthritis are well recognized and Boll probably should have been able to recognize them. So it kind of shows how our expectations can lead us to a certain conclusion and push us in that direction even when the evidence isn’t quite there.
That’s why you see these interpretations change over time — because there’s more to the interpretation. It’s not as simple as looking at bones and immediately knowing what they mean. It is being filtered through other information, both scientific and cultural. You know, we can’t turn off that lens at any point.
Bird Pinkerton
So… it’s a bit like Baul’s ideas were accepted easily in his time because they understood the cultural context that they were a part of, but later, because of the evidence and partly because of the narrative, they were rejected. The race of the displaced people was however the question of science. They began to question the ethnoscience applied to Neanderthals. And so suddenly it was almost like it was the bowl that opened up the space to question this image [of Neanderthals]?
Paige Madison
exactly Suddenly previous ideas about Neanderthals didn’t make much sense.
Bird Pinkerton
It seems like what you’re saying is that our perception of Neanderthals has always been less about Neanderthals and more about ourselves, or our current cultural moment? Like, if you read what’s written historically about Neanderthals, you learn less about Neanderthals and you just learn more about scientists and the society they lived in?
Paige Madison
That’s exactly what I would argue. Some scholars say it’s like holding a mirror up to us, because Neanderthals were so closely related to humans today.
I think what’s interesting about this—and you’ll hear this from many historians of science—is that in the past it was much easier to accuse. their To err on the side of their biases or their cultural or political leanings, but in fact, what most historians and philosophers of science would argue is that it is still going on. It’s just hard to see at the present time.
Bird Pinkerton
How do modern scientists defend against this in their efforts to better understand Neanderthals?
Paige Madison
I think the best thing most scientists can do at this point is to be very clear about what their biases might be, what the limitations might be, and really just lay them out on the table so that we can test it as best we can. that we can
A really powerful way that I see this playing out in science [scientists] Recognize that their worldviews shape the kinds of questions they ask and the way they ask those questions
So, for example, if you find artefacts in a cave, and you assume that artefacts are something that only Homo sapiens made and Neanderthals weren’t capable of doing… then you never even question it. [“could Neanderthals have made this?”]. You just ask “Which Homo sapiens did it and when?”
But if you go into a cave and see that there’s art, you might ask, “Who did it?” in a more open way.
This is something I do with scientists [on] A lot — just thinking about their starting points, their questions, ways to open or close certain possibilities already.
