page_title: Neanderthals in popular culture
hierarchical_section_title: Neanderthals in popular culture
caption_attribution_description: English: First reconstruction of Neanderthal man Español: Primera reconstrucción del Hombre de Neandertal
context_page_description: Neanderthals have been portrayed in popular culture since the early 20th century. Early depictions were based on notions of the proverbially crude, low-browed caveman; since the latter part of the 20th century, some depictions were modeled on more sympathetic reconstructions of life in the Middle Paleolithic era.
  In popular idiom, the word "Neanderthal" is sometimes used as an insult, to suggest that a person combines a deficiency in intelligence and a tendency to use brute force. It may also imply that the person is old-fashioned or attached to outdated ideas, much in the same way as the terms "dinosaur" or "Yahoo" are also used.
  There are a number of sympathetic literary portrayals of Neanderthals, as in the novel The Inheritors by William Golding, Isaac Asimov's short story "The Ugly Little Boy", or the more serious treatment by Finnish palaeontologist Björn Kurtén, and British psychologist Stan Gooch in his hybrid-origin theory of humans.
context_section_description: Neanderthals have been portrayed  in popular culture since the early 20th century. Early depictions were based on notions of the proverbially crude, low-browed caveman; since the latter part of the 20th century, some depictions were modeled on more sympathetic reconstructions of life in the Middle Paleolithic era.
  In popular idiom, the word "Neanderthal" is sometimes used as an insult, to suggest that a person combines a deficiency in intelligence and a tendency to use  brute force. It may also imply that the person is old-fashioned or attached to outdated ideas, much in the same way as the terms "dinosaur" or "Yahoo" are also used.
  There are a number of sympathetic literary portrayals of Neanderthals, as in the novel The Inheritors by William Golding, Isaac Asimov's short story "The Ugly Little Boy", or the more serious treatment by Finnish palaeontologist Björn Kurtén (in several works including Dance of the Tiger), and British psychologist Stan Gooch in his hybrid-origin theory of humans.
caption: An early (1888) conception of what a Neanderthal male may have looked like; reconstructions such as this greatly influenced the portrayal of "Neanderthals" in popular culture.
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