CAVEman

A caveman is a based upon widespread but anachronistic and conflated concepts of the way in which Neanderthals, early modern humans, or archaic humans may have looked and behaved. The term originates out of assumptions about the association between early humans and caves, most clearly demonstrated in cave painting. The term is not used in academic research.

Cavemen are typically portrayed as wearing shaggy animal hides, and capable of cave painting like behaviourally modern humans of the last glacial period. Anachronistically, they are simultaneously shown armed with rocks or cattle bone clubs, unintelligent, and aggressive, traits more like those of Neanderthals or of archaic humans from hundreds of thousands of years before this period.

The image of them living in caves arises from the fact that caves are where the preponderance of artifacts have been found from European Stone Age cultures, although this most likely reflects the degree of preservation that caves provide over the millennia rather than an indication of their typical form of shelter. Until the last glacial period, most hominins did not live in caves, being nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes living in a variety of temporary structures, such as tents (see Jerry D. Moore, "The Prehistory of Home", University of California Press, 2012) and wooden huts (e.g. at Ohalo). Their societies were similar to those of many modern day indigenous peoples. A few genuine cave dwellings did exist, however, such as at Mount Carmel in Israel.

Caveman-like heraldic "wild men" were found in European and African iconography for hundreds of years. During the Middle Ages, these creatures were generally depicted in art and literature as bearded and covered in hair, and often wielding clubs and dwelling in caves. While wild men were always depicted as living outside of civilization, there was an ongoing debate as to whether they were human or animal.

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