Bad Hair Days in the Paleolithic: Modern (Re)Constructions of the Cave Man

Author(s): Judith C. Berman

Source: American Anthropologist , Jun., 1999, Vol. 101, No. 2 (Jun., 1999), pp. 288-304
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association

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JUDITH C. BERMAN 1
Department of Anthropology
Hunter College, CUNY
New York, NY 10021

Bad Hair Days in the Paleolithic:

Modern (Re)Constructions of the Cave Man

Although we have never seen Paleolithic humans in the flesh, we recognize them immediately in illustrations, art, car-
toons, and museum displays. The familiar iconography of the "Cave Man" often depicts our early human ancestors with
longish, unkempt hair. However, this conventionalized image is not congruent with available archaeological data on the
appearance of Upper Paleolithic humans. The lengthy iconographic history of representations of our prehistoric humans is
rather a palimpsest of beliefs about the origins of humans, "natural man," human nature, primitive humans, and the savage
"Other": a history of discourses about human evolution, human language, and the place of humans in the natural world.
These images are traced in their anthropological, evolutionary, and philosophical contexts from medieval art through re-
cent scientific illustrations, art, cartoons, and murals, and their influence on the scientiElc interpretation of our ancestors is
assessed. [Cave Man, Paleolithic, evolution, primitive, illustration]

Parsimonius: unwilling to use resources

From his first "scientific" appearance in 1873 (Fig-
ure 1), the "Cave Man" 2 seems utterly familiar. A1-
though he has never been seen in the flesh, we in-
stantly recognize him in illustrations, art, films, cartoons,
and museum displays. His place in human evolutionary
time is signaled by several attributes, most of which appear
concurrently: he is found in or in front of caves, or in a wild
setting confronting savage beasts. He is equipped with
(and archaeologically best identified by) stone, wooden, or
bone implements, usually associated with hunting or com-
bat. In scientific illustration, he is often quite serious in de-
meanor, as seems to befit the arduous circumstances of his
life. He is attired in fur, which is often draped in ways that
shield the wearer from neither the weather nor untoward
gazes. Accessories, when they exist, consist of bone, ant-
ler, or claw jewelry. His hair is particularly noteworthy: he
sports shoulder-length or longer, often unstyled and even
unkempt, hair on his head and frequently is bearded. Sig-
nificant body hair is often depicted.
This image is so familiar to us that it is difficult to think
of Paleolithic3 humans as looking any other way. And yet
our actual referents for this image are extremely scarce or
are belied by the extant paleoarchaeological record. Cer-
tainly many paleoanthropologists, archaeologists, physical
anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists in the latter
part of this century have contended that Upper Paleolithic
humans were "just like us." Conversely, the image of the
Cave Man is notably data-independent, and is, I suggest,
almost entirely based on a specific visual construct that has
remained remarkably stable for three millennia and more.
What then accounts for the persistence of this counter-im-
age that powerfully negates paleoanthropological reality?
Visual conventions or stereotypes provide both artist
and audience with a parsimonious mode of expression: a
world of meaning through a single image. Conventions im-
mediately, simply, and effortlessly convey the elements of
a situation or story so that we can properly "read" it. The
economics of popular images, such as cartoons, force reli-
ance on visual shorthand, on a common iconographic vo-
cabulary, in order to communicate with an audience. With-
out this shorthand we would not be in on the joke. But
although conventions appear enface to simplify and clar-
ify, they contain complex and often contradictory mes-
sages. Readings of images are psychologically, culturally,
and socially conditioned and may bear only a contingent
relationship to reality.
Some images seem to take on a life of their own, to persist
over long stretches of time. These images endure because
they readily sustain polyvalent, mutable readings, because
they are psychologically potent projections, and because they
provide visual support for histories and narratives. They also
may be used to create and maintain boundaries. In scientific
and popular discourse, visual imagery is particularly impor-
tant, for, as Myers (1988:231) has argued, 'nthe iconography
of a science is more likely to have an impact on the public
than the words or mathematics, which may be incomprehen-
sible to them" (see, for example, Moser 1992; Myers 1988;
Rudwick 1976, 1988, 1992 on the relationship between the
visualization of scientific data and the effects of that visu-
alization on the science itself and on its audience).

American Anthropologist 101(2):288-304. Copyright C) 1999, American Anthropological Association

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 BERMAN / BAD HAIR DAYS IN THE PALEOLITHIC 289

Figure 1. Harper's Weekly, XVII(864):617, July 19, 1873.

The distinction between the scientific and popular Cave
Man haFs diverged only recently. However, the shaggy,
grunting Cave Man, who fights dinosaurs, taLks "rock,"
and woos prehistoric-bikini-clad Cave Women with a club,
is firmly in place, and it is easy to see why. To take one me-
dium as an example, in this centuty the public has been
saturated with over 150 Cave Man films, animated car-
toons, and television shows, beginning with the 1912 D.W.
Griffith silent, Man's Genesis. These films are a sexy mix
of beefcake, cheesecake, and monsters and encompass al-
most all film genres, from comedy to horror.4
These filmed images are supported and reified by other
popular media. For example, Griffith's films, Man 's Gene-
sis and its 1913 sequel, Brute Force, were based on the
1897 ur-Cave Man novel The Story of Ab, by Stanley Wa-
terloo (Wagenknecht and Slide 1975:10). Griffith also
used Jack London's illustrated 1907 novel, Before Adam,
which, in turn, was alleged to be a plagiarization of Water-
loo's work (Kingman 1979:118; Tavernier-Courbin 1983:
13). The ill-received Darryl Hannah film, The Clan of the
Cave Bear, was based on the wildly successful first novel
of the same name in Jean Auel's popular series, Earth's
Children (with more books to come). And of course, dino-
saurs and Cave Men mix in the funnies: viz. Alley Oop
(who, since 1933, has "a chauffeur that's a genuine dino-
saur"5), B.C. (since 1958), the Flintstones (since 1960),
and thousands of other cartoons.
These examples show that while the Cave Man is vasu-
alized stereotypically, both in scientific and popular cul-
ture, he is read in many different ways. These readings, as I
will tty to show, reflect our views of ourselves in terms of
our place in nature, our origins, and perhaps our destiny.
The Cave Man's long, polemical pedigree is a product of
centuries of debate about the origins of humans, "natural
man," human nature, and primitive humans and comprises
discourses about human evolution, human language, and
the place of humans in the natural world.6
Certainly this essay is not the Elrst attempt to deconstruct
the Western image of the Cave Man or the "primitive" and
point out how the concept is more a reflection of Western

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290 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST * VOL. 101, NO. 2 * JUNE 1999
notions than on-the-ground reality (see, e.g., Clifford
1988:189-214; Edwards 1992; Gombrich 1960; Kuper
1988; Lutz and Collins 1993; Moser 1992; Moser and
Gamble 1997; Price 1989; Raymond 1990; Stoczkowski
1990, 1997). However, the Cave Man differs from the
primitive in that he is invisible through the barrier of time,
simultaneously real and imagined, unexploitable, and
available for appropriation. His image is always a (re)con-
struction and an opportunity for fantasy. In this paper, I
shall attempt to interpret aspects of his iconographic his-
tory: his longish, wild hair and hairy body.
The Cave Man's hairiness is one of the elements of the
construction of an "imaginary prehistory" (Stoczkowski
1997:256), as identified in several recent analyses, notably
by Stoczkowski (1990, 1992, 1994, 1997; see also Moser
and Gamble 1997). This prehistory is composed of two
master narratives. One is the ascent of humans from their
aiimal origins to becoming "masters of nature." Lovejoy
and Boas ([1935]1997; see also Panofsky 1972:4041)
identify this as "hard primitivism," the ascent from a bes-
tial state. Early humans in such works as Lucretius' first
century C.E. work, De rerum natura (Book V, 925-1010,
as quoted in Lovejoy and Boas [1935]1997:225-228), are
depicted as hairy, muscular hunters, that is, as Cave Men.
As Stoczkowski (1990: 115-120,1997:253) notes, this mo-
tif was picked up and embroidered by the philosophes of
the Enlightenment. In the alternate "soft primitivism" nar-
rative (Lovejoy and Boas [1935]1997:23-102), humans
descend from a Golden Age to a degenerated state.
Stoczkowski (1997:256) contends that "this imaginary
prehistory continues to have a life of its own today only
through sheer apathy." However, I suggest that it is not
apathy that supports the visual iconography of the Cave
Man, but rather the powerful meanings behind the image
as well as an endless array of present and past cultural
icons that reinforce and reify its presence. The Cave Man
is, in part, a projection of the wild, untamed, uninhibited,
aggressive self a projection, in fact, that explains that self
by histoncizing its "uncivilized" elements. That is, the
Cave Man relieves the anxiety of the uncivilized parts of
oneself by projecting them outward and backwards in time.
The Cave Man can be both debased and noble, expressing
nostalgia for our noble animal nature, as well as the nega-
tion of civilized society.
In this essay, I shall attempt to unpack one element used
in the construction of the Cave Man image, focusing on
one of the Cave Man's most consistent and meaningful at-
tributes: his hair. I first consider some of the psychological
and anthropological aspects of hair itself and its use as a
marker for the Cave Man. Next, I review some of the ex-
tant Paleolithic data from mobilary art, wall engravings,
and paintings on self-representations of early humans, in-
cluding hairstyles. I then discuss selected aspects of the
iconographic history of two of the images of the hairy
Cave Man, from the imagery of the "Wild Man" in medie-
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val art through the evolutionary models of the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. I conclude with some reflec-
tions on how the image shapes our thinking about our pre-
historic ancestors and ourselves.
Hair as Sign and Symbol
Hair, like other parts of the human body, is laden with psy-
chological, social, philosophical, and emotional meaning
(e.g., Eilberg-Schwartz and Doniger 1995; Levine 1995).
However, hair differs from olher parts of ie body in several
ways. It can be readily altered without physical pain as often
as desired; it regenerates after having been altezd; and it is
visible at a social distance (Wobst 1977). Hair is the body's
most accessible site for grooming, decoration, and symbolic
marlting; it is difficult to imagine that it would not have ap-
peared so to Middle and Upper Paleolitic humans, as it has
to those who have followed (Nagwb 1990). The symbolism
of hair is overdetermined; that is, it has multiple meanings,
both personal and public, even within a single context (e.g.,
de Vries 19 74; Eilberg-Schwartz 1995; Hallpike 1969;
Hershman 1974; Leach 1958).
Given a myriad of potential hairstyles (with their multi-
valent meanings), the individual artists7 considered in this
essay portray the Cave Man almost monotypically as wild-
haired and hairy. Why should this convention prevail, and
what does it mean? Modern scientific illustrators often
give him a "noncoiffure" (Grunwald 1993:51) in an at-
tempt to construct an "unmarked" or "scientifically neu-
tral" Cave Man. That is, the argument goes, since we really
don't know, for any particular place and time, how prehis-
toric humans wore their hair, their hair is left unstyled and
messy rather than topknotted or braided, for example. If
they are given a coiffure, then we commit ourselves to a
depiction of our ancestors that might be inaccurate or
prejudicial; certainly it is non-verifiable. But this "un-
marked" hair, as I shall attempt to show in this paper, is not
neutral, but rather a visual signifier for an entire set of be-
liefs about our ancestors, placing them in the category of
Not Us, or at least Not Quite Us.
The answers to these questions reside, I believe, in the
way in which the Cave Man's body acts as the primary site
for delineating his evolutionary position and condition.
While facial and body hair are ancient and important mark-
ers of maleness, the application of these markers to Cave
Men transcends issues of gender identification. The ar-
chaeological data suggest that the Cave Man can control
the world around him to the extent of making tools, making
art, and wearing clothing. But his hairiness subverts his hu-
manity; it implies that he cannot master his own body, can-
not tame its nature, cannot sever himself from the world of
animals. The Cave Man is located in Nature, marked as a
primitive, and placed below modern humalls on the ladder
of evolution (read Great Chain of Being), exactly as, for
example, Krao, the haily girl, was "scientifically" proposed
 BERMAN / BAD HAIR DAYS IN THE PALEOLITHIC 291

as the "Missing Link" and shown at exhibitions in thestyling.

late Human hair, in contrast, requires styling if it is not
nineteenth centuly (Poignant 1992:51; see also Cook 1996; to be tsgled and disorderly (personal communication,
Fiedler 1978; Mitchell 1979; Rothfels 1996; Semonin 1999). Some scholars have hypothesized that loss of fimc-
1996). tional body hair is one of a complex senes of important
The association of wild hair, a hairy body, and a "natu- early hominid thermoregulatory system adaptations to the
ral" state frequently occurs cross-culturally and diachroni- physical requirements for survival in open savannah envi-
cally. The wild aspect of naturalness carnes with it conno- ronments, and for "persistence hunting.''l? While these
tations of primitivism, of animal-like behavior, of standing studies place the loss of a thick coat in the Lower Paleo-
outside of civilization, of power, of lawlessness, of amoral- lithic, we have a terminus ante quem in the Upper Paleo-
ity, of sexual abandon, of perversion, of madness, just as lithic, since images of humans from that period seem to
the natural world can be unchecked, dangerous, unpre- have hair distributions resembling that of present-day hu-
dictable, and powerful (de Vries 1974:21-23; see also mans. Thus, the trope of the hairy Cave Man has every-
Bernheimer [1952]1970:10). This is not surprising, given thing to do with the reading that has historically been given
both our membership in the animal kingdom and the fact to cases of extreme hirsutism and hypertrichoses and little
that the hairy body is associated with sexuality, as body to do with evolutionary fact. Individuals suffering from
hair appears during puberty. Hallpike (1969:261) neatly these conditions have been immediately and unequivocally
summarizes it thus: "there is considerable evidence in fact linked with animals: "generalized hypertrichoses of ge-
for an association of 'outside society equals hairiness netic cause are often congenital and may give rise to such a
equals animality'." In Western society, the literary and ar-striking phenotype that affected subjects have been dis-
tistic tradition extends from the great Mesopotamian heroplayed in circuses as 'hair men', 'dog men', 'human Skye
Enkidu through the Bible8 to our present day. terner', 'ape men', 'human werewolf or 'Homo silvestris'"
As we view the hairy body of the Cave Man, the Wild (Figurea et al. 1995:202). While these cases are extremely
Man, we imagine we see something essential; as hair rare, they support the legends of elusive, animal-esque hu-
comes from inside the body, it can be thought to expressmans, from Sasquatch to werewolves to the Wild Man.
However, there is a difference between assigning wild hair
something fundamental about the inner nature of the being
from whence it comes. This concept is clarified if we think to a few individuals and assigning it to a whole species. We
of the opposite case: a normally hairy, powerful animal do have some evidence for the appearance of our ancestors,
rendered hairless. Think of a hairless wolf or gorilla; its and to this I now turn.
power seems considerably diminished. Hairlessness recalls
the fetal, utterly dependent state. Compare the relatively
Hair in the Middle and Late Paleolithic:
hairless domestic pig with its dangerous cousin, the hairy The Archaeological Evidence
wild boar.9 Thus wild hair is the visual synecdoche par ex- How did Cave Men actually look? The answer to this
cellence for the primitivism, the power, and the natural question first requires some unbundling, as the historical
state of the image of the Cave Man. convention often conflates Middle Paleolithic homnids
Very hairy, wild-haired humans like Krao are, in reality, (the European variety of which are familiarly called Nean-
quite unusual. Clinically, Krao's appearance may have been derffials) with those of the Upper Paleolithic (early modern
due to hormonal imbalances, or to the much rarer acquired or humans, some of whom were formerly termed Cro-Magnon)
generalized genetic hypertrichoses, which result in hair into one great "Stone Age." In the past century and a half,
grow all over the body (often to a greater degree than in we have had at our disposal three sources of data on Mid-
apes). Scientists have recently identified fihe gene responsible dle and UpperPaleolithic humans: (1) the skeletal remains,
for congenital generalized hypertichosis, a "rare mutation (2) the material artifacts, and, (3) for the Upper Paleolithic,
[iat] might have restored a function that was reduced or ex- images of humans produced by Upper Paleolithic humans.
tinguished during human evolution, causing ffie loss of facial There are no extant images of Neanderthals produced by
hair. Such back mutations are called 'atavistic' as they are the Neanderthals themselves.
causally associated with the partial reappearance of an ances- The skeletal remains yield a great deal of inforrnation
tral phenotype" (Figurea et al. 1995:206). Hypertichoses about appearatlce in terms of stature, muscle mass, sex,
may involve physical deformities and mental retardation; diet, age, and health, but do not in any way indicate how ar
they may also run in families. individual wore his or her hair, or dressed, or wore tattoos,
While there is no direct evidence for the point in human nor do these data have anything to add about skin or hair
evolution at which thick pelage was lost, the subject has color. So the first category allows us to construct skeletons,
been debated since Darwin ([1871]1981:ii, 281-286). A1- to pose them in groups, to show young and old, male and
ison Jolly makes the important point that all known non- female; it does not provide us with skin or hair. The
human primates have neat hair; grooming involves clean- original Neanderthal discovery, in 1856, consisted of a
ing coats and the promotion of social bonding, not hair partial skull with thick browridges, thighbones, part of a

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292 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST * VOL. lOls NO. 2 * JUNE 1999

pelvis, ribs, and arm and shoulder bones (Trinkaus and

Shipman 1994:4). By 1873, only four more bones had been
added to the Neanderthal corpus: the Gilbraltar skull (with
a face) from 1848, recognized as Neanderthal in 1864
(Trinkaus and Shipman 1994:89); and a group from La
Naulette, Belgium, found in 1866, which consisted of a
lower jaw, ulna, and metacarpal (Trinkaus and Shipman
1994:102-3). These few bones were used to construct the
Harper's Weekly Neandertal cum Cave Man (see Figure 1).
The second category of data, material remains, enriches
our view of the past. We can say much more about life-
ways: dwellings, tools, settlement patterns, diet, activities.
We may infer social behavior from these data, and we can
add to our knowledge of physical appearance through the
documentation of items of personal adornment, such as ac-
cessories, fastenings, combs, needles, and paints. How-
ever, we do not have direct evidence of hairdos, skin, or
clothing. We might surmise that the Neanderthals, living as
they did in a severe glacial period, had little opportunity or
motivation to groom their hair, but this is conjecture not
specifically grounded in the data.
The third category of data, visual representation, is most
useful here. There are several hundred extant figural repre-
sentations from Upper Paleolithic contexts, mostly of
women. We have absolutely no way of judging what the
creators of these images intended; for example, we cannot
even say if these representations are naturalistic portrayals
of contemporary humans, or if they were recorded because
the subjects were typical or because they were exceptional.
However, we do know that the images of animals produced
by Upper Paleolithic humans are realistic representations,
and we might infer that at least some of the representations
of humans are also naturalistic. If we look specifically at
head hair, we can see that it is styled. The images most fa-
miliar to us are the so-called "Venus figurines.'' While
these small statues of women depict parts of bodies in
some detail, they often do not apply the same amount of at- Figure 2. "'Venus' of Willendorf." Photo courtesy of Musee de

tention to extremities, including the hands, feet, and head. l'Homme, Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris.

However, when there is some detail in the heads we often

see hairdos. The most famous Venus figurine, the Venus of If we can make the not unreasonable leap from Upper
Willendorf (Figure 2) seems to be wearing a hairnet or Paleolithic art to Upper Paleolithic behavior, the data
some kind of elaborate hairdo, and the Venus of Brassem- strongly suggest that Upper Paleolithic humans were atten-
pouy (Figure 3) has a clearly defined shoulder-length hair-
tive to hair alld that they styled it.l1 It is difficult to make
style. Other Venus figurines have dressed, or at least tamed,
any case for the meaning of hairstyles7 as a personal state-
hair. Archaeologists have argued that there are local
ment, as a reflection of group membership, etc.; for my
"styles' of Venus figurines; these local styles reflect both
purposes here, it is enough to say that hair was aKended to
differences in local artistic traditions and may also reflect
by Upper Paleolithic humans.
differences in local hairdos and other aspects of personal
This observation clarifies the disjunction between what
adornment (Gvozdover 1989a, 1989b). However, body
we know of Upper Paleolithic humans arld the image of the
hair (excluding that from the pubic area) is not represented
on female figures (Duhard 1993:16S167). There are hairy Cave Man. Thus, while most of the extant data for the

fewer representations of men in which hair styles can be Upper Paleolithic do not s7wggest wild huir, the lack of duta
observed. Their hairstyles are less elaborate than those of for the Middle Paleolithic does not require its insertion.
the women. VeIy few have facial hair, and none are repre- From this perspective, the total absence of evidence for
sented with body hair (Duhard 1993:167). Neanderthal appearance turns into an opportunity for free-

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 BERMAN I BAD HAIR DAYS IN THE PALEOLITHIC 293

Man is represented by the Neanderthal male in the dioram

Figure 3. Head of a woman called "La Dame de Brassempouy."
Photo courtesy of St-Germain-en-Layes Antiquites Nationales.
C)Photo RMN-J.G. Berizzi. Persons wishing to photocopy or other-
wise reproduce this material must contact the permissions department
at St-Germain-en-Laye.
floating fantasies; it is therefore especially interesting that both the Wild Man and Cave Man are quite apart from or-
this blank in our data is filled in with the idealimage of the ganized society, the former by space, the latter by time.
Cave Man. Certainly, as Moser (1992; see also Stringer
and Gamble 1993:18-33) has shown, the lower the place
of Neanderthals in the Great Chain of Being, the hairier
and more ape-like they are. But even when they are repre-
sented at their best, as in the American Museum of Natural
History's new Hall of Human Biology and Evolution (see
below), ffiey are nevertheless still represented as hairy men.
Two Hairy Men: A Visual History
Let us examine the images of two types of hairy men:
the Cave Man and an image that I propose as one of the
progenitors of the Cave Man. Our by now familiar Cave
in the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Hu
man Biology and Evolution (Figure 4).l2 Certainly this N
anderthal is not the stooped brutal caveman depicted in
century's worth of images (Moser 1992; Stringer and
Gamble 1993) Indeed, the diorama reflects the most recent
data about Neanderthals and expresses serious scientific
assumptions about Neanderthal cognitive abilities as well
as living conditions. But the diorama also appears to em-
ploy some standard Cave Man tropes and so is useful in
unpacking some of the assumptions going into the conven-
tional Cave Man image.
We may understand this modern reconstruction by go-
ing back to an older, seemingly unrelated image. In a Late
Medieval illumination attributed to Jean Bourdichon,
Tours, ca. 150() (Figure 5), a Wild family is grouped in
front of a cave in the woods? presumably somewhere in
France. The Wild (and rather mild) paterfamilias is stand-
ing next to his seated wife and child. He is naked, hairy,
and somewhat wild-haired. He holds a long wooden staff.
A medieval castle is visible in the background. In fact, the
castle is perhaps our only direct indication that this is not
another depiction of prehistoric life (the image also clearly
refers to the Holy Family).
So far, we have a simple visual parallel between two im-
ages, from which some straightforward comparisons may-
be made; indeed, the diligent observer could fond many
such comparanda. When the representations are juxta-
posed, they are strikingly similar. In each, the man has wild
hair and beard, holds a wooden implement, and is dressed
either in a crude animal skin or his own hairy pelt. The al-
most inevitable fur drape may be seen as a substitute for
the Wild Man's/Cave Man's hairy skin. Indeed, they ap-
pear in a near-inverse relationship; the less body hair on the
Wild Man or Cave Man, the more he is likely to be in furs.
The fur associates these figures with their animal natures
and also implies that the association is mutable, capable of
evolution. As the fur drape can be transformed into cloth-
ing, the Wild Man or Cave Man can be civilized. However,
Now we may ask if these images owe their similarity to in-
dependent invention, or whether there is some genetic link
between them.
The Wild Man, typifiedby the one we see in Bourdichon's
painting, is, I suggest, the ur-image of the hairy Cave Man.
He has all of the familiar Cave Man physical attributes and
props: the wild hair, the hairy coat, the club, the cave, and,
like the Cave Man, he is a figure just out of sight. The Wild
Man embodies the same debates about humans' place in
nature that, in a later time, rage about the Cave Man. How-
ever, the Wild Man is not an evolutionary figure, but rather
a theological one: "the [Wild Man] had been brought to its
condition by loss of mind, by upbringing among beasts, or

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294 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST * VOL. 101, NO. 2 * JUNE 1999

Figure 4. Neanderthal Diorama, Hall of Human Biology and Evolution, American Museum of Natural History, New York, 1993. Neg. no.
338383. Photo by Finnin, Chesek, Beckett. Courtesy Department of Library Services, American Museum of Natural History.

by outrageous hardships.... The status of Wild Man was His impact is perhaps most clearly and ironically shown
thus reached not by a gradual ascent from the brute, but by in the early encounters between Native Americans and
a descent" (Betnheimer [1952] 1970:8; see also Bartra Europeans. The Europeans arriving on the shores of the
1994; Dudley and Novak 1972; Husband 1980; White New World were thoroughly acquainted with the iconog-
1972). raphy of the Wild Man and the meanings attached thereto.
Over time, the significance of the Wild Man to Euro- Imagine their surprise when they first encountered Native
pean society changes, especially after the great age of ex- Americans. The Native Americans were, in the first place,
ploration. He accrues a variety of meanings and associa- neither hairy nor necessarily wild-haired, and, in fact, often
tions. He is celebrated from the margins of manuscripts had elaborately dressed hair. The Europeans were shocked
(Camille 1992:109) to the manuscripts themselves, includ- by this lack of hair, and accordingly illustrated male Native
ing The Faerie Queene and The Tempest. He is found in Americans with long, flowing beards (Figure 6; Colin
song, theater, foLktales, and art. Indeed, the figure and char-1987; Sturtevant 1976); indeed, verbal reports of hairy Na-
acter of the Wild Man was widely disseminated throughout tive Americans persist into the eighteenth century, as do
medieval and Renaissance Europe. He is a familiar, un- surpnsed or admonitory reports saying that the Native
godly figure, a bogeyman to frighten children, a symbol ofAmericans were not hairy at all (Dickason 1977:22). In the
unfettered desires and cruel savagery. As a local European, most delicious of ironies, the Native Americans, who de-
he becomes more benign a more tender-locked "Noble tested body hair and plucked it from their bodies, were in
Savage," in contradistinction to the real "savagesn' discov- tum shocked by the hairy Europeans. The Native Ameri-
ered outside of Europe. But he never wholly disappears, cans, it seems, had a hairy Wild Man of their own, called
and the association between hairiness and wildness he em- Sasquatch (Dickason 1977:22). Thus, both the hairy Euro-
bodies is preserved and transferred wholly to the Cave peans and the hairless Amerindians have a hairy Wild Man
Man. in their forests, arld each is repelled by the Other.

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Figure 5. "Etat de sauvage." Attributed to Jean Bourdichon (Tours,
ca. 1457-1521), France, about 1500. Tempera on vellum. Miniatures
9s93. Photo courtesy of Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-
Arts, Bibliotheque, Paris. Persons wishing to photocopy or otherwise
reproduce this material must contact the permissions department at
Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Bibliotheque, Paris.
The above example is instmctive in several ways. First,
it emphasizes the pervasiveness, the palpable force of the
image of the hairy Wild Man, to the point where its insis-
tence denies reality. Second, it underlines the fact that a
hairy Wild Man is not an exclusively Western invention,
and that the association of hainness and animality is quite
widespread. Indeed, an almost exact parallel is found in ac-
counts by the Chinese of their encounters with European
missionaries (Dikotter 1998:52-54). While the genetic and
somatic conditions causing excess hainness may arise any-
where, they seem, interestingly, to be read in similar
ways as beings who are somewhere between animalJna-
ture and human/animal.l3 Many societies create hairy Oth-
ers, and, while outside the scope of this essay, it would be
edifying to identify this reading cross-culturally and
diachronically. For example, hairy, often fearsome wild
men and monsters abound, from China (Dikotter 1998),
South Africa (Kuper 1987:171), and, as we have seen, the
New World.l4 Legends of a mystenous Wild Man are also
found cross-culturally: the Yeti (Nepal and China), the
Abominable Snowman (Siberia), the Almas (Mongolia),
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BERMAN / BAD HAIR DAYS IN THE PALEOLITHIC 295
and Sasquatch (North America) (see Shackley 1983 for a
summary and a connection to the disappearance of the Ne-
anderthal). Finally, the example provides a point of enta
into the larger debates about pnmitivism, savagery, and
evolution, from which we will see the hairy Wild Man
emerge, (re)constructed, as the Cave Man.
The questions Europeans asked about Native Americans
and other Others Were they entirely human? Did the)
possess a soul? Can they be redeemed? Did they really
speak a language?-were those asked about the Wild Man.
These questions became particularly urgent with the dis-
coveries of non-European humans. How to place them in
relation to the "civilized" humans of Europe? To vastly
oversimplify, those trying to answer these questions were
constrained by the Bible and by Aristotle. As life on earth
began with the Biblical Creation the living things that
were created then exist today. Thus, humans had no prehis-
tory. On the other hand, all living things had to fit into the
Aristotelian Great Chain of Being, which was a hierarchi-
cal classification with humans at the top. Some naturalists
filled the gap between animals and humans in that chain,
the "missing link," with newly discovered humans. Sig-
nificantly, the Wild Man appears in that category, along
with the (naturally hairy) orangutan, in Linnaeus' 1758
edition of Systema Naturae (Greene 1 959:1 8>1 87).
By the eighteenth century, the Wild Man is believed to
exist and to occupy a place between animals and humans in
the natural world. In these schemes, he is illustrated in a
Missing Link lineup, along with hairy apes and wild-look-
ing "primitive" humans. It is important to mark that the
visual copula of these very different creatures-one imagi-
nary, one non-human, and one human is hair. Their hairi-
ness implies their other primitive features: lack of morality,
lack of language, lack of civilization, lack of humanity.
They are the primitive Other, one notch below humans in
the Great Chain of Being. When that chain becomes an
evolutionary scheme, these Others appear in one guise as
the Cave Man, who arrives in the nineteenth century to il-
lustrate the debates arising from Darwinian evolution and
the first discoveries of human fossils.
After the discovery of the remains of Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis in 1856 and the publication of Darwin's
The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection in
1859, the Cave Man emerges as an independent figure. He
now occupies a temporal, evolutionary niche. His iconog-
raphy is notably an off-the-shelf version of the Wild
Man the MissingLink usedby nineteenth-centuIy art-
ists to illustrate Stone Age life. The hairy Wild Man, re-
constructed as the Cave Man, becomes the standard trope
for the Cave Man for three important reasons. First, the
Cave Man is familiar. He has been loitering in the correct
position in the Great Chain of Being for centuries. He
seems so natural that one has trouble imagining our arlces-
tors as anything else. Secondly, the producers of the image,
296 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST * VOL. 101S NO. 2 * JUNE 1999

Figure 6. Anonymous. [Early German woodcut of a New World scene.] Woodcut, ca. 1505. Photo courtesy of the Spencer Collection, The New
York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation.

the artists, did not acknowledge the Cave Man's visual ge-
nealogy, but instead legitimized their work as Science. Ac-
cordingly, the consumers of the image thought they were
viewing Truth, not interpretation. Finally, in the age of me-
chanical reproduction, these illustrations were circulated
among the widest possible mass audience. Haiw Cave
Men filled the pages of magazines and newspapers and ap-
peared in salons, fairs, and expositions.
We can see how this happened in a brief example from
nineteenth-century France. The emphasis on scientific ac-
curacy in images of Cave Men coincides with a more gen-
eral trend toward realism in art. Artists were attempting
what the art historian Linda Nochlin (1971:25) aptly terms
"genre paintings of history." While Realists confined
themselves to paintings of contemporary life, other French
Academic artists worked at the same time to create highly
influentiall5 paintings of history and prehistory. These
Academic paintings and sculptures were enormously
popular and were widely exhibited at the French Salons
and many of the great nineteenth-century exhibitions (Mai-
nardi 1987, 1993). While this Academic art is generally ne-
glected today for its aesthetic and creative shortcomings, it
plays an important role in the history of illustration of the
Cave Man.
That France was one of the most important loci of Cave
Man art is not surprising. Many of the early and widely
publicized Paleolithic skeletal finds were made in France
and French scientists and scholars were heavily involved in
this work. An enthusiastic and fascinated public, enchanted
with their own culture, avidly demanded more and more
information. Further, the French Academic establishment
already had a tradition of genre paintings; the yearly Salons
were filled with historical scenes, as well as elaborate rep-
resentations, in that blithely imperialist period, of exotic
and savage figures from all over the world. Finally, the
homme sauvage, the Wild Man, was a familiar figure to
French artists.
The work of the artist Fernand Cormon (1845-1924)
serves to illustrate the way in which the Wild Man be-
comes the "scientific" Cave Man. Cormon was one of the
most prolific and influential painters of Stone Age humans.
His painting Cain, a variant on the usual Cain theme, based

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upon a poem (La Conscience) by Victor Hugo (Hugo
[1859]1974:2S27), is seen in an impressively large (584 x
700 cm) painting that was exhibited at the Salon of 1880
(Mainardi [1993:94] notes that it got in by its sheer size
alone). The painting shows a hairy, ragged band of prehis-
toric figures on a forced and desperate march (Figure 7).
All of the iconographic traits of the Wild Man are floridly
evident. This portrayal won Cormon the Legion of Honor
(Mainardi 1993:94); this award, as well as his other paint-
ings of prehistonc subjects, made him a natural choice to
paint prehistoric humans on the walls of Paris's new
Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle.
These paintings, which depicted wild-haired Cave Men
in a vanety of activities, influenced generations of scien-
tists and scientific illustrators, as well as the public. Many
found Cormon's works persuasive not just because they
were dramatic and compelling narratives; after all, many of
that histoncal genre were equally appealing. It was that
Cormon's work bore the imprimatur of Science. He was
celebrated for his ethnographic, archaeological, and natural
history research (Michel 1898); thus his paintings were not
seen as mere artistic interpretations, and certainly not as
appropriations of the Wild Man, but instead as accurate
representations of human ancestors in imagined configura-
tions.
This work provided a perfect visual accompaniment to
the verbal narratives of human evolution and fits well with
the more general trend toward realism in art. Cormon's
wild-haired Cave Men are indeed beings who are not quite
human, or not quite civilized, somewhere between the apes
and civilization. One cannot imagine beings who look like
Cormon's Cave Men being anything but uncivilized. They
appear as raw, crude blueprints for the modern humans
they will become. The Cave Man image drives the dis-
course of evolution, rather than the other way around. The lithic behind, put on good Neolithic cloth coats,l8 invent
image is so powerful, so hard to dislodge because it is so
terribly familiar as much to Cormon as it is to us. As we
have seen, the "truth" of the Cave Man image is derived
from his Wild Man forebear and not from the archaeologi-
cal record. Thus, the emendation of the bodies of our an-
cestors with the visual signifiers of the Wild Man nota-
bly, his wild hair-seems altogether inevitable, although it
is actually a narrowing of alternative interpretations of the
data.
The scientific Cave Man came to America through the
work of Charles R. Knight, the artist largely responsible for
the great and influential murals in the American Museum
of Natural History in New York and the Field Museum in
Chicago.l6 His shaggy-haired Cave Men were wildly popu-
lar and widely influential (Figure 8).17 As noted above,
Cave Men have been staples of American popular culture
for the last century.
To summarize: the Cave Man's lineage extends back to
the ancient and hairy Wild Man. Artists of the nineteenth
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BERMAN / BAD HAIR DAYS IN THE PALEOLITHIC 297
and twentieth centuries simply appropriated that ready-
made image, in part because the image is part of their artis-
tic vocabulary. More importantly, the hairy Cave Man ap-
pears to look as a "missing link" should: his hairiness
places him somewhere between animals and modern hu-
mans, between animals and Civilization.
Implications
I have attempted to trace the image of the Cave Man
back to its roots, and to show that hair is a visual synecdo-
che for the nature and animality that connects the image
and its precursors. The Cave Man looks as he does because
he is a representation of our ideas about human nature and
human origins. His image is not necessarily based on sci-
entific data, but is rather anchored in and entwined with
other tremendously puissant representations deriving from
pagan and Judeo-Christian traditions. We are readily con-
vinced of the ''tmth'' of Cave Man images because they
seem "natural" or familiar to us; in fact, they draw on a set
of conventionalized observations about the origins and
natural history of humans.
Hairstyles are a clue to where on the evolutionaty tree an
artist or illustrator places his or her subject. Certainly a
thick coat of body hair and ungroomed head hair puts an
ancestor a great distance from modern humans (although
we have no data on when a hairy coat was lost), while most
Neanderthals have longer and untidier hair than Upper Pa-
leolithic humans. Now these may be perfectly accurate
representations of our ancestors, but we have no data on
this subject until the Upper Paleolithic. Hair is our marker
of evolutionary position; the further away from our animal
origins, the more it is under control. (In many of the picto-
rial histories of humal3kind, later humans leave the Paleo-
headbands and pageboys, and settle down on their farms.)
So far, we have delineated some of the natural history of
the convention of the Cave Man and have examined the
significance of his hair. But why should this Cave Man
matter so to us? The Cave Man is a representation of our
ancestors; the fact of evolution forces us to acknowledge
that the Cave Man resides within each of us. He is our ani-
mal, primitive self, before the limits of society.
In one version, he is the Noble Savage, natural man be-
fore he was corrupted by civilization. He is romanticized as
a purely natural being, peiaps because
our fantasy of the noble savage represents a reality of our ex-
istence, it stands for our sense of something unhappily surren-
dered, the truth of the body, the truth of full sexuality, the
truth of open aggressiveness. Something, we know, must in-
evitably be surrendered for the sake of civilization; but the
"discontent" of civilization which Freud describes is our self-
recrimination at having surrendered too much. [Trilling
1974:18-19]
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Figure 7. Fernand Cormon, Cain, Salon of 1880. Photo courtesy of Musee d'Orsay, Paris. OPhoto RMN-00598767. Persons wishing to
photocopy or otherwise reproduce this material must contact the permissions department at the Musee d'Orsay, Paris.

In this sense, the Cave Man embodies a yearning for na- with a society beyond his ken. The Cave MaIl is in effect a
ture, for simplification. Things were simpler and more child in an adult world, the evolution of Cave Man to mod-
natural in the Golden Age of the past, desires were unbri- ern human recapitulated as the development from child to
dled, lusts were uninhibited, until we ruined it with Civili- adult; this was a common pop psychology argument, found
zation. We hear the echo of the Noble Savage when we in self-help books such as The Caveman Within Us (Field-
think that those close to Nature are living a superior, natu- ing 1922). But there is a more malign twist to the pnmitive,
ral life. As Joel Pfilster (1997:183) has shown, for the white savage Cave Man from whom we have evolved. His visual
middle and upper classes between the two World Wars, markers can be read as meaning he is outside of civiliza-
"recovenng the primitive became tantamount to restoring tion, is without morals, is animal-like and threatening. His

one's 'deeper' humanity." This humanity the inner Cave link is to a threatening nature. He exists inside us, a lurking
Mr. Hyde. In modetn Western society, he is out there in the
Man was often represented by the libidinous, neurosis-
world, and menacing: the "wild man" roaming the streets.20
free, naked, pop culture Cave Man, embodied by such as
All of these images and histories coexist as we "read"
Taizan.l9 In a variation of this representation the Flint-
the hairy Cave Man. Understanding the sources of the im-
stones and other cartoons make an essentialist argument:
age is a small but necessary counterweight to its power.
human nature that is, modern Western capitalist human
behavior has always been the same. Thus, family prob-
Notes
lems, economic problems, strife and warfare, manners and
mores are eternal human issues. The Cave Man can be Acknowledgements. Thanks to C. Loring Brace, Eric Del-
used to defend human nature as eternally the same. son, Linda Jacobs, Alison Jolly, Susan Lees, Michelle Marcus,
The image can also be turned around to suggest how far Derek Miller, Lois Morris, Holly Pittman, Robert Pollack,
Susan Sidlauskas, Olga Soffer, and two anonymous reviewers
we have come, how advanced we are. We can embrace the
for their attentive reading and helpful comments on this paper,
Cave Man's struggles with language, with the natural
and to my family and friends, especially Gail Reed, for their
world, with other Cave Men in a benign way, seeing him as
support and encouragement. Any errors, of course, remain my
a humorous figure. In cartoons and movies he is often por- own.
trayed this way: somehow he arrives in the modem world, 1. Please address correspondence to: Judith C. Berman,
where he bumbles with technology, with language, and 639 West End Avenue, Apt. 3D, New York, NY 10025.

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 mSE lisS*"
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BERMAN / BAD HAIR DAYS IN THE PALEOLITHIC 299

+' tv; 00 " 09 "; 0 ''+ 8 & ty a as >tSS i>ityi s * e

Figure 8. Charles R. Knight. Cave man of the Neanderthal race. Mural in the Age of Man Hall, American Museum of Natural History, New York,
1921. Neg. no. 39441A. Photo by A. J. Rota. Courtesy of Department of Library Services, American Museum of Natural History.

2. I use the term Cave Man to denote the constructed image
of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens.
In this paper, and much to my regret, I do not discuss the fe-
male version of the Cave Man. Her natural and icono-graphic
history differs in significant ways from that of her male coun-
terpart, and she is worthy of her own excursis. However, as
there is much more available on the visual, literary, and schol-
arly history of the male Cave Man (!), I use him to establish
certain important lines of inquiry in a limited space. Her his-
tory requires a separate paper. The Wild Child is yet another
important subject, with links to stories of feral children.
3. I shall not address the complex issues of dating or hu-
man evolution in this paper. This essay treats the hominids of
the Middle Paleolithic in Europe (Homo sapiens neander-
thalensis, who date from approximately 230,00040,000
years ago) and the humans of the Upper Paleolithic (Homo sa-
piens sapiens, who date from around 40,000 years ago to the
present). H. s. neanderthalensis is popularly termed "Nean-
derthal7'; the term Cro-Magnon was used to denote early H. s.
sapiens. Because the Cave Man image discussed in the course
of this essay often conflates Middle and Upper Paleolithic
hominids, I use the terms Paleolithic and Stone Age to include
both the Middle and Upper Paleolithic unless otherwise speci-
fied.
4. At least one new Cave Man movie, cartoon, or television
show has been introduced in almost every year since the end
of World War II. Filmic Cave Men have great range, reflect-
ing their great appeal. Some examples of Cave Man movies
include: science fiction (e.g., The tost World, 1925; Teenage
Caveman, 1958); drama (The Caveman, 1926, with Hedda
Hopper and Myrna Loy); horror (The Neanderthal Man,
1953); musicals (On the Town 1949, which features "anthro-
pologist" Ann Miller singing "Prehistoric Man" to Cave Man
look-alike Jules Munshin); comedy (everyone from Charlie
Chaplin to the Three Stooges to Ringo Starr as Atouk in Cave-
man, 1981); adventure (Missing Link, 1988); and anthropo-
logical (Quest for Fire, 1981). This survey is based on the
Cave Filmography on the website http://www.banamba.com/-
cave/film. Musical references are from Mesolithic Music at
the same link.
5. From the popular song, 'Alley Oop," words and music
by Dallas Frazier, 1960. This song was covered by several art-
ists and reached number one in 1960.
6. I write from the point of view of the "West," a term I do
not like to use, as it reduces the enormous complexities and vi-
cissitudes of a variety of European and American cultures
over many centuries to a seemingly simple, monolithic, and
self-conscious entity. The term West creates an Other that is as
misleadingly stereotypical and reductive as the other stereo-
types I discuss here. In fact, the experience of the Other is in-
dividual-each person determines his/her own definition of
Self and Other but this definition is dynamically shaped and
mediated by the historical, social, and cultural context in
which the individual is located (Mason 1990:2; Obeyesekere
1981:13-14). Thus, in the course of this essay, I shall try to
ground my observations in person, time, and space as specifi-
cally as possible.
7. The term artist is a bit misleading, as the portrayal of
Cave Men in scientific settings, such as book illustrations and
museum dioramas, was almost always a collaboration be-
tween artist and scientist. The work of artists was often and
necessarily bound by the strictures of anthropologists, cura-
tors, and other scientific personnel. For example, Charles R.
Knight's hand was guided by Henry Fairfileld Osborn and
other members of the American Museum of Natural History
staff (Czerkas and Glut 1982).
8. The Cave Man is also influenced by another figure, that
of the hairy Holy Man. He is also outside of civilization, living

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300 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST * VOL. 101, NO. 2 * JUNE 1999
freely and close to nature. He may have the same hair as that
of the savage Wild Man, but he is his inverse: he is peaceful,
in harmony with nature, and even possessed of holy charac-
teristics (Warner 1995:66). Here, wild hair is a marker of as-
ceticism, of the renunciation of the rules and goals of society,
of purity, of piety, of penance for impurity and impiousness,
and of separation. The sources of this image are found in the
Bible. Both Hebrew priests (Leviticus 21 :5) and ascetics
termed "nazirites" had long hair, which was emphatically a
public sign of position and devotion. Conversely, shaven
heads (or having one's head shaved) was an act and sign of
public humiliation (II Samuel 10:4; Isaiah 3:17-24; see also
Milgrom 1996:907; Plaut 1981:106>1061). The Hebrew root
of the word nazir, meaning to "'set aside,' 'dedicate,' or
'curse"' (Plaut 1981:1058 fn), suggests the duality of the hairy
man as the Holy Man, separated from society because he is
impure and wishes to cleanse himself, and the cursed Wild
Man, removed from society because he is impure and cannot
be cleansed. Christian ascetic monks, or anchorites, followed
that tradition. From the beginning, a set of legends accrued
around the desert monks (Williams 1925,1926,1935) and it is
in these legends that the connection between the Holy Man
and the Wild Man can be most closely apprehended. We can
underline the similarities between the Wild Man and Holy
Man: their separation from society, their animal nature, and,
emphatically, their wild hair, which serves as a signifier of
their inner natures. Both images externalize the animality of
the character through their hairiness, as both figures lose their
hairiness as they are redeemed. The Cave Man image is the
product of the Wild Man and the Holy Man. He is also, by
evolutionary retrojection, the source of that animal nature.
9. One may play this game out and think of counterexam-
ples, the elephant, to cite an obvious one. We might also argue
that human hairlessness can be powerful: Michael Jordan
comes to mind. Certainly asceticism is expressed by hairless-
ness as well as hairiness. Exploring these exceptions is stimu-
lating.
10. Much of the recent work concerns the evolution of
hominid body and brain thermoregulatory systems and their
associations with bipedalism and, later, increased brain size.
Wheeler (1984, 1985; see also Ebling 1985; Kushlan 1985)
has suggested that bipedalism, as well as loss of functional
body hair and the development of eccrine sweat glands and
subcutaneous fat, were early adaptations to the direct solar ra-
diation of open savannah environments. Carrier (1984; see
also Brace 1995:157-159) has argued that the evolutionary
loss of body hair is one of several adaptations that allowed hu-
mans to be successful persistence hunters, able to outlast
game. Falk (1990; see also Dean 1990; Wheeler 1990) has dis-
cussed the evolutionary evidence for regulation of brain tem-
perature and the consequences of this change for hominid
brain evolution, using fossil evidence for cranial blood flow.
11. Contrast the hairdos of these figures with the descrip-
tion of Neanderthal hair care described by Auel (1981:67-68)
in The Clan of the Cave Bear. The Neanderthal woman sham-
poos and conditions her own hair as well as that of her newly
adopted "Other" (i.e., Homo sapiens sapiens) daughter.
12. To be clear, the American Museum of Natural His
tory's Hall of Human Biology and Evolution also depicts Up-
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per Paleolithic humans that are clearly not Cave Men. They
are rather well-dressed and tressed.
13. I thank an anonymous reviewer for insight on this
point.
14. For an interesting parallel, see Cecelia Klein's (1995)
study of the transformation of the wild-haired Aztec goddess
Cihuacoatl in colonial Mexico. As Klein (1995:263) notes:
"the European Wild Woman could make herself at home in
colonial Central Mexico precisely because the Aztecs . . . had
expressed their values and concepts in metaphorical terms that
were often remarkably congruent with those of Europe."
15. Note that the influence I am concerned with here is not
just that on science, but on the popular imagination.
16. The data on Knight presented here are based largely on
the biography by Czerkas and Glut (1982). Knight was trained by
George de Forest Brush, who was a noted painter of Native
Americans; indeed, some of Knight's earlier works are fanciful
representations that cross Native Americans with an imagined
"primitive" (Czerkas and Glut 1982:8, 22). In the course of his
work at the American Museum of Natural History, Knight
traveled to Paris and saw the work of the French Academic
painters (Czerkas and Glut 1982:8-9). Upon his return to New
York, he started working on murals and exhibits at the mu-
seum, painting prehistoric humans in the same "scientific"
style as the French.
17. Knight's influence was quite widespread. His work
was extensively seen in the United States, and he dominated a
whole school of artists, including Zdenek Burian and Jay Mat-
ternes. Burian's work (Augusta and Burian 1960) has been
widely disseminated in textbooks and popular pieces. Perhaps
the most familiar is his hairy Cro-Magnon male (Figure 9). He
is a robust, lively man, with somewhat scraggly hair and
beard, dressed in fur and leather, and carrying a toolkit that in-
cludes a bow and arrow. Most archaeology textbooks properly
point out Burian's error: the bow and arrow was not used in
Europe for another ten thousand years. This is an excellent ex-
ample of the influence of the tradition of Wild Man/Noble
Savage on this genre of art: the Cro-Magnon is carrying the
bow and arrows because his referent is the Native American
(but see Mason 1990:117 for an alternative reading of the im-
age). In either case, Burian' s image belongs to the realm of the
Wild Man, not in the interpretation of prehistoric data.
18. For example, the recent discovery of evidence for fab-
ric weaving by the residents of an Upper Paleolithic site in the
Czech Republic shows that the heretofore fur-clad Paleolithic
Cave Men wore woven nettle coats (Adovasio et al. 1996).
19. In the 1949 musical On the Town, Ann Miller sings about
her sexy "Prehistoric Man" as having "No repression he just
believed in free self-expression." There is also some delightful
wordplay on "bearskin" and "bare skin." The lyrics are by Betty
Comden and Adolf Green, music by Roger Edens.
20. A July 27, 1993, headline in the New York Post reads:
"'Wild Man' to Go Free Again." The "Wild Man" referred to
was a homeless, mentally ill drug addict named Larry Hogue,
who assaulted and harassed residents of Manhattan's Upper
West Side. A follow-up story several days later (August 2,
1993) characterized other people like Hogue as "wild men."

Figure 9. Zdenek Bunan, Cro-Magnon Man (Augusta and Burian
1960: Plate 24). Copyright unknown.
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1935 The German Legends of the Hairy Anchorite. Univer- Charles E. Cleland, ed. Pp. 317-343. Anthropological Pa-
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Wobst, H. M. of Anthropology.
1977 Stylistic Behavior and Information Exchange. For the
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