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It’s touchy and toxic to ponder how those dumbass troglodytes were able to build civilizations that remain advanced far beyond those of the pure humans. Though we’ve all been trained to equate “Neanderthal” with “stupid,” it’s generally accepted that Neanderthal brains were at least as large as those of homo sapiens, but people will start calling you bad names if you dare raise the topic of differences in brain size among human groups. Therefore, the more plausible explanation for why primitive subhumans consistently outperform fully evolved humans is because they use the subtly persuasive methods of tricknology.

Neanderthals weren’t quite as dimwitted as, say, Barney Rubble or the giant dumb caveman in Eegah. They were a humble and hardworking folk who built homes and fashioned tools. They buried their dead, sometimes with flowers. They had a “sense of compassion” that led them to care for disabled children and the elderly. According to one website, they “lived in family groups, had names, hunted game, usually at night in groups, baked acorn meal bread, and had language, religion, cuisine, medicine, trade, tools, crafts and art, including music, dance and body paint.”

I can get behind all of that except for the body painting.

Most endearingly of all, they hated Brussels sprouts. So that’s where I get that from.

One could view the first dusky, lanky homo sapiens who ventured north from southern Africa’s steamy jungles and into the Middle East, Europe, and Asia as immigrants. Or one could view them as colonists. One could even view them as biological predators who almost completely eliminated the indigenous population. This is a case where the historical record is by necessity prehistoric, so it remains unclear why the appearance of interlopers out of Africa coincided somewhat with the gradual extinction of a Neanderthal population that had resided in Europe for nearly half a million years. Maybe it was all a wacky coincidence. Or maybe it was the first large-scale genocide in human history.

Still, those kooky kavemen are largely gone, and I’d like to place at least some of the blame on Africans because, well, that’s what I do. But they are not entirely gone. Strains of their ancient blood course through my veins, causing that sudden involuntary Berserker thrill whenever I accidentally hear a Led Zeppelin song.

But dead or alive, I believe it’s time Neanderthals received their due respect, or, as the so-called “pure humans” like to say, their “props.” So to all you pure, fully evolved humans out there who flit breezily through this world unencumbered with even a wisp of Neanderthal DNA: I want you to know that although we may not look and act like it, we are human, too, and we demand that you respect that part, goddamnit! We are your sons, your daughters, your brothers, and your sisters. When you cut a Neanderthal, does he not bleed? Huh? Does he not? Even if he’s a “€œshe”€? Of course she does! So before we all start stabbing one another, we should agree that we all bleed.

To all my fellow cavemen, cavewomen, and cavechildren: How much longer will we endure their insults? How much longer must we suffer the slings and arrows of their arrogant evolutionary disdain? “No longer,” I say. Those “€œGeico Caveman“€ commercials were a good start, but we need more positive depictions of Neanderthals throughout popular culture. No more anti-Neanderthal slurs and no more anti-Neanderthal job discrimination. Working together we were able to kick a woolly mammoth’s ass, so these modern humans don’t stand a chance against us. Do not give up hope. Burn bright, little Neanderthal flame. There’s a light at the end of the cave.