Neanderthals in popular culture

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!Title

!Year

Written/Pub

!Author

!Anthology

!Notes

|1921

|H. G. Wells

|The Complete Short Stories

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|1939

|L. Sprague de Camp

|Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond

|A Neanderthal finds himself in a peculiar time-traveling colony mixing people from various time periods and locations. He plays a crucial role in forging an alliance of people from different backgrounds to fight the story's villains - bandit adventurers from Medieval Norman Sicily aided by 20th-century Nazis. Eventually he is able to return to his own era, but finds Neanderthal society too boring and so settles on a career of time-traveling adventure with the Russian woman he loves.

|1957

|Poul Anderson

|Trips in Time

|A modern man undertakes a "mental time travel" enabling him to experience the life of a very remote ancestor, a Cro-Magnon hunter setting out to rescue his mate who was kidnapped by the "Goblins" (Neanderthals) living across the river.

|1958

|Issac Asimov

|The Time Travelers: A Science Fiction Quartet

|A Neanderthal child is brought into the present via time travel. Neanderthals are sympathetically depicted as having an articulate and sophisticated society and language, in conscious rebuttal of the above stereotype.

|1959

|Avram Davidson

|Worlds of IF

|A 20th-century archaeologist, who discovered the traces of Neanderthals who survived into historical times and came to a tragic end in a remote valley of 16th-century Germany, came to an equally tragic end himself.

|1939

|Robert E. Howard

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|2008

|Orson Scott Card

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|Neanderthals are accidentally resurrected during testing of an immune system enhancement.

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!Title

!Year Written/Pub

!Author

!Notes

|1935

|Edison Marshall

|Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons are traditional enemies surviving in a warm valley of Antarctica

|1960/1984

|Philip K. Dick

|The discovery of a Neanderthal skull in the United States is a plot device.

|1962

|Mary Renault

|Kentaurs are portrayed as Neanderthals.

|1964/1977

|Philip K. Dick

|Neanderthals living in primitive towns in the rural areas of the former United States are happy at the outbreak of nuclear war, hoping that self-destruction of Homo sapiens might give them another opportunity to dominate Earth.

|1968

|Clifford D. Simak

|Twenty years after a Neanderthal named Alley Oop (after the eponymous comic strip) is brought into the present for study purposes he is educated enough to be working on a doctoral thesis but still has trouble with certain social aspects, possessing, for example, a habit of breaking into closed stores when hungry and paying compensation later.

|1976

|Michael Crichton

|A small Neanderthal population in Northern Europe is the source of the battles recorded in Beowulf. This story was also the basis for a motion picture The 13th Warrior (1999), though the word "Neanderthals" was never mentioned in the movie.

|1981

|Björn Kurtén

|This book follows interactions between European Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, possible worldviews and origins for troll mythology

|1987

|Alan Dean Foster

|Spacefaring Neanderthals removed from Earth by powerful aliens return to save them from extinction.

|1993

|Colin Wilson

|This book discusses evidence and theories of Neanderthal survival into the modern age, including the possibility of their recent breeding with humans, in his book Unsolved Mysteries.

|1992

|Attanasio

|Early humans clash with the last of the neanderthals.

|1988

|Harry Turtledove/L. Sprague de Camp

|In an alternate timeline the Mediterranean Sea has stayed dry since the Miocene and Europe is still inhabited by Homo neanderthalensis, referred to in the story as "Strongbrows" and described as "shorter, stockier, fairer", than the "Highhead" people (presumably analogous to Homo sapiens).

|1996

|John Darnton

|A group of surviving Neanderthals discovered in the mountains of Afghanistan is said to possess the ability to read minds due to their larger cranial capacity, but unlike Cro-Magnons, lack the capability of deception on more than two levels at a time. The author blamed the near-extinction of the Neanderthals on this shortcoming.

|1997

|Joan Dahr Lambert

|A band of early Homo sapiens team up with a remnant band of Neanderthals to defeat a hostile band of H.sapiens who are trying to take over their territory. Set in the Pyrenees, Neanderthals are dying out because they cannot give birth to enough children; their infant's heads are often too big.

|1999

|Paul Levinson

|Neanderthals are still living in Basque country in 750 AD, and a few survive in the present world.

|2002

|W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear

|Neanderthals, cloned back into existence in modern times, are the targets of assassination attempts by a Christian fundamentalist creationist sect.

|2003

|Greg Bear

|A phenomenon which caused the Neanderthals to die off now threatens modern humans.

|2002

|Stephen Baxter

|This novel prominently features Neanderthals from an alternate timeline. This is a sequel to Manifold: Space where Neanderthal characters also appear, in a narrower context, as genetically engineered slave laborers.

|2004

|Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen

|This book features spacefaring Neanderthals who were removed from Earth by powerful aliens for unspecified reasons.

|2006

|S. M. Stirling

|Neanderthals inhabit an alternate-history Venus.

|2013

|Ted Kosmatka

|Neanderthals are resurrected by South Korean scientists en masse and intermarry with humans.

|2015

|James Rollins

|The Watchers are a superior hybrid species of early humans and Neanderthals who disseminated knowledge and possibly interbred with people throughout the world. They also created the protected, hidden city of Atlantis, located in Ecuador.

|2017

|Claire Cameron

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|2018

|Jacques Gaubil

|A novel about the discovery of a Neanderthal living in the frigid northern Quebec and the chain of events that ensues, effectively a portrait of modern humans

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!Series

!Author

!Notes

|Philip José Farmer

|A prominent Neanderthal character named Kazz (short from Kazzintuitruaabemss), who interacts with modern humans.

|Jean M. Auel

|Neanderthals appear as characters including in the 1986 movie adaptation of the first book, The Clan of the Cave Bear

|William Shatner

|Neanderthals were a primitive psychic species which caught the eye of a large alien empire, which decided to isolate the telepathic gene and transplanted several experimental subjects to another world. The original Neanderthals were then eliminated so that no one else could reproduce the experiment. The Homo sapiens were not modified. The transplanted Neanderthals eventually evolved into an industrial society; this took much longer than it did for humanity, as a telepathic species would have problems inventing complex technology without the use of writing, which would be an unnecessary tool for telepaths. In the story, Neanderthals eventually joined and transcended their physical shape, becoming a god-like being.

|Jasper Fforde

|Neanderthals are brought back from extinction by cloning to act as medical test subjects thanks to their close relation to Homo sapiens but lack of legal status as human beings.

|Robert J. Sawyer

|On an alternate world Neanderthals became the dominant species while Homo sapiens died out.

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!Genre

!Year

!Publisher

!Notes

|1968

|DC Comics

|Anthro is the first Cro-Magnon boy, born in the Stone Age to Neanderthal parents. His father, Neanderthal caveman Ne-Ahn is the chief of his tribe, his mother a captive member of another tribe.

|1982

|Dark Horse Comics

|A main character in Alfredo Castelli's comic book Martin Mystère is a Neanderthal called Java. Martin Mystère found him in Mongolia, home to the last population of Neanderthals. He is named after the Java Man, which are actually much earlier Homo erectus remains.

|2000

|Top Cow

|Top Cow, an imprint of Image Comics, publishes Kin, a six-issue series about extant Neanderthals.

|2005

|DC Comics

|In Seven Soldiers of Victory, the New Gods (Metron, Lightray and Orion) came to Earth and adapted the pre-Neanderthal hominids, giving them "fire, inspiration and magic" and creating a semi-immortal king named Aurakles. The resulting Neanderthals then create a scientific civilization which covers the world, until it is destroyed by future time-travellers. They then revert to cave-dwelling and evolve into modern humans.

|2016

|Studio Gokumi

|In Seton Academy: Join the Pack! the character Anne Anetani initially pretends to be a modern human, but is eventually revealed to be a Neanderthal.

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|E. A. Dupont

|1953 film

|Professor Groves turns himself into a Neanderthal man.

|Irving J. Moore and Christian Nyby

|1984–1985 TV series

|features a family of Neanderthals during the Ice Age.

|Carl Gottlieb

|1981 film

|Ringo Starr plays a Neanderthal-like caveman in the year "one zillion BC." He and the other characters speak in a "caveman language" and encounter dinosaurs, invent cooking, and learn to walk upright.

|Tim Disney

|2019 film

|In 2019, a Neanderthal is cloned using somatic cell nuclear transfer by two scientists. Various stages of his life are portrayed through age 18. His cognitive abilities and differences are studied and many conflicts arise due to his differences with homo sapiens society.

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!Title

!Year

!Publisher

!Notes

|2006

|THQ Nordic

|Neanderthals appear as enemies in an Ancient World where mythology and legends are real. In contrast to their real-world extinction, the Neanderthals of Titan Quest continue to thrive in central Asia where they attack and plunder caravans along the Silk Road.{{cite web| title = Titan Quest - Creature Feature, China| work = IGN| date = 24 May 2006| url = https://www.ign.com/articles/2006/05/24/titan-quest-creature-feature-china| access-date = 19 February 2020}}

|2016

|Ubisoft

|Neanderthals are among the game's primary factions.{{cite book| last = Wainwright| first = A. Martin|title = Virtual History: How Videogames Portray the Past| publisher = Taylor & Francis Ltd| date = 2019| location = Montreal; Quebec| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=RZqfDwAAQBAJ| isbn = 978-1138069084}} The game is set in an isolated valley around 10,000{{nbsp}}BC during the end of the Epipalaeolithic and beginning of the Mesolithic period in Europe."We decided to settle on the Mesolithic time period" Jean-Christophe Guyot, [http://www.ign.com/videos/2015/10/06/far-cry-primal-behind-the-scenes-development-video Far Cry Primal - Behind-the-Scenes Development Video], IGN, October 6, 2015. The game's Neanderthals are a remnant group that has survived long after other Neanderthals have gone extinct, though they too are afflicted by a disease and slowly dying out.{{cite news|author = Chad Sapieha| title = Far Cry Primal review: Brutal and fun cave man simulation might have been called Grand Theft Mammoth| work = Financial Post| date = 23 February 2016| url = https://business.financialpost.com/technology/gaming/far-cry-primal-review-brutal-and-fun-cave-man-simulation-might-have-been-called-grand-theft-mammoth| access-date = 19 February 2020}}