Newswise — Emilia Stanfill, a senior at St. Lawrence University (Canton, New York) from Littleton, Colo., wasn't particularly hesitant about butchering a deer in Associate Professor John Barthelme's anthropology class, "The Neandertals: Fact, Fiction and Fantasy."
"I guess I wasn't sure what to expect," she says, "but once we started, I really didn't think about it much. It was definitely a memorable part of the class and a pretty crucial one, because you really have to take on the Neandertal mindset. I think it was easier once I realized that if I had been a Neandertal this would have been a much-needed source of food."
Stanfill, studying the classics this year in Orvieto, Italy, took the Neandertal class last spring. She and her classmates not only butchered a deer and ate it for dinner, but they also discussed the Geico Insurance "caveman" commercials, and this fall students will watch the new ABC-TV series, "Cavemen," based on the commercials.
Lindsey Taylor, a senior from Rutland, Vt., says the class shatters the myths about Neandertals.
"I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Barthelme's Neandertal class, and learned old and new perceptions on the Neandertal people," Taylor says. "The deer butchering was very interesting to me, as we were able to make and use our own stone tools just as the Neandertals would have done. I think that the Geico commercials bring a little bit of humor to the truth about Neandertals. It is a common misconception that they were 'idiots' and savages. These commercials portray the cavemen as intelligent, normal people, which is closer to the truth than the original caveman stereotype."
Barthelme doesn't watch much television, but he will be tuning in on October 2, when the new comedy series, "Cavemen," premieres. Barthelme believes the Geico commercials that inspired the series and claim their service is so easy, "even a caveman can do it," have challenged the stereotypes of Neandertals that have persisted in our culture. They are stereotypes he has been battling in his course for 15 years.
It's a class in which students make stone-age tools from obsidian, glass found in volcanic rock and used today to make surgical scalpels, and use them to carve up a deer and eat the venison so they better understand how Neandertals lived.
Students in the class also read novels, short stories and see films on Neandertals. A final project replaces a test, and in the past students have written children's books, produced a video and developed board games, all dealing with the science behind the stereotypes. This year, the deer butchering is planned for Nov. 28. There are 17 students in the class.
"Neandertals were consummate tool-makers, hunters and colonizers," says Barthelme, who developed an interest in the species while doing research in Kenya on the origin of Homo sapiens. "They occupied areas of north Europe and Central Asia that humans had never before occupied." He says Neandertals lived between 240,000 and 28,000 years ago.
In the late 1990s, he says, DNA researchers demonstrated from Neandertal skeletons that they were not ancestors of humans, but rather a distinct species.
Barthelme says the Geico commercials, which he finds hilarious, accurately depict Neandertals "from the neck up," and he is considering a project with his class that includes surveying the public about caveman stereotypes before and after viewing the new TV series.
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