Caveman
A caveman is the inhabitant of a cave or abri . The word was used as a synonym for primitive man , especially in the 19th century .
Concept history
The term caveman is based - comparable, for example, with the term Venus figurines for Upper Palaeolithic female statuettes - on the reception of antiquity in modern times . Troglodytes ( Greek τρωγλοδύτης "cave dwellers") have been described in the works of various ancient authors , among others by Herodotus , Strabo and Hanno the Navigator . The inhabitants in the Platonic allegory of the cave are also referred to as troglodytes .
The term troglodytes was particularly common in French as a neutral synonym for all cave dwellers. The French troglodyte tradition goes back largely to the Persian letters XI to XIV of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755), in which he understands the troglodytes described there as the original civilization. Dwelling caves are known in the south of France from both prehistoric cultures and more recent history, for example in the Vézère valley .
In German, the term Höhlenmensch occurs in the second half of the 19th century, as in " Rulaman : Tale from the time of the caveman and the cave bear" by David Friedrich Weinland (1878). Colloquially, the word Höhlenmensch was often used disparagingly in German as a term for a “lower” cultural evolutionary stage . In today's linguistic usage, however, a value-neutral use can be recorded.
Prehistoric archeology
In the paleolithic research that began around 1860, the term was based on the fact, derived from excavation observations, that most of the Paleolithic settlements were found in cave sediments and in abrises . In 1899, the Cro-Magnon I fossil was named by Georges Vacher de Lapouge as a type specimen for the species he proposed, Homo spelaeus ("caveman"). In particular, the Upper Paleolithic cave paintings , scientifically accepted in the cave of Altamira and other caves around 1900, fortified the image of the caves as centers of cult. The one-sided image of the cave-dwelling prehistoric man was not put into perspective until the 20th century, when more and more open-air sites from the Paleolithic were discovered.
A typical definition of contemporary historical idea was Ludwig Büchner in 1889: "As the heat increased again after the Ice Age, the caveman was replaced by the people of the Neolithic period, which came from Asia and was never fully repressed." Even in the In the 1930s, the caveman was confronted with the “cultural man” that followed the Neolithic era with virtues such as house building and agriculture . Not only rock caves but also earth caves were postulated as a place of residence. At the Langmannersdorf site in Lower Austria, a mine finding was still interpreted as a cave from the Aurignacia period in 1923 .
Colloquial language
The type caveman remained even after the disappearance of archaeological literature firmly rooted in the genre of "Fiction préhistorique," the popular, especially in France fantasy novels and films with acts from prehistoric times. The American comedy Caveman (1981) makes use of the clichés that have grown out of it.
Colloquially, the term cave man is still used today to refer to people with archaic or very bad manners . The title of the Broadway monodrama Caveman , for example, is based on this . The term Man Cave describes a cave-like retreat and alludes to the stereotype of the caveman.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ralf-Carl Langhals: Back to Lascaux! A cave story. Tectum Verlag 2003, ISBN 9783828884595
- ↑ a b Carl W. Neumann: The becoming of people and culture. Leipzig, G. Dollheimer publishing house, 1932
- ↑ The Last Cavemen of Papua New Guinea. National Geographic Germany (accessed October 11, 2015)
- ↑ Tina Baier: The ancient residents. Archaeologists have discovered 3,000-year-old bones in a cave in the southern Harz - now they are looking for living relatives. Süddeutsche Zeitung of February 3, 2007, online at sueddeutsche.de/wissen
- ↑ Ludwig Büchner: Man and his position in nature and society in the past, present and future. Or: where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? Leipzig, Thomas, 1889, p. 71
- ^ Christine Neugebauer-Maresch: Paleolithic in the east of Austria. - Scientific Series of publications Lower Austria 95/96/97, 1993. St. Pölten-Vienna.