How come illustrations of cavemen always depict them as being white?

Question

If they lived on the veldt or the plain, wouldn't their skin be dark?

Answer 1

As we evolved from Australopithecines into Homo, and our body hair started thinning, we would have started out with fairly light skin, like that of a chimpanzee, under its thick coating of body hair, but would have been slowly selected for darker skin. This enabled the males to forage, hunt, and scavenge without competition during the hottest part of the day, in Africa, near the tropics, where others would have been resting in the shade, returning to the tribe more often with more food, and gaining greater sexual access to the females, who would have been quick to realise who were the better providers, the ones that "brought home the bacon".The first wave of migration out of Africa into Northern Europe, would then have been selected for lighter skin, which produces more vitamin D, thereby reducing the incidence of rickets and other diseases caused by a deficiency in that vitamin. They eventually evolved into Homo Neanderthalensis, which was out competed and displaced by later waves of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (us), who would have still been adapting to those Northern climes, and been darker of skin than the Neanderthals. To a large extent, those depictions are like those of Jesus, as being white, when, according to the Greeks, he was swarthy (between olive and mid brown). So it depends not only on the artist, but also the publisher/museum director.

Answer 2

Well, they wouldn't be "cavemen" exactly, if they lived on the plain or veldt (of Africa, I presume). The most appropriate use for the term "cavemen" refers to Neanderthals, and humans that migrated into Northern Europe about 45,000 years ago. These two groups, living in ice age Europe, would have had different skin colors. The Neanderthals, having evolved in Europe, would have been white. The newly arrived humans would have still had black skin. What I find funny is that when you see depictions of Neanderthals meeting Humans for the first time, the Neanderthals have dark skin, (though not black) and the newcomer humans have white skin...why is that? Obviously, that would not have been the case.

Answer 3

More than likely because the textbooks were produced by whites in the earlier years. However, since the emergence of "Lucy," presented as a black woman and theoretically a major contributor to human, rather than "eurogenesis" history, illustrations have become more credible.
Santa Claus would have certainly been darker skinned if his myth had been created by his neighboring Inuit tribes, but since Kris Kringle was first introduced by Nordic/Teutonic peoples, it should come as no surprise that he is portrayed as white and possibly born a natural blond. The depiction of one Jesus Christ as fair-skinned reflects the influence of predominantly "white religions" with no consideration whatsoever for his claimed middle-east roots. As the much touted "King of the Jews," I envision Him as more Semitic or Arabian in physical appearance, but church fund-raisers even in the formative years discovered white purses held more shekels, drachma or other coin of the realm.

Answer 4

It's all to do with the film One Million Years B.C.. They needed pale skin so the primitive 1960s camera men could make out their heaving, bikini clad bosoms against the dark, green skin of the giant iguana-like dinosaurs that were wrecking havoc across Hollywood in that glorious decade.

Answer 5

Maybe they are depicted as white because when drawing/coloring cavemen, they're often filthy. It's a bit more difficult to distinguish brown dirt on brown skin.

Answer 6

'Cavemen' are usually interpreted as Neanderthals, a high-latitude, cold adapted species of Homo, and it is speculated that a pale skin would have been an evolutionary adaptation to the European environment. The early Cro-magnons, migrating north from Africa, may well have had dark skins.

Answer 7

I wonder why they always depict them with human hair patterns and I have even seen Neanderthal with male pattern baldness. For all we know they were hairy like chimpanzees. Since they were living in areas with very little sun, it seems likely they had light skin but they were no more closely related to us than they are to any other race. Our last common ancestor was something like 300,000 to 400,000 years ago.

Answer 8

Very good qestion.

I suspect the usual reason: The people depicting them are white and don't even think of any other possibility.

Same reason Santa Claus is white? (although he does live at the north pole so I suppose that is legit)

Answer 9

It`s simply because the drawings are done by whites.
Anyway your usual "cave-person" is depicted as Cromagnon who was predominately paler than his Neanderthal competitor.
However "modern man" did spring from what is now the African continent.

Answer 10

i dunno by the same logic why do most Hollywood productions have to portray a White Anglo-Saxon character set with a couple of Blacks thrown in here and there - and no other ethnicity whereas America and especially, New York and Los Angeles are large melting pots of diverse communities (that's a fact)