Will Cuppy Tonight: "The Neanderthal Man" from "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes"

The Neanderthal Man (and Neanderthal Woman)

"The Neanderthal Man had plenty of brains but somehow they did him no good."

by Ken

Can you feel the excitement? As we proceed through the first part, "Memoirs of the Jukes Family, or Where We Come In," of How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes, we're getting closer to "where we come in." Tonight, after Java Man, Peking Man, Piltdown Man, and Heidelberg Man, it's --

The Neanderthal Man

THE NEANDERTHAL MAN lived in fear of the Woolly Mammoth, the Woolly Rhinoceros, the Woolly Hyena¹ and the Neanderthal Woman, who would drag him to her cave and roll great stones against the door and marry him. The Neanderthal Woman had no charm but she had a club. The Neanderthal Man was so difficult to rouse that one wonders if it was worth it. There were no icemen because it was the Great Ice Age. Neanderthal Men had very short fibulas. They walked with a shuffling gait like Edgar Wallace characters. They were slow on the uptake. The Neanderthals lived in groups under an Old Man who would drive out all the likely youths as soon as they were likely. Then the more intelligent girls would stroll off in the same direction to pick wild flowers. They would have clubs. The Neanderthal Man had plenty of brains but somehow they did him no good. During the Great Ice Age the glaciers kept advancing and retreating much more than they do now. They kept the Neanderthals on the run. The glaciers were in a wild state and only the fleetest Neanderthals could escape from them.² This was the survival of the fleetest. The Neanderthal Man had fires, caves, marrow bones,³ mosquitoes, love and arthritis. What more can you ask?

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¹The Neanderthal Man was rather woolly himself.
²Cf. "Pursued by a Glacier."
³Neanderthal Men also ate Snails, Frogs, Lemmings and other varmints. Some say they ate fried Neanderthal.

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TOMORROW IN WILL CUPPY TONIGHT: The Cro-Magnon Man


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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