information:classification
In popular culture

Neanderthals have been portrayed in popular culture including appearances in literature, visual media and comedy. The " caveman " archetype often mocks Neanderthals and depicts them as primitive, hunchbacked, knuckle-dragging, club-wielding, grunting, nonsocial characters driven solely by animal instinct. "Neanderthal" can also be used as an insult.

In literature, they are sometimes depicted as brutish or monstrous, such as in H. G. Wells ' The Grisly Folk and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas ' The Animal Wife, but sometimes with a civilised but unfamiliar culture, as in William Golding's The Inheritors, Björn Kurtén 's Dance of the Tiger, and Jean M. Auel 's Clan of the Cave Bear and her Earth's Children series.