Oh yeah, I recognize her. An ancestor of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Some of us were real ugly, and way stupid, like her. They were the ones who kept saying, "They're socialists, these sapiens! Can't you see that? We gotta fight them, kill 'em all, otherwise they'll destroy everything we've built! I mean, look at this cave, you want to give that up?"
The rest of us Neands got along with them, you know what I mean? Marjorie’s ancestor and her crowd, they wouldn’t have it. They had a movement going, no, I’m not kidding, MNUSHA they called themselves—they painted it on their foreheads, which was hard because look, there’s not a lot of room there, below the hairline. Look at the pictures. What? Oh, it stood for “Make Neanderthals Understand Shit Again,” or something like that.
Yeah, we had a written language. Well, “we” did, the ones who learned from the sapiens, Marjorie’s ancestor wouldn’t hear of it. “Why do I have to read?” she’d say, “what’s there to learn from socialists except how to fuck in weird positions like face to face, why do you want to look at the guy? I’ll go to the cave pictures, thank you very much, or listen to the Big Orange One.”
Uh huh. He was a Big Neck, the biggest, I guess, he became their leader. More like a cheerleader, he just encouraged them to say stupid shit, and do really dumb things, like start wars with the sapiens, who had better weapons, to begin with, and it’s not like they meant to wipe us out, they just brought all these diseases with them out of Africa, so when it warmed up we starting dying off, dropping like horseflies. No immunity, you see what I’m saying? And they actually made more sense of the world than we did. They had, like, a sense of direction, you know what I mean? They knew which way they wanted to go. Mostly west.
Marjorie’s ancestor and MANUSHA didn’t want to make sense; they were know-nothings, and they were proud of it, even the smart ones, always talking about how great things used to be back when, you know, like when everything froze up almost overnight and everybody starved, that was so great. “Back to the caves!"” they said, as if it ever got warm in there. They wouldn’t go near horses, they wouldn’t let the wolves close to the fire, they wouldn’t raise birds, like the sapiens did. I don’t know why, something about what the Big Necks said, how animals were filthy creatures, you couldn’t trust ‘em, better not eat ‘em. Something like that.
That’s right, the Big Orange One was the leader of the Big Necks. They were the ruling class, or wanted to be. He was the worst of the bunch, though, he just kept chanting, saying shit nobody understood, but the sound of it seemed right. It was what they wanted to hear, I guess. MNUSHA destroyed us, if you want to know the truth. Man, they did everything they could to fuck things up. Elected leaders who couldn’t get anything done. Kept talking about the “the invaders,” yeah, the sapiens, but didn’t do anything about it, except build walls from stones and sod—they tore up the tundra to build these ridiculous piles—and what did that accomplish? They became playgrounds for the sapien children, and were they ever obnoxious little shits, most of ‘em.
Well, yes, there was “interbreeding,” but look, it wasn’t planned or anything, and it made for a lot of trouble. I mean, a lot of us died over it, and by “us” I mean both sides, mostly us of course because the sapiens thought we were an inferior species, although it turned out we were similar, even related, and ended up swapping genes and all. All kinds of stories about “star-crossed buggers,” you know what I mean, Neands and sapiens getting together against the parents’ wishes. What could they do?
Yeah, well, thanks for having me. Been a pleasure.
Nicely done.