Welcome Back to Caveman Times: Social Consequences of (Mis)Representations of the Paleolithic By Jenna Hendrick B.A., Binghamton University, State University of New York, 2016 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS In the Department of Anthropology ãJenna Hendrick, 2021 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. We acknowledge with respect the Lekwungen peoples on whose traditional territory the university stands and the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day. ii Welcome Back to Caveman Times: Social Consequences of (Mis)Representations of the Paleolithic By Jenna Hendrick B.A., Binghamton University, State University of New York, 2016 Supervisory Committee Dr. Brian Thom, Supervisor Department of Anthropology Dr. April Nowell, Supervisor Department of Anthropology iii Abstract Among the American population, there is a general misunderstanding of human evolution and human life in the Paleolithic. Beyond the mechanics of biological evolution, there is confusion over what sorts of modern-day behaviors are vestiges from humans’ evolutionary past. My master’s thesis explores what kind of misconceptions about Paleo-life and human evolution circulate in popular discourse and where these misconceptions stem from. Drawing on the experiences of community members in upstate New York, I conducted a multimodal discourse analysis via surveys, interviews, and a reflexive media analysis to triangulate my findings. Through these two discourses – that of the everyday understanding of human evolution and Paleo-life versus what kinds of messages popular media portrays on these same issues – I determined that popular media constitutes a large resource of information gathering for the general public. Furthermore, the media highlighted by my research participants to exhibit themes of human evolution had clear messages on race, gender, and violence that research participants largely believe to be successful modes of “survival of the fittest” and thus cultural “survivals” from when we were evolving to our modern form. Participant and media messages regarding race, gender, and violence mirror the logics behind white American Exceptionalism; though these everyday epistemologies are argued by my participants to be biological in nature, they merely reflect today’s values and are logics used to successfully participate in American society. That is to say, the repetitive, naturalizing messages portrayed by popular media on human evolution and paleo-life both construct and reify the popular understanding that modern concepts of race, gender and violence are biological and have led to the success of our species. With these findings, I offer science educators recommendations on how to best utilize edutainment to correct these outdated narratives. iv Table of Contents Supervisory Committee ..............................................................................................................ii Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ............................................................................................................................. vi List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1 : “Living in the Modern World with a Stone Age Brain” .......................................... 1 1.1 Research Questions and Objectives............................................................................................. 5 1.2 Thesis Outline .............................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 2: “That’s Interesting, Because We’re Not Taught That:” Contextualizing the Need for Evolutionary Edutainment ................................................................................................... 8 2.1 Why Human Evolution Matters .................................................................................................. 8 2.1.1 Human Evolution and Race: Logics of White Human Exceptionalism ................................................. 10 2.1.2 Human Evolution and Gender: “The women are not doing anything” .................................................. 16 2.1.3 Human Evolution and Violence: “It was kill or get killed” ................................................................... 22 2.2 Fighting and Appropriating Human Evolution in America: “Poor people are poor because… they’re not fit” ................................................................................................................................. 25 2.3 Popular Media as a Solution ...................................................................................................... 27 2.3.1 Cultural Models .................................................................................................................................. 31 2.3.2 Popular Media as Enculturation and Socialization ............................................................................... 32 2.4 Popular Media as Edutainment ................................................................................................. 32 2.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 34 Chapter 3: Research Methodology ........................................................................................... 35 3.1 Study Sample and Recruitment ................................................................................................. 36 3.2 Ethics .......................................................................................................................................... 40 3.3 Data Collection and Analysis ..................................................................................................... 42 3.3.1 Survey Construction and Collection .................................................................................................... 43 3.3.2 Semi-Structured Interview Data Collection ......................................................................................... 44 3.3.3 Ethnographic Data Analysis ................................................................................................................ 45 3.3.4 Reflexive Media Analysis ................................................................................................................... 45 3.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 47 Chapter 4 : “You hunted, ate, fucked until you died at age 23”: Ethnographic Results and Analysis .................................................................................................................................... 49 v 4.1 Valued Sources for Information on Human Evolution and Science......................................... 50 4.2 Everyday Epistemologies of Gender ......................................................................................... 56 4.2.1 Man-the-Hunter and Woman-the…? ................................................................................................... 57 4.2.2 Life After Children? ........................................................................................................................... 64 4.3 Everyday Epistemologies of Violence ........................................................................................ 69 4.5 Everyday Epistemologies of Race .............................................................................................. 75 4.4.1 New Land, New Look ......................................................................................................................... 75 4.4.2 Paleolithic “Racial” Tensions and the Case for (White) Human Exceptionalism ................................... 80 4.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 85 Chapter 5 : “Everything was based on survival of the fittest:” An Analysis of Popular Media Representations of Human Evolution ...................................................................................... 91 5.1 Gender: “male dominance, female subservience” .................................................................... 94 5.2 Violence: “…they’re all trying to survive and they’re all fighting in their hostile environment…” ............................................................................................................................. 102 5.3 Race: “To me they kind of all looked very similar” ................................................................ 108 5.4 Online News Articles................................................................................................................ 114 5.5 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................