I was on Chicken Foot Road, in St. Paul’s, North Carolina this past Mother’s Day, sitting around the kitchen table with my mom, younger sister and her daughter (she calls me Uncle Baggo). We were enjoying strawberry-covered angel food cake. The small TV in the corner was tuned to Clash of the Cavemen on the History Channel. In the beginning I was the only one watching, but after a short time my sister started commenting, then my niece, and finally my mother.

It wasn’t so much the content of the show that caught their attention; it was the Narrator’s pronunciation of Neanderthal. The premise of the episode was how Mr. & Mrs. Neanderthal’s contact with Homo sapiens (Cro-Magnon Person) about 27,000 years ago, because of the necessary migration forced by Global Cooling (better known as the Ice Age), caused their eventual extinction.

When I was young, the only pronunciation for Neanderthal was Neanderthal. But apparently the hoity-toity, high-brow Anthropologists prefer to use the proper German Neandertal. So, what if Neanderthal was discovered in Neander Valley? I want to say it the way I know. Although I heard the “correct” pronunciation a few months before my family on a different “educational” show, at the time I didn’t pay it much mind. Now it kind of ticks me off. How dare them change it? Bastages. All of them!

Then the Narrator started pronouncing Cro-Magnon as Cro-Magnyon, in some sort of French, Sissy way. Where will it end? I always knew Cro-Magnon as Cro-Magnon. Now, I have to picture Peppy Le Pew walking around saying, “Theese eeze Cro-Magnyon Pairson” as he points to the picture on the left.

Homo sapiens were much less mentally challenged than Neanderthal (tal). Anytime a more advanced brain subjects an inferior brain to The Ways of the World, the superior mind wins.

I think I’ll have another donut. Pass the pizza.

With Love,

Bag O’ Donuts
Guest Contributor