Artist: Troy D. McLachlan
Species: Homo neanderthalensis
Sources: Facebook & The Purple Dawn of Creation
Now, that’s probably a wild title for you all. While I’m sure the resemblance to Vendramini’s Neanderthal is clear, one might find themselves asking what a “purple dawn of creation” even is. Well, that’s not exactly my field of interest, so I’d suggest checking out Mr. McLachlan’s website for answers there if you’re truly curious. Otherwise, all you need to know is that it’s a fairly niche theory of some forgotten age of the world, when Earth orbited Saturn and existed in a perpetual purple haze.
For whatever reason, quite unknown to myself, proponents of this theory are also fond of certain aspects of Danny Vendramini’s Super-Predator, and so it is just such a creature depicted here. A hairy, nocturnal, and utterly carnivorous Neanderthal with truly enormous eyes, all the better to see you with.
Not being any sort of reconstruction, so far as I am aware, it’s unlikely I would post these at any other time of the year. However, ’tis the season and I feel it’s more than appropriate, as a savage beast of nightmare stalking an eerie twilight dreamscape.
I can’t say I have no appreciation for the dynamic poses Troy has chosen here, every scene certainly paints a portrait of the monster. An ape loosely approximate to us in form, a creature with the intelligence to make sophisticated weaponry and put it to good use, one that embraces cooperative hunting, and yet is utterly unlike ourselves. Perhaps something more related to the notion of “convergent evolution” than true kin of ours, which we only mistake for a man out of wishful thinking and a lack of flesh.
As I’ve expressed before, it’s quite the entertaining notion even if you don’t buy a single word of it. There’s a clear fascination and pride in being human there, I think, and a question to how near a man an animal may be without being one. If advanced toolmaking isn’t it, than what is? Perhaps as a source of inspiration, you might ask yourself where you might draw the line.
Artist: Jill Holod
Species: Homo neanderthalensis
Sources: Facebook
Now, Jill Holod’s take is somewhat different, presenting them less as savage ape-men and almost more as simple example of wildlife. These creatures do not snarl or roar, but merely watch with an uncanny stare and unreadable face. If anything, however, I find such an image all the more unnerving. Where Troy’s might be a monstrous mirror of man, Jill’s is a wholly alien and unrelatable existence.
I often compare paleo-reconstructions to a reflection of the artist, aspects of the familiar they seek in the past, but this is one polished surface that refuses to return even a hint of the recognizable. Where Holod draws the line between beast and man, she draws it sharp and clear.
Here, there is not even furrowed brow or snarl to which we might relate our own rage or aggression, but something strange and cold that turns us aside. Eyes that stare back without even a hint of familiarity, and certainly none of the cues we search for within those of our fellows. Even the mannerisms depicted seem wholly unlike the curiosity expected of one of us, but more akin to the alert posture of an animal. Strangely, I am put in mind of Meerkats.
Despite sharing a common root framework, the sheer difference just in interpretation is fascinating. Personally, I think I prefer Jill’s version as an expression of the truly inhuman. Something that avoids all of the marks of the classic killer ape, and yet seems far more at home dispassionately chewing on the still warm intestines of its yet living and anguishing prey as many predators are won’t to do.
Perhaps that’s something of an underexplored field of horror ready to be further defined, though it is not without its pioneers. A cold calculating competitor to ourselves, a rival for our niche perhaps more efficient and deadly by any obvious metric, and yet lacking in so many of the myriad aspects of human consciousness we so prize. A challenge, then, against which to prove the worth of the human soul.
At the very least, it’s not the worst idea to muck around with.
—The Curator
The Early Man Gallery 