Spoiled for choice, it’s rare that we encounter narrative content that surprises us. How often do you find yourself, mid-way through a movie, saying to yourself “I already know how this is going to end!” Whether you know definitively, or know vaguely two or three potential endings, you’re anticipating something you’ve encountered before. Some literary theorists have speculated that there are only a handful of basic plots that story-tellers from Mesopotamia to modern day have recycled in “novel” ways. Whether this is absolutely true or not, it’s clear that in the 21st century we approach new content with a weary hopefulness that it might feel fresh, might provide us with new perspectives on the dreary mundanity of our lives. We seen it all already.
Even so, every now and then something filters through the cracks of our jadedness and surprises us. Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal has been one such pleasant surprise. I’d heard about it, this new series from the creator of Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack. Both cartoons were beloved in my house growing up and remain steady points of cultural reference within my family, very much a staple of our late 90’s surplus lifestyles. Genndy’s unique use of bold colors and lines was especially appealing. His stories were also hilarious and strange and occasionally affecting. Born Gennady Borisovich Tartakovsky in the former Soviet Union, I often locate him within a tradition of late Soviet animators like Yuri Norstein, Fyodor Khitruk, Roman Kachanov, and Gennady Sokolsky. But it wasn’t until his family left the Soviet Union and relocated to Italy (for fear of state sanctioned anti-Semitism) that he even began to consider art. Eventually his family settled in the states and Tartakovsky would do two years at CalArts before starting work on series’ like Batman: The Animated Series (another staple of my childhood).
What first surprised me about Primal is that, unlike Dexter’s Laboratory or Samurai Jack, it was an animated series for adults. Makes sense if your demographic is now in their late twenties and mid-thirties. All of the boldness of Dexter’s Lab and Samurai Jack can be found in Primal with a hi-def facelift and more graphic content. The story, almost entirely devoid of typical dialogue, follows a Neanderthal in an unspecified prehistoric locale who’s confronted with the tragic death of his partner and child at the tiny hands (and sharp teeth) of two predatory Tyrannosaurs. This tragic, if well-worn, inciting incident embarks our Neanderthal on a journey of vengeance that sees him befriending another Tyrannosaur who experienced a similar loss (of her two babysaurs) at the hands of the same predatory dinosaurs. The show then departs from this set-up in fantastical ways, with the odd couple, reminiscent at times of Steinbeck’s Lennie and George, encountering all kinds of supernatural and hypernatural phenomena. Often, these encounters present very real and violent threats to the two heartbroken wanderers and Primal is not shy is presenting that viscera in bright colors and high contrasts. Even so, however the extent of the show’s uncanny horrors, there remains within every episode a warm, beating heart. It’s perhaps because of the spectacle (and ever-present threat) of violence showcased therein that Primal rather becomes a parabolic tale of compassion. So not to spoil the experience any further, I’ll stop here. It’s available for viewing on Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” or via HBO Max, if you’re at all interested in something new.
But what actually piqued my interest on first viewing was the degree to which Primal was adhering to some notion of anthropological authenticity. It’s a silly kind of scrutiny to apply to comic and pulp media—it’s a cartoon bro—but it’s one I was initially curious about. Was Primal aiming for some degree of authenticity? Midway through the first episode I began to question the narrative framing. And by the end of the first episode I was convinced that Primal would be taking some liberties with the source material. Described on Wikipedia as deliberately anachronistic, these strange and fabulous departures (no spoilers) from what we know and accept of pre-historic beings, while likely not accurate, make for a better and more compelling animation and story. And this is what I found so curious. How much of what we know and accept of the prehistoric (that is, a time before recorded history) influences our perception of the present?
In the context of human evolution, human vestigiality involves those traits (such as organs or behaviors) occurring in humans that have lost all or most of their original function through evolution. Although structures called vestigial often appear functionless, a vestigial structure may retain lesser functions or develop minor new ones. In some cases, structures once identified as vestigial simply had an unrecognized function. Vestigial organs are sometimes called rudimentary organs.
The examples of human vestigiality are numerous, including the anatomical (such as the human tailbone, wisdom teeth, and inside corner of the eye), the behavioral (goose bumps and palmar grasp reflex), and molecular (pseudogenes). Many human characteristics are also vestigial in other primates and related animals.
—Wikipedia
After a recent visit to the dentist, I was encouraged to pay special attention to my back molars when brushing. This has always felt a little challenging for me since those things are way back there. So I managed to ask as she scraped the non-existent plaque from my gums (because I take excellent care of my teeth) “What exactly are wisdom teeth and why does everyone bitch about them?” Turns out, according to my thoughtful hygienist (who also recommended rosemary oil for hair loss per one TikTok tutorial she’d seen) that wisdom teeth were considered a vestigial set of molars from an ancient and outmoded form of human beings, Neanderthals perhaps. I still have my wisdom teeth. They’ve never been a problem for me. And it’s not because I’m (not) wise. Most people, if they develop wisdom teeth at all, seem to need them removed because (this too according to my evolutionary biologist hygienist) the human jaw evolved and became smaller, narrower when those teeth no longer served a functional purpose.
This really got me thinking about my heritage. What does it mean to have the physical qualities (and perhaps even DNA) of an extinct population? More specifically, what does it mean to have the genetic material of a Neanderthal or Denisovan, to be encoded and perceived as primitive?
On the literal and scientific level, it might indicate an individual’s haplotype as inherited from a larger haplogroup. Haplogroups identify unique gene mutation in a significant subset of the population. In other words, a haplogroup shares a common genetic trait or set of traits. Broadly speaking, haplogroups form the branches of an ancestral or evolutionary family tree that can be traced through significant distinctions in genetic material (melanated skin v. pale skin, blue eyes v. brown eyes, red hair v. blond hair, etc). These are often traced through patrilineal DNA (Y-Chromosome) or matrilineal DNA (mt-DNA or Mitochondrial DNA). Analyzing clusters of these distinct genetic mutations in present day populations has given evolutionary biologists some idea of how these haplogroups may have migrated over time.
Not too long ago, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology coordinated what would be called the Neanderthal Genome Project, a collective, international effort to determine the who, what, when, where, and maybe why of Paleolithic (early Stone Age) humans. As they sequenced Neanderthal DNA to compare and contrast it with our present human DNA, they arrived at a handful of conclusions about previously held assumptions regarding our anthropological ancestors. One of these conclusions is that Neanderthal DNA can still be traced among European and Asian haplogroups (with a near absence in Sub-Saharan African haplogroups), further suggesting a pre-historic intermingling between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. Though this has been challenged as recently as 2018, with mitochondrial African haplogroups displaying “more potential [Neandertal] signatures than Asian and European haplogroups”.
These conversations among biological anthropologists and geneticists are ongoing, open to the arrival of new data and discoveries. It is, in some sense, a dynamic discourse. But what has endured is our psycho-social, semantic, and narrative understanding of the Neanderthal as primitive, an inferior expression of our contemporary human genome. To call someone a Neanderthal is to imply that they are boorish, uncivilized, aggressive. And this relatively fixed understanding of the primitive is, unfortunately, bolstered by the dynamism and authority of (misinterpreted) scientific discourse.
One of the most frequently parroted anthropological theories is that anatomically modern humans have a common ancestor in Africa. How often have you heard from people in the field, whether your teachers or institutionally committed researchers or rabid black nationalists, that we’re all originally from Africa? If you return to the above Y-DNA haplogroup map and examine the west African coast (around the conflux of Niger-Congo haplogroups) you’ll notice a 5-point star denoting Y-DNA Adam, the patrilineal source of modern humanity, the African Ur-Father. I am in no position to confirm or deny the veracity of such a biological claim, but I will say that this theory commits one deadly linguistic sin that has been the source of a pervasive and fundamental misreading. The notion that all modern life comes from Africa is, like Primal, deliberately anachronistic, a form of historical catachresis relied upon for its convenience. What I mean is that the land on which this prehistoric, prelinguistic ancestor is traced back to could not appropriately be called “Africa”. That Pleistocene landmass, while geographically similar to our contemporary mapping of the African continent, was not yet the social construct of Africa—a construct largely determined by European framing of a vast land and peoples it could not, in its own insularity, understand or even conceive of. The idea that we are all African is absolutely dangerous because it inscribes contemporary Africa and people of African descent as perennially primitive, originary and ante-modern, animalistic and inferior, etc. Unfortunately this is a narrative coopted by a variety of institutions. It is a story swaddled in the privilege and authority of science.
This has always been true of the human handlers of data driven science. Even in effort to maintain some semblance of scientific objectivity and methodical doubt, the data must be interpreted and that interpretation is itself a form of narrative invention. What we’re left with in popular imaginings of these “scientific findings” are primitives markedly different from a Neo-Classical Aryan ideal. So much of this subcutaneous propaganda is mapped to the T-zone of our faces, where primitives demonstrate low, sloping foreheads, wide noses, and projecting mid-faces. In contradistinction, the anatomically modern human is demonstrated as having a high brow, a straight, narrow nose, and a compact, concave philtrum above reasonably proportioned lips. Stephen J. Gould in The Mismeasure of Man, a response to Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve, challenges some of these pseudo-scientific and historical precedents, from western notions of racial hierarchies to practices like phrenology. The above diagram is one such example, presented in the book, of Eurocentrism’s influence on modern perceptions of race, class, and primitivity.
Even so, however compelling cases against these myths have been, these myths (often expressed in binaries of primitivity v. evolved modernity, inferiority v. superiority) persist. Whether in representations like Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal or Jean M. Auel’s Earth Children series (often synecdochically referred to as the Clan of the Cave Bear), these myths persist because they are not only narratively compelling, but provide a convenient frame for the absurd anomaly of modernity, a frame (again) couched in the veracity of scientific data and historical rigor.
We see evidence of the effects of this pseudo-scientific framework in the present, with many expressing their discontent for Halle Bailey’s casting as a live action Little Mermaid—because…well…it just wouldn’t be scientifically possible for real mermaids to come from an African haplogroup. And we all know that melanated skin is due to the sun’s superabundance in African countries.
Questions of representation are tantamount to our understanding of modern and contemporary art. If, within the western canon of visual artists, we trace European modernism through Picasso’s 1907 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, it is only because of an encounter the young and ambitious artist would have with a traditional African mask. Picasso’s Demoiselles, a painting that in scope and style oddly foreshadows the bodily appropriations of Kim Kardashian and her many Instagram acolytes, often marks the end of his Blue Period and the fantastic reinvigoration of his Rose Period by inaugurating his African period. It is also frequently considered the birthing of Cubism and the gradual abstraction of figurative painting.
Many are the influences on Picasso’s work and this painting in particular, but it’s the obvious “primitivism” that continues to stoke curiosity. There are a variety of stories surrounding Picasso’s encounter(s) with African art and masks, but it stands to reason that the most influential (and perhaps first) piece he was introduced to was a mask carved in the Fang tradition (Bantu; Cameroon, Gabon, Guinea). The features on the faces of the women in the top and bottom right corners of the painting mimic the sleek length common to Fang mask work. Picasso hadn’t been first among his peers to dabble in primitivism, but he certainly made one of the biggest splashes with this Eurocentric mode of representation.
Fast forward nearly a century to 1991. Fred Wilson (b. 1970, Bronx NY) has appropriated Picasso’s Demoiselles for a piece of his own titled Picasso/Whose Rules? Using a photo of the original painting in dimensions similar to the original (~8’ x 7’), Wilson affixed to the face of the woman on the bottom right a Kifwebe mask. The eyes of the mask seem to glow with an ethereal blue light and upon closer inspection, one finds behind the eyes a video.
In a 2005 interview with Art21, Wilson said of the piece “When I did that I was feeling very strongly about how modernism was a part of the destruction of traditional African culture. When Picasso found African things in the shops in France, he saw something far greater in them, which, you know, of course, we’re all thankful to him for. However, neither the missionaries, the military men, nor Picasso had a clue as to what these things were really about…if you look through the eyes of the mask there’s a video of two African friends and myself speaking about what makes art great and, um, there are a lot of convoluted questions like… ‘If your modern art is our contemporary art, does that make our contemporary art your cliché?’”
‘If your modern art is our contemporary art, does that make our contemporary art your cliché?’
—Fred Wilson
We each exist within and beneath and around these forms of deliberate anachronism. They seem to color various facets of our world in mythical hues of good and evil, efficient and outmoded, digital and analogue. If one of the hallmarks of the primitive is his vestigiality, the benign offense of his apparent uselessness, then I suppose I am markedly primitive. I have wisdom teeth. I can wiggle my ears. I spend lots of time writing things people don’t have time to read. And I expect I have a number of other features that might classify as holdovers from the Stone Age—as we all do. The uvula, the appendix, these too are vestigial organs. We all have them. We’re all a little vestigial. We’re all a little primitive.
Which is to say that the idea of the primitive is a failure of 20th century heuristic thinking. It is as inaccurate a classification as the idea that we all come from Africa is a catachrestic misnomer, anachronism that situates Europe and Asia as the modern evolved future of an African and indigenous prehistoric past. This is not meant to refute the data and findings of sincere scientific inquiry, rather it’s a reminder to continue troubling the water of language used to frame a framing discourse.