Vampire Cavemen: Speculation Regarding the Plausibility of a Modern-Day Archaeological Hoax

1 Vampire Cavemen: Speculation Regarding the Plausibility of a ModernDay Archaeological Hoax

Vampire Cavemen: Speculation Regarding the Plausibility of a ModernDay Archaeological

Hoax

Andrew Gillespie

University of Colorado at Denver


CONTENTS

3… Abstract

4… The Origin of a Nightmare

7… Selecting the Subject

10… The Making of a Monster

13… “Razzle Dazzle Them”

15… Conclusion

17… Works Cited


ABSTRACT

The historical con artist utilized many tools, but chief among them were the zeitgeist and

the ignorance of ordinary people to gain attention, fame, and fortune. In this age of vampire

mania due to the Twilight series and pseudoarchaeology capitalizing off people’s ignorance,

taking advantage on this in the archaeological world through the manufacturing of evidence is

entirely plausible as my paper will demonstrate. I will take you through the conceptual creation

of Homo Neanderthalis sanguinis — the Vampire Caveman. After interviewing local experts in

the fields of archaeology, forensics, medicine and other fields as well as doing extensive research

online and in the Auraria Library, I will construct a hypothetical scenario for a modern day

archaeological hoax exploiting one of the most powerful current trends in marketing — the

fascination with the vampire.


THE ORIGIN OF A NIGHTMARE

Vampire myths and legends began to emerge in cultures all around the world at various

times. Demons, deities, monsters, creatures, and even plants have all been associated with blood

drinking and dominion over the night. Many different theories have been proposed for the origin

of what we now know as the vampire, and they all deal with particular aspects of humans and

their cultures that are arguably universal. In cultures and civilizations throughout human history,

there has existed the fear of the night given that our greatest sense, sight, is essentially robbed

from us while large animals that preyed upon us do not have the same limitation. Equally

universal is the association of blood with life. Loss of blood was often a death sentence to

humans lacking sufficiently advanced medical knowledge or technology, leading to that other

universal among humans: death. Given that the more food one had generally the longer one

lived, a creature capable of living on the blood of humans is thus seen as living off life itself; a

very pertinent connection given humans are predators themselves.

To become the hunted is to feed on very primal terrors, going back to our apelike

ancestors far into the Pleistocene Era when primates first evolved. Not a mammal has existed

that did not feel fear of being devoured at some point in its life, and so it is with us. Finally, there

is death itself. The vampire is an aberration, something that quite frankly should not be. It is dead

and yet alive. Like a parasite, it feeds off the life of the living to continue its own existence. It is


made even worse if it is a family member, turning the person we once knew and loved into an

undead monster.

The trauma of losing someone you love to death is bad enough, and the feeling of this

lasts for quite a while. The idea of someone returning from the dead is both appealing and

appalling. This wholly unnatural state produces the conflict which feeds the trauma. Taking a

sentient mammal that knows the feelings of being both hunted and hunter, aware of the end of

their own existence and the very real connection between living and blood, and add in our

instinctive fear of darkness and it’s little wonder what we now call the vampire is found

throughout history.

In India, vampires are known as the brahmaparusha; in Africa they are the asasabonsam

and the obayifo. In Hebrew mysticism, Lillith, the first wife of Adam, became the mother of

vampires when she refused to submit to Adam. In Egypt, Sekhmet, the hunter goddess, was

bloodthirsty and celebrations were held in her honor after battles. The Hindu pantheon also

included the goddess Kali: warlike, violent, and often depicted drinking blood. The Americas

did not have a specific vampirelike entity in their mythology until the French and the slaves

brought the Loogaroo from Africa. European vampires were blamed for illnesses like

tuberculosis and were thought to feed upon blood due to the fact corpses were found to bloat

after death due to bacterial growth. Legends spoke of their great strength and stealth, and upon

the discovery of vampire bats in the New World (given how they seemed to rise from the grave

and return without evidence of their passing), shapeshifting was attributed to them. Vlad the

Impaler, better known as Dracula, was a skilled general and brutal warrior and said to feast upon

the blood of his enemies, forming an association between him and the vampire.


However, the modern Western conception of the vampire did not arise until the writing of

Bram Stoker’s infamous horror novel Dracula, published in 1897. Here, the vampire was

presented in a form easily recognizable to the West — suave, charismatic, immortal, and evil, yet

also tragic; a monster and yet a man. This interpretation has become the most prevalent, and its

hold over the popular imagination has remained to this day (Stoker, & Klinger, 2008). The Dutch

psychoanalyst Ernest Jone’s work On the Nightmare covered the vampire in extensive detail,

delving into the psychology that went into the vampire. Doing so brought up all sorts of new

explanations for its prevalence across time and culture: sexual repression, an outlet for sadistic

sexual desires, Freudian oral fixation, or an even simpler desire to avoid death and to live

unconnected from everyday suffering (Jones, 1931).

In recent years the sexual aspect of the vampire has been one of its defining

characteristics, as the Twilight series has plainly shown. It has also become extremely profitable

—the movie adaptations alone have generated more than $1.79 billion USD as of 2010

(Unknown, 2010). This fascination with the vampire has allowed for massive sales in everything

from fashion to comic books to roleplaying games.

As with any popular trope of fiction, there exists the desire for it to in some way exist; for

there to be an inspiration for the legend. It is such desires that the con artist plays upon, whether

for their own amusement or for money. The vampire myth being made real would be a coup of

the highest level, and as in the case of the Cardiff Giant or the Piltdown Man, a possible source

of massive revenue and publicity (Feder, 2008). However, those those were in the 1900s. This is

the twentyfirst century. So, how would such a hoax in the modern day be achieved? The same

way anything else is achieved: through the clever use of science, money, ruthlessness, and


charm. As P. T. Barnum was credited with saying, “there’s a sucker born every minute” (Brown,

2001).

SELECTING THE SUBJECT

It was the protein and fatrich meat of felled antelopes that allowed our ancestors’ brains

to grow larger and more complex. Hunting behavior evolved in Homo at least as early as Homo

ergaster, who utilized group hunting behavior to drive elk over cliffs in England 300,000 years

ago (de Lespinois, 2003). However, in order to connect the myth of the vampire to a racial

memory on a realistic time scale requires a recent specimen. Fortunately, there is such a

candidate.

The species Homo neanderthalensis, better known simply as Neanderthals (or

Neandertals) was discovered in 1864 and were the first fossil humans to be named as a species.

Originally discovered in the Neander Valley in Germany, subsequent anthropological work has

revealed that this species of humans ranged from Spain and the entirety of Europe through a

significant part of the Middle East and Asia Minor. They existed (according to the best of current

findings) from over 350,000 years to a mere 22,000 years ago (Conroy, 2005). There have been

some potential finds in the Ural mountains as well. This fits well within the range of European


and Slavic vampire myths, which happen to be the ones most dominant within the popular

imagination of the world.

Neanderthals, while shorter than us, were also far stockier and had a thicker, stronger

skeletal structure than modern humans. Their brains were larger than ours, but due to a lack of

sulci and gyri, informally known as the wrinkles that make up the surface of the brain they were

far less intelligent. While physically capable of language due to their similar hyloid bones, they

lacked the same temporal lobe development as modern humans so their language would be

limited compared to ours but effective for the environment they lived in. They were tool users,

clothes makers, masters of fire and hunted in organized family groups. Some groups also

practiced symbolic behavior in the form of burying their dead and carving fetishes and pendants

that may have had religious significance. They were a definitive example of the huntergatherer

human lifestyle, built hardily enough to survive in the harsh Ice Ages that saw the emergence of

modern humans and smart enough to utilize the environment around them. While hardly the

smooth, sophisticated vampires of Stoker or Rice’s novels, the Neanderthals were truly,

uncomfortably human — maybe not as intelligent or as creative, but they were a refinement of

everything that had allowed humans to survive and flourish and were not to be underestimated.

Neanderthals and Homo sapiens competed for resources, possibly even engaging in warfare in a

struggle for who would become the dominant hominid on Earth Such conflict between the

species is easily seen in the vampire myths; creatures like us but not like us feeding on humans

(in this case metaphorically) and threatening our existence.

An additional discovery that aids in the hoax is the fact that due to the high nitrogen

content of Neanderthal bones, their diets consisted of up to eighty percent meat (Baker, 2010).


Which, given the harsh Ice Age conditions they found themselves in, makes sense — foraging

for plants across glaciers is a less effective survival strategy than hunting down living and

roaming food. In addition, according to finds in France some groups of Neanderthals, much like

modern humans, may have practiced cannibalism (Defleur, White, Valensi, Slimak, &

CrégutBonnoure, 1999). Was it symbolic or merely an act of desperation? It is unknown. In any

case, confirmed cannibalism would make the case for Neanderthals being the basis of vampires

far more plausible. After all, if they were already in conflict with modern humans, then

devouring them to both get added protein and remove a rival makes sense from an evolutionary

perspective. If they eat each other, why would they not leap to eating rivals? It also serves a

Freudian purpose, further reinforcing the connection between vampire and Neanderthal: eating

another human is a highly primal and traumatizing action to modern humans, associated with the

monstrous part of human nature that the vampire can also represent.

All of this is merely incidental, and is not enough evidence for a serious scientific theory

that Neanderthals formed the basis of vampire myths. Real physical evidence would be required

for that. Fortunately, this being a hoax, such evidence is unnecessary: In the words of Billy Flynn

from the musical Chicago, you have to “give them the old razzledazzle.” (Kander, & Ebb, 1975)


THE MAKING OF A MONSTER

To accomplish his goal, the con artist must know the subject of his hoax intimately, and

he must understand the people and the zeitgeist which he is trying to exploit. First of all, a

proper site for the “discovery” of a vampire Neanderthal fossil would need to be found. The

geology needs to be right; finding a Neanderthal fossil in the KT boundary layer would be

immediately dismissed as a hoax and would also be embarrassing; humans and dinosaurs did not

share anywhere near the same The location must also be carefully chosen. Vampire Neanderthals

in Ohio would raise serious questions and would immediately attract only pseudoscientists and

frauds to the find. The ideal place for the find (as far as the media is concerned) would be the

birthplace of the real Count Dracula himself: Transylvania, Romania. Fortunately, existing

archaeology has proven that Neanderthals ranged throughout Transylvania during the Middle


Paleolithic era, 200,000 to 60,000 years ago. The Vârtop Cave in Transylvania, a dwelling of

Neanderthals, was inhabited as early as 62,000 years ago (Onaca, Viehmanna, Lundbergb,

Lauritzenc, & Stringer, 2004). Locating a site within Transylvania’s borders for the find of the

vampire Neanderthal would not be a significant chore — it has numerous tributaries and exits for

the Danube River and many caves where fossils are found with some regularity, washed up on

shore or into said caves.

The site is important not just for the obvious reasons of where to dig it up, but also due to

the nature of fossilization. While the Cardiff Giant was composed of gypsum, a modern

archaeological hoax would have to be constructed of something far less obvious. Fossil bones

take on the properties of the stone they are found in, and the minerals replace the bone over

periods of thousands or millions of years. However, each bone retains chemical components that

positively identify it as belonging to a living life form, such as Strontium90, which would only

be in the bones due to the fossilized subject eating meat from grazing animals. A basic

knowledge of chemistry, extensive knowledge of the anatomy of the Neanderthal, and the means

to obtain the materials needed would suffice. Any such “find” would have to at least pass a

cursory examination by an anthropologist to get any credibility. Having an accredited

anthropologist in on the hoax would make things far easier because they can help make the find

more convincing.

Creating your own fossilized Neanderthal vampire could be done by creating or obtaining

casts of an existing skeleton and using a mixture of soils to approximate the chemical

composition, weight, feel and look of surrounding fossilized bones. Recreating them in their

entirety would be quite the undertaking unless you are willing to put in the extra effort of casting


the insides of the bones as well as outside. The insides of the real bones would contain holes and

gaps due to the blood vessels than ran through them in life.

The teeth are a very important part of the hoax — elongated canines on a human skull are

an archetypical symbol of vampires). Canines remain a significant part of intimidation displays

among cattarhines and other primates, and large sharp teeth still get an instinctive response out of

humans. Creating false teeth is something humans have been doing for centuries and Neanderthal

teeth would not be a chore to replicate, but carbon dating is something far more difficult to fool.

The canines could be rendered sharper and longer than usual — the claim could be that it was a

natural adaptation, as if they had sharpened the teeth themselves they would be shorter. Few

other adaptations would be required for a viable vampire Neanderthal skeleton as few other parts

of the anatomy would actually survive the fossilization process.

A far simpler and more "realistic" way to pull off the hoax would be to find a real

Neanderthal skeleton and modify it with pointed teeth. That immediately solves any problems of

faking the age of the specimen and is a proper anthropological find in its own right. However, if

you found your own skeleton it is less likely you’d want to go with the vampire hoax in the first

place, and is also far less likely to happen given that only about 10 percent of all life on Earth

will ever be fossilized, and far less than that will be found before being destroyed.


“RAZZLE DAZZLE THEM”

The hoax should commence during an auspicious time. The fall would be good for

several reasons. Its relation to Halloween and various other pagan holidays that honor the dead

and fear the coming darkness of winter influence the discussion going on at the time and the

obvious relation to monsters in the popular imagination. There is also the fact that major

archaeological work would soon come to a close, making it less likely for it to be discovered by

the wrong people. The discovery of the vampire Neanderthal would happen quite by "accident".

For example, a pair of friends out for a walk, perhaps taking a tour of Europe from America, fall


into a cave and find that there are bones beneath their feet. Perhaps staring out at them from the

floor of the cave will be a fanged skull, peering out of the shadows. Dramatic to be sure but like

the theater, drama prevents the audience from caring about the fact the sets on the metaphorical

stage are made of cardboard. The anthropological authority in the area would immediately come

to this “new site” and positively identify the find as an unknown form of Neanderthal.

Media would be contacted first ahead of scientific authorities, giving the news enough

lead time to declare the findings to the world. The local tourism board would happily cooperate

with the find whether it was authentic or not, because even legends and fables draw tourism

revenue. Thus announced, “Vampire Neanderthals” would echo through the Internet and TV.

Posts on forums would explode and reporters would flock to the area. While it might seem like

something out of "Weird News", having real scientists to back it up and leaking the news to the

right sources (such as Stephanie Meyers fans) would quickly push the media frenzy.

Preventing too much access to the remains is standard protocol for archaeologists. Homo

erectus fossils found at Tinal in Indonesia were lost during World War II when the museum they

were kept in Berlin was bombed. Also, techniques like carbon dating and chemical analysis of

fossils often involves the destruction of parts of the skeleton; being reluctant to do that allows for

less scrutiny of the findings in order to prevent their destruction (and discovery of their true

nature).

There will also be fringe and pseudoscientists who will assist in the hoax. The History

Channel is all too happy to run shows like Ancient Aliens, which give a voice to nonscientists

who spout drivel about Atlantis, alien genetic experiments, gods being aliens, and other things of

that kind without the slightest hint of any proof of their theories (Burns, 2009). It just explains


their theories and uses flawed reasoning to demonstrate it “must be true”. The wise con artist

would subtly encourage the quacks to spread the news and reinforce it among the populace,

while working at arms length with academia to lend credence to the findings.

Ultimately the fossils would be put on exhibition, though before this the world would be

deluged with papers, paintings of Homo sanguinis, and lectures about its possible diet, behavior,

and other aspects. Popular culture would be utilized to its fullest extent, spreading the idea of the

vampire caveman to affect the popular consciousness. Suggesting the possibility that such

creatures might still exist in the world gets the cryptozoologist crowd going, but doing that

behind the scenes retains the veneer of respectability. It’s all a matter of playing the crowd as

long as possible and keeping everyone balanced at length from each other. A very effective

personal relations manager would be needed. However, with capitalization of the find a top

priority and a tacit approval from academia, hiring one would not be challenging.

The greatest push would be to use education in the classroom. High school teachers

needing to get their "tweenaged" students interested in science would link this incredible find

with science, perhaps inspiring a generation of new archaeologists and anthropologists. The

suggestion that vampires still exist still roam would be enough to do the rest. The exhibition

would be packed — not just by teenaged girls but by all manner of people caught up in the

fascination of the discovery, a potent attractor evident in phenomena such as the allure of the

Indiana Jones franchise.

Of course, in the end, it’s all a lie.

CONCLUSION


Ultimately, like all hoaxes, Homo sanguinis neanderthalis is doomed to exposure. Given

enough time, something would go wrong. A true scientist would get their hands on the remains

and do serious analysis. A member of the conspiracy would have an attack of conscience or

perhaps would be made a better offer for the truth. Any number of things could go wrong and

ultimately it would be revealed as the fraud it is, just as the Piltdown Man and the Cardiff Giant

were. There would be outrage and scandal and (most likely) lawsuits.

The ultimate lesson to be found in this (if such a hoax were to be pulled off) depends on

one's perspective, one of which being that humanity is simply gullible, no matter how far we’ve

we have advanced. If a lie is repeated enough times, the surely some people will begin to believe

it. While science is expected to maintain validity through the rigors of the scientific method, it is

not impervious to temptation, corruption, and failings. Oddities such as vampires draw humans

like moths to a flame.

Any of these conclusions might prove valid, but a silver lining might yet be found. If the

hoax were to draw people in to science — real science — and to learn and seek understanding,

then the basic tenet of science is preserved: to learn and understand more. Science is not a static

truth, it is constantly changing as new knowledge is acquired. To pull off such a deception would

require a great deal of scientific knowledge, knowhow, and skill. That is to say nothing of the

people skills, intelligence, money, resources and luck also necessary to achieve a convincing

hoax. Science may have facilitated the hoax, but science will ultimately refute it, as it has done to

superstition, fraud, and lies ever since our ancestors first postulated the question, “Why?”


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Vampire Cavemen: Speculation Regarding the Plausibility of a Modern-Day Archaeological Hoax

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