Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens. The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world

and our lives in it through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald. All that's happening on this green jewel in space. If you're of a certain age, then you definitely saw these ads.

For Geico, the insurance company, before they switch to their trademark lizard,

the ads featured a trio of hipster bachelor cavemen who are constantly encountering

what I guess you could call anti-caveman bias. So easy a caveman could do it, the voices around them

blared, and the protagonist Paleolists would roll their eyes or storm out of fancy luncheons

or stew bitterly over their roast duck with mango

salsa, encountering yet again humanity's prejudice towards our ancient ancestors.

The ads were funny mostly because of the site of the cavemen, who were definitely made up

to look like stereotypical cavemen, which of course cavemen didn't actually look like,

hairy, exaggerated brows, but

wearing tennis whites and dapper suits. But beneath the funny was the tacit acknowledgement of something

else, which I'm sure Geico didn't think much about, but is actually very real. Our assumptions

that our ancestors were primitive, you know, that they were dumb, that they were

somehow less than us, bias against the Paleolithic peoples who literally form 97% of our ancestry.

And I say it a lot on this podcast, and I'm going to let 97% sink in a little bit this time.

97% of our ancestry.

This bias is very, very real, and it has a deep effect on how we view the world,

and how we sit as a society within place and time.

Contrast the common modern Western vision of the caveman with this.

...