First you have to remember that 30,000 years ago another darned ice age had caused property values to soar in southern France. The four- to six-bedroom caves in good neighborhoods had already been snapped up by those pesky Cro-Magnons.
Most Neanderthals families, arriving from the north one step ahead of the glaciers, got stuck in shallow three-bedroom, one-bath, holes-in-the-wall with a tremendous dearth of closet space. Worse, the Cro-Magnons’ giant sloth harvest had been unusually productive and many of their households could afford a mammoth to take the kids to soccer. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to be from Germany. Everyone had to keep up with the Thags.
Originally the Neanderthals were able to cope with inadequate closet space since Pleistocene fashion mores dictated wearing casual single skins around the cave, small (but drafty) aprons for root-gathering, and loin-cloths for hunting. Dancing around the campfire could be done naked. Of course that had to change as temperatures dropped and pretty soon everybody and his uncle wanted a bear-skin coat. Great for winter, but in summer, where are you going to put it? The few wall nooks began to bulge and everyone became jealous of one another’s crannies.
Suffering from thick clothing and a paucity of storage, it is easy to understand recent studies citing cave clutter as the primary agent of Neanderthal extinction. I myself have experienced Insufficient-Depository-Alarm when attempting to manage the personal shell mound in our home where my wife, though less than half my size, has commandeered the only walk-in closet and barricaded it with tops, bottoms, unders, overs, slacks, skirts, shawls, shorts, vests, sweaters, capris, leggings, armings, gloves, socks, hose, camisoles, and fabric tarpaulins of indeterminate purpose. Did I mention shoes? Such an innocuous word.
Anyway, back to the floor plans. Fortunately food refrigeration was not an issue as most things stayed frozen eight months a year including late-arriving relatives who couldn’t find room close to the fire. Pantries were nonexistent because every bit of food was always immediately eaten right down to the glue on the labels. Furniture? Clunky, to put it mildly. Large rock couches were difficult to rearrange and took up quite a bit of parlor space. Fallen trees made poor tables and reading torches were constantly setting everyone’s fur on fire.
As you can imagine, using the rear of the cave for toileting worked beautifully for the first 30 generations but after a while, things begin to pile up. The insects and small rodents that rooted in the offal were as much of a problem as they were a good snack. People fought over sleeping areas on the cave periphery much as we do in our own homes and the niches that weren’t taken up by trundle-beds, hunting-mallet displays, and ritual paintings, were usually filled with stacks of dry fluff for fire starting.
With no armoirs, no cellars, no laundry rooms, clutter abounded. The local dump was so similar to the cave that no one considered using it for overflow and thrift stores were quite a bit more selective than they are today because all the best business locations were taken by mastodon dealerships and hide-scraping salons. Frustrated, hopeless, overcrowded, just like my wife and me, the Neanderthals simply ran out of room and began to scuffle over storage capacity. Conversations deteriorated. Grunt. (Where are the antihistamines?) Grunt. (You used them last, Batdung.) Grunt. (Have you seen the bone needle I made yesterday?) Grunt. (It’s in your nose, you idiot.)
After prolonged negotiation, my wife and I solved our closet problem. I would stack my clothes on the workbench and dress in the garage. Along with my clothes, however, that space has gradually evolved into the default repository for everything that no longer fits in the house proper. While we are still able to wind our way through labyrinthine corridors currently unblocked by used furniture, priceless heirlooms, un-hung art, moving boxes, bargains, books, and broken electronic paraphernalia, the leftover mishmash has migrated to my dressing room where once automobiles dwelled, smug and shiny.
Not complaining, mind you, but the industrial dumpster we rented is buried somewhere under this haystack of flea market flotsam.
Thus, it is easy to see how gradually the entire Neanderthal species expired in much the same way that we have misplaced our hamster and our nephew. Clutter creates a war of attrition that even lug-nuts like Cro-Magnons can easily win just by giving things away and holding quarterly sales in their driveways.
My wife and I have decided to follow their example and eliminate clutter once and for all. We’re going to start next week, and I hope that’s not too late because I haven’t been able to find her for several days.
Charlie Price lives with his wife, Joanie, in their Redding and Dunsmuir homes. He’s a business coach, consultant, writer, and author of “Dead Connection” and “Lizard People.”
