Stone Age habits still resonate: 10 Far Side caveman comics that feel perfect 40 years later
Nostalgia in the Stone Age
One strip shows two elderly cavemen watching a younger man walk upright with a bow and arrows. The older pair miss the days of clubs, though they are seated in rocking chairs.
The contrast turns nostalgia into the joke: even in prehistoric times, people could idealize an earlier age. The elders look back fondly on a less-developed stage of human evolution, much as people do in any era.
A prehistoric spelling bee
In another scene, cavemen compete in a spelling bee. One contestant watches an opponent receive an easy word and worries that his own challenge will be far harder.
The joke draws on a familiar pre-competition fear: that rivals have it easier. The thought of spelling “Australopithecus” makes the anxiety especially clear.
Selling a useless wheel
A prehistoric couple encounters a salesman offering a worn, bottomless wheel and describing it as only a little rough. The scene brings familiar sales tricks into a Stone Age setting.
The display resembles a used car lot, with sale tags on damaged wheels. The salesman’s flashy clothes add another clue to the profits he may have made from dubious deals.
An invention without a purpose
One strip imagines cavemen creating a device resembling a modern microscope, but large enough to view a mammoth. Rather than examining tiny objects, it helps them inspect something enormous.
The cavemen use it simply to verify that the animal is a mammoth, making the invention impractical. The available article text ends mid-description of the scene, so further details are not provided.
Key points
- Larson’s caveman strips pair Stone Age settings with familiar human habits.
- An elderly pair mourns the past while sitting in rocking chairs.
- A spelling bee turns fear of a difficult word into a prehistoric joke.
- A mammoth-viewing device makes invention seem comically unnecessary.