I’ve seen it in cartoons and heard it referenced in other ways. When a caveman wants a woman, he bonks her on the noggin with his trusty club and drags her off by her hair. Variations exist. So where did this originate?
Is it just a commentary on how unsophisticated cavemen were supposed to be? Do we have ancient dating guides crudely painted on cave walls? Who was the first to suggest something like this? Is there a particular fictional character famous for this?
There’s an amazing bit of historical research on Google answers.
It includes this:
FWIW in the caveman part of his film “The Three Ages” a fur-dressed Buster Keaton goes hunting for a wife with a club. The payoff to that particular scene was he finds a giant fur-clad Amazon that bonks him on the head with a bigger club.
The date on that film is 1923, so you’re looking at a stereotype that’s been around at least a few generations.
Timothy Beneke opines that it’s a pictoral euphemism for rape. Rather than state or visualize our ancestors attaining sexual congress via the rape of the females by the males — or for that matter going on record as thinking that’s “natural” and then having to defend it — we have this image of what a “caveman” is like (and hence what our “nature” is): the male has bopped the female over the head and is dragging her off by the hair, to his cave. Presumably not to roast and eat her, show her his etchings, or give her a nice foot rub.
Sounded compellingly plausible to me (although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that’s literally the origins of it)