Most of these cartoons boil down to just two joke archetypes: in one, the caveman family does things quite primitively and, in the other, the caveman family is surprisingly sophisticated despite living in a cave. In both cases the joke plays on our preconceived image of cavemen and Neanderthals representing the opposite of civilization and, ultimately, on our deep discomfort that our advanced society arose from humble and embarrassing beginnings. We laugh not because cavemen and Neanderthals are beneath us but because they are us.