5 Daft Myths You Should Stop Believing

Let’s debunk some of the nonsense

A photograph of Elizabeth Taylor from MGM, c. late 1950s (Wikimedia Commons)

Mythbusting is always worthwhile.

As well as being educational, it’s fun to see people’s reactions when you shatter a falsehood they’d previously believed in.

Ranging from scientific mistruths to pop-culture legends, there are plenty of myths out there to debunk, and the five discussed in this article are just some of my favorites.

Myth #1: Neanderthals Were Hunched and Unintelligent

A photograph of a neanderthal from the Neanderthal-Museum in Mettmann, 2008 (Wikimedia Commons)

As soon as you hear the word neanderthal, you probably picture a stooped, ape-like man with a low level of intelligence.

This image of neanderthals dates back to a skeleton reconstruction by a French paleontologist in 1911. The reconstruction presented neanderthals as a midpoint between apes and humans with a bent-knee posture, divergent toes, and a protruding skull.

Today, this image still persists despite the fact that it was debunked over sixty years ago by a pair of anatomists named William Straus and Alexander Cave. Far from being a midpoint between apes and humans, neanderthals were…