EARLY man often indulged in intolerable behaviour similar to that of modern-day pricks, it has emerged.
Archaeological evidence discovered by the Institute for Studies could overturn previous assertions that Neanderthals, although frequently brutish and warlike, were not capable of being pricks in the commonly-understood sense of the word.
Professor Henry Brubaker said: “We had assumed that the phenomenon of prickishness developed far, far later in human history, in the Middle Ages when houses first started to be bought and sold, and the newly-moneyed individuals involved in this trade began to affect flamboyant footwear and refer to themselves in the third person.
“Given the constant struggle for survival that was life in the Late Pleistocene era, you wouldn’t have thought that early hominids would have had time to get all full of themselves and annoying.
“But on this latest expedition we discovered cave paintings depicting petty boundary disputes, and scenes where a given individual appeared to roll up after another tribe had been decimated by a pestilence, seemingly just to convey the information that his tribe has been unaffected and had in fact been enjoying tremendous success at meat-getting.”
It is unclear whether being a prick conferred any evolutionary advantage.
Professor Brubaker added: “Crude symbols on the entrance to one particularly ancient cave network appear to translate as ‘no turning’. It’s not clear what might have been turning, perhaps some sort of very crude hand-pulled cart.
“And a row of small boulders outside the cave door appear to fulfill the same function as bollards, namely to prevent parking.
“I mean, imagine doing that before cars even existed. You’d have to be such a fucking prick.”
