Nightline Daily Email: 6/14

W A S H I N G T O N, June 15 -- At Nightline, we pride ourselves on asking the Big Questions, looking atthe Big Issues, covering the Big Stories. So it was only a matter of timeuntil we turned to tonight's Big Question: What did cavemen and womenreally wear?

Now, I'm sure that virtually all of you think that you know the answer.Furs, right? The evidence is everywhere: The Flintstones, The Clan of theCave Bear movies and others like that, and, most important for a wholegeneration of young boys, that poster of Raquel Welch from the movie "OneMillion Years B.C." What more evidence would you need?

Now, we all knew that cavefolks really didn't wear fur bikinis like Raqueldid, but that whole idea is pretty embedded in our conception of ourforebears. After all, what else was there? They got up, went out andkilled something large and furry, ate what they could, and wore the rest.Not a pretty image when you stop and think about it, but what was thealternative?

Well, Robert Krulwich has found a remarkable woman who found evidence thatwill rock our images. In fact, museum displays, not to mention scientificthinking, have already begun to change. And it's no coincidence that sheworked for a time in the fashion industry. Now archaeologists andanthropologists had been looking at the same evidence for years. And theyall reached the same conclusions. But this woman, and a friend of hersnicknamed Conan the Archaeologist, looked at that evidence, and noticedsomething that everyone else had missed. And what they saw is challengingall of the conventional wisdom.

Now this being a report by Robert Krulwich, it won't be that simple. Nodiscussion of this issue would be complete without wondering about theweight of a woolly mammoth coat, Sid Caesar's historical accuracy, and whatabout the Paleolithic bunnies? Where do they fit in to all this? We'll tryto answer all of these questions, and have a little fun at the same time.And who knows, it may make you look at that Raquel poster in a wholedifferent way. Or not.