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One Million Years BC to The Last Hunter - Episode 21
234 Plays6 years ago
Take a few archaeologists who think they're film buffs and what have you got? A prehistoric film special! From fur bikinis to inter-species rape, we look at the best that we could find of a very small film genre with a sometimes critical and sometimes fond eye.
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Transcript
Introduction to Prehistories Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to the Prehistories podcast. I'm your host, Kim Bedelf, and here on Prehistories, we really look at, I've been looking mostly at books set in prehistory. But what I'm interested in is how people have told stories today
00:00:26
Speaker
about prehistory and we've looked at all sorts of different books to think about that but of course we tell stories in so many other ways obviously you know there's all sorts of media out there and so tonight is our film special
Exploring Films About Prehistory
00:00:42
Speaker
And in our film special I hope to take in One Million Years BC, yes, we can find good things about it. Clan of the Cave Bear, which we have talked about in the book but the film I think is also something that sits by itself as a very interesting take on the story. Quest for Fire, and then a very recent film we might get to talk about is Owl the Last Hunter.
Alice Discusses Public Engagement in Archaeology
00:01:12
Speaker
Now, I have some fantastic guests here with me as well. So I'd like to just introduce Alice O'Mahoney. Hello, Alice. Hello. Thank you for joining me. Oh, thank you for asking me. Yeah, thank you so much. I'm glad we managed to sort out the date so that we could all talk together, which is fantastic. Now, you're studying for a PhD at the moment, is that right, at Bradford University? Yes, that's correct.
00:01:39
Speaker
And it's quite an interesting topic about how, is this right about commercial archaeology and how they engage with the public around where they're digging? So the, yeah, the start of the project was to do with commercial archaeology, but I've actually widened the focus and it actually looks at evaluation of public engagement practices in the UK now. So it's not just focusing on commercial archaeology.
00:02:05
Speaker
But everybody who's doing archaeology? Yeah. So what kind of things are you coming up with? Are you still data gathering at the moment or are you processing at all? I've done part of my data gathering and I'm now analysing. It's actually really interesting a lot to do with time and money, as you might expect, but also to do with training and understanding of what the expectations for archaeologists are when it comes to public archaeology.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yes, well I'm all for it obviously, I try and do it as much as I can but it does mean that I don't really do very much research or digging and I'm just very public focused and I think there is that kind of division isn't there?
00:02:51
Speaker
Or is that what's coming through? I don't know. I think it's six of one and a half dozen of the other. There are some people who become very much public focused, but there are some people who want to do the digging research side and so focus on that, but with a public archaeology slide, if that makes sense, so that their research will always involve public archaeology.
00:03:16
Speaker
That's good. I think it should always do that. But that's, I come from that particular vantage point, I guess.
Matt Pope on Paleolithic Archaeology and Primtech Course
00:03:24
Speaker
But you're also a bit of a film buff, aren't you? Yes, I am. I do enjoy a film.
00:03:31
Speaker
Excellent, so a very good choice for today. You did your research well for tonight's podcast, as we were discussing earlier. Now, my next guest, if anyone is an avid listener of the podcast, we'll already know him. Matt Pope has talked to me a couple of times already. Hello, Matt. Hello, how are you? I'm good. Thank you for joining me again. Yeah, very nice to be here again. I'm joined by more of my cat this evening. So if you can hear some growling, it's not my stomach.
00:04:00
Speaker
It's a purring cat.
00:04:03
Speaker
Oh, lovely. I've kept the cat out of the room. He'd bake far more fast out of the room than he will do here with me. Yes, no, fair enough. No, my cat can go outside and she'll be fine. Now, Matt, you're a senior teaching fellow at UCL, aren't you? Yeah. In Paleolithic archaeology. I am. I'm an archaeologist who specialises in the Paleolithic.
00:04:32
Speaker
Lovely, so lots of lovely Neanderthals, which we have talked about before. Yeah. And we'll come up again today. In various guises, yeah.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yes, definitely various. But you also run the famous Primtech course for the first year archaeology students, don't you, at UCL? How was that this year? The britches looked good. Yeah, it was a really good year this year. It was very wet, which was a bit challenging and very muddy. But yeah, something really came together this year. I think
00:05:05
Speaker
I think it was all about putting some activities together which were all about fire and hafting and spears. Students weren't really tribal on us this year but quite as tribal as the staff. It was a really good experience.
00:05:22
Speaker
There is something just so addictive about fire, I think, and weapons, weapons too.
Film Discussions and Personal Favorites
00:05:28
Speaker
But I think as fire is actually pretty, it's pretty easy to get the knack of making fire. But then once you've got it, you don't want to stop, you want to keep on making fire.
00:05:37
Speaker
I think what's really interesting about going out with the students and spending three or four days with them is just how little you can do without it and how central it becomes, especially in the rain where it becomes really, really precarious, which we'll also be talking about this evening, I imagine. Yeah, so many themes that are all just going to come together. It'll be fantastic. So are you a film buff as well, Matt?
00:06:03
Speaker
I like to think I am, but I just have very little time these days for watching movies. But, oh God, I mean, as a teenager growing up, yeah, the video would just record stuff late at night, 6 o'clock in the morning, I'd be there.
00:06:20
Speaker
waiting and watching this stuff coming through and yeah, it was a complete education and Lots of resonances from prehistory kind of got its way into my Subconscious through through cinema through the video machine. Yeah, def
00:06:37
Speaker
Yeah, there are a lot there were particularly kind of not so much nowadays, but you know, 30, 40 years ago, there are quite a lot of caveman films, weren't there? And before that as well. So there's loads that you that Oh, for me. It was it was in like
00:06:54
Speaker
the subconscious of the entire society. Yeah, it was the 1970s Planet of the Apes movies. They have, you know, science fiction, but due on so many evolutionary themes. And yeah, it was a real big formative movie franchise for me, Planet of the Apes.
00:07:13
Speaker
You know, I never really liked Planet the Apes, I just couldn't, I don't know what it was about it. What about you Alice, did you ever like watch those? Yeah, I've actually just recently watched the most recent films because they redid them. So I'd always watched Planet of the Apes long before they remade them. But yeah, I'd always liked the first film just because
00:07:37
Speaker
the cinematography, the shots that they used, and then obviously the twist at the very end is, I think, fantastically done and fantastically played out. Are we allowed to talk about the twist? I don't know, you can see the spoiler. Surely, surely we can assume that most people will see it. Spoiler alert, the elements of Planet of the Apes.
00:08:01
Speaker
I know. No it is. It's kind of the archaeology of the future. I don't think I ever kind of got that though really. I just, I don't know what it was. Charlton Heston for me was always best as Cardinal Richelieu. Not as, not in that. But there's that scene just before, it's the scene before Charlton Heston's big reveal on the beach where, um,
00:08:23
Speaker
it's Cornelius and Zira have been carrying out an archaeological dig in that cave on the coast and they actually they're putting these objects a pair of glasses a Charles Dole and they're trying to convince the orangutans who are the uh yeah the uh the science science uh keepers and the lawgivers that there was a previous human civilization and the chief orangutan i can't remember what his name is gives an alternative interpretation for each of these artifacts
00:08:53
Speaker
and crushes Cornelius's interpretation. And it's just a brilliant piece of archaeology in science fiction. Yeah, really amazing about current academics. Totally. Yeah. And that's where my that's where my head went back. Yeah, that's a bunch of it. Yes, quashing there. Anyway, what so would you say that's your favorite film, Matt? Or do you have what about what about you, Alice? What's your favorite film?
00:09:24
Speaker
In general, not just prehistoric film. So I love science fiction, it has to be my favourite. So up there is Star Wars and then the Alien franchise. Oh you see I'm such a scaredy cat, I can't watch Alien. I don't do horror films normally but zombie films and science fiction films that are horror films I totally cope with because they're science fiction and I can just cope with that.
00:09:51
Speaker
Now I can't stand zombie films either. I don't know, I always thought of myself as a film buff but I don't like Planet of the Apes, don't like zombie films. Don't like horror. So it's a very restricted set but I'm with you on Star Wars, I grew up with Star Wars.
00:10:07
Speaker
So that's just amazing. And there are bits of archaeology. I noticed on your avatar on Twitter, Alice, you've got one from the latest one.
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, I just saw that landscape and I was like, can you imagine doing a study of those ships and the landscape, the ships actually, I just translated it into an archaeological landscape study of how ships felt. Yeah, I loved that. It was fantastic. I just, I thought it was fantastic. In fact, Alien was one of those films, Aliens, when they discover the ship and they want to go through it, I was just like, can you imagine surveying that ship? That's not really what you should be thinking when you're watching the film, but that's what I thought.
00:10:52
Speaker
I want to go and explore it. I want to, you know, understand how it works. Think of the paperwork involved. I know, you can apologise of the end report.
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah well were there any like historical films though or pre-historical films that stood out as a kid? I mean you said Matt that you actually watched One Million Years BC, the last time you watched it you were a kid. Yeah I'm sure I was, it seemed to be on endlessly on like Saturday afternoons and I guess for yeah I guess for a while that would have been pretty much my biggest
00:11:32
Speaker
sort of impact to what the past would have been like. But I think I knew it was ridiculous. I think I was nerdy enough, even as a small child, to know dinosaurs went around at the same time as people. But yeah, I probably had a big impact. What about you, Alice? Or is it just all about the future? No. One million years, BC. This might sound weird, and probably it's more fantasy, but Conan, the barbarian. Oh, God, I love Conan. Well, the original one. Oh, yeah.
00:12:02
Speaker
Arnold Schwarzenegger, yeah, yeah. And then there was a cartoon as well when I was growing up, and I still remember the theme tune. And that just, I think that idea of living before technology, kind of really before digital technology, I guess, that
00:12:22
Speaker
yeah and living by the sword just yeah I totally love sword fighting in anything musketeers or konan or you know lightsabers I think it's all about swords
00:12:40
Speaker
I mean obviously historical... I've tried to read some of the Conan short stories and stuff and they're very very difficult to get through. It's all really cheesy but I'll try and give them another go but yeah the films are much much better. The original films. Wasn't they update with Jason Momoa? Was that right? Yes. Which was really disappointing because he's amazing but they were just a bad film.
00:13:07
Speaker
No, I haven't seen it. I mean, the original Conan movies were so quirky, but perfect in their own way. And yeah, I really didn't want to spoil it with the remake. Didn't need to be made.
Prehistoric Themes in Children's Media
00:13:21
Speaker
no it didn't so yeah we can just imagine it wasn't um i just i have always loved historical films massively anything um you know set in the medieval times i mean robin hood prince of thieves was it just made my entire life um i was 13 when it came out and it was so important to me massively important to me and more swords you see um and um
00:13:50
Speaker
But of course, Hollywood history is, you know, it's synonymous with bad history. You just have to say Braveheart, basically. And that's what it's like. Do you think that that is what has happened to prehistoric films as well? Well, apart from AO, which is the only one that's come out recently and I haven't seen, is it something that's really a live franchise, well, not franchise, current theme? Kind of theme, yeah.
00:14:21
Speaker
I don't think it is. Well, I obviously did a little bit of extra research. And it's not necessarily a current theme in what you would call adult films, but definitely for children's films. There was the Creeds released in 2013. Oh, yeah. And that was a Dreamworks animation, which I started watching, but decided that I didn't want to finish. And then obviously there's no point. Yeah, I was like, this is this is not a good film. And this is not just properly about prehistory.
00:14:50
Speaker
And then there's obviously the Ice Age films. And I think there's a trilogy of those actually. So they kind of work on the idea of climate change and animals rescuing a human and trying to return the human back to its tribe and the pitfalls of that happening. But that's obviously for children.
00:15:13
Speaker
I think there's a lot of adult jokes placed in there for parents and so on. Yeah, they're good fun. And I quite like the one where Peter Dinklage is the pirate ape thing. That was quite funny. But I do sometimes get them to get children when I'm talking to them to think about what animals might be around in the ice age. And they always get, oh, yeah, ice age, mammoth, saber-toothed tiger, sloth.
00:15:40
Speaker
Squirrel. Yeah, squirrel, because we don't have squirrels now, obviously. They are quite useful to get them thinking, but then obviously you have to stop them thinking halfway through that recitation. Yeah, I think you're right. I'm very much looking forward to the Aardman early man. Have you seen the trailers for that?
00:16:06
Speaker
yes yeah i've seen i've seen the trailers i don't like the title oh no yes kirby sexism please hardman but yeah
00:16:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Aardman, it'll be entertaining, won't it? And of course, there is a movie, and I can't remember what it's called, but it's coming
Entertainment vs Historical Accuracy in Films
00:16:23
Speaker
out. It's working tight with something like Salutrian, and Carl Lee worked on it as the advisor in terms of producing all their artifacts. And that's going to be, yeah, I've seen trailers for it, but I don't know when it's coming out, but it seems to be, it looks really good. Yeah.
00:16:41
Speaker
oh cool I haven't come across that that sounds really good excellent okay so if we if we go with 1 million years BC just to start with and just I'm not gonna talk about it for too much too long because obviously you know it has lots of problems it has humans and dinosaurs living together
00:16:58
Speaker
Mass hysteria. It's got giant turtles that they have to fight for some reason because these giant turtles are really vicious and it's got savages who are dark-haired and clearly evil and then it's got lovely lovely altruistic tribes who are blonde and beautiful and Aryan so lots and lots of issues with it but
00:17:24
Speaker
Is there kind of anything redeemable about the film? I mean it's great fun obviously and there's the bikini but you know. Is it an exploitation movie? Is it to degree an exploitation movie? Wasn't it produced by like Hammer Productions? Yeah it was Hammer yeah. Which kind of puts it in a particular you know
00:17:54
Speaker
they were taking off lots of different sort of genres. Their horror was over-sexualized a lot. Was there something exploitative here? I always wonder if it wasn't kind of, especially with the lovely tribe by the sea, if there wasn't something about 1960s counterculture in there as well. I don't know, I'm gonna drag this up from,
00:18:21
Speaker
Well apparently Ursula Andress was going to play Raquel Welch's part but of course having just been in Dr No her prices were too high and there are some links to Bond because I thought it was hilarious when I was watching it that the leader of the of the savage tribe is M. No way! It's ridiculous! It's like that is M, how is he a caveman? That's really funny.
00:18:45
Speaker
and Martine Beswick was also in that savage tribe as the the alternative love interest who gets rejected eventually and she was one of the fighting in quote marks gypsy girls in um from Russia with love as well so so many links to Bond because it's a 60s film you know there's there's going to be um and it does yeah it does feel like it's it's not really it doesn't really you know could have been set anywhere really at any point
00:19:15
Speaker
But you like it, Alice. Well, you did say that. Yeah, because it's got a giant turtle in it that they have to fight. And Ray Harryhausen, I mean, yeah. Well, yeah, he actually made it. He's quoted as saying professors who probably don't go to see these kinds of movies anyway. So
00:19:36
Speaker
It's this I guess it's this break and this might be a stretch, but Tarantino as well, he's done historical or taken historical historical kind of.
00:19:48
Speaker
themes and put them in movies has said history without the capital H because its history is entertainment. So it's perhaps not necessarily about being accurate, but being about kind of having a historical theme and bringing that out as entertainment for people's entertainment, which is what I think films were seen as at that time.
00:20:10
Speaker
Absolutely. Well they still are, I mean you still get that don't you? I have talked in other earlier podcasts about this tension between accuracy and storytelling and storytelling has to be preeminent really in any of these media that are representing these. If you have a book that's written, a fictional novel written by an archaeologist tends to be a bit more boring
00:20:39
Speaker
Then one written by a novelist who is using the history. Because the storytelling is a massive skill.
00:20:48
Speaker
And it was an incredible showcase for Ray Harryhausen. It was a complete treasure of special effects. So for that alone, I think I probably loved it. That was probably the thing I would have loved the most about it as a child. Just seeing humans and these monsters, whether it was Clash of the Titans or Jason and the Argonauts, it was always sensational to see that.
00:21:12
Speaker
They were great. I love the skeletons in Jason, yeah. But that was in Jason, wasn't it? It was, yeah. I think he gave the phobia of skeletons ever since, which is why I ended up in the only bit of archaeology I'm pretty much guaranteed not to find any skeletons. What if you do find some Neanderthals at Lacotte? No, you have Lacotte. I'll have some counselling and make my way through it, but yeah, I think I'll still have a flashback to Jason the Argonaut, I reckon.
00:21:42
Speaker
Well I think we're going to leave One Million Years BC there and we're going to take a quick break when we come back.
In-Depth Look at 'Quest for Fire'
00:21:49
Speaker
Let's talk about Quest for Fire which is a slightly later film although it's based on an earlier novel and it looks at the era in a very different way.
00:22:00
Speaker
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00:22:24
Speaker
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00:22:34
Speaker
Okay and welcome back. So let's talk about Quest for Fire which is, it was a book that was actually written in 1911 originally. It's a French book and it was translated into English in the 60s and then made into a film in, I think it was 1981 it was released.
00:22:57
Speaker
Yeah, so we've all watched it now, haven't we? Totally, yeah. And that was a golden age of cinema, wasn't it? The early 80s. I mean, we've got Alien, we've got, well, late 70s Alien, Blade Runner, we've got The Thing, John Carpenter, and in the mix of it all, Quest for Fire. Yeah. It was one I saw in the 80s on my mate's video card that he was able to use a video shot before we were old enough.
00:23:28
Speaker
Oh, naughty. There are sexual themes in it, aren't there? There are. As there are with all of these films. But it was Ron Perlman's first film, where he played a not quite evolved human, where everyone else was in makeup for five hours apart from him.
00:23:47
Speaker
No, poor Ron, he's a lovely guy, but he was really worried about it to start with apparently because he thought it was going to be one million years BC and it was going to be stupid and in the end it wasn't, was it Alice? It's quite a seriously thought through film even if I still have issues with it.
00:24:07
Speaker
What do you think? I have a few issues with it. I'm not. Yeah, go ahead. Again, things like the costumes and furs and just themes that keep popping up and eating from bones. Food seems to be always very led by meat rather than what we understand now as foraging and showing that.
00:24:37
Speaker
I guess it's just interpretation of how Neanderthals would react. They've obviously looked at chimpanzees and monkeys and how they have awareness of territory.
00:24:56
Speaker
I don't know, part of me felt like that was perhaps too, it was too animal led. Yeah, it's too far. Apparently Desmond Morris was consulted on the kind of movement of the people and stuff. So it's definitely bringing in quite a lot of those ape-like movements. Yeah. And then things like there was a saber-toothed cat and I thought it was meant to be set in Europe because so they didn't exist in Europe, apparently.
00:25:24
Speaker
They're yet to be found. Occasional visitors. Occasional visitors, yeah. I was talking to Ross Barnett and who was saying that sometimes that, is it home aetherium? Yeah. One of them is, yeah, there are bits of them found. So potentially, it is 80,000, it says it's supposed to be set in 80,000 years ago. Yeah. So a little bit later. Now, how many human species were actually around at that point? Loads.
00:25:52
Speaker
Well, relatively. So if we went 80,000, you might have had the last Homo erectus, you had the Denisovans, the Andatals, you had Homo floriensis, and there was probably something archaic lurking around, species X, which is introducing DNA. So yeah, yeah. What about Homo naledi? I mean, obviously not in the same place. Gone by then.
00:26:17
Speaker
the that's that's about 300 285 300 000 so it is nice to have a movie that represents a kind of plurality of of humans and i don't think we should get too hung up on you know quite which species they are but they've each got their own kind of character their own way of moving their own
00:26:36
Speaker
way of vocalizing are going like that. Did you assume that all of those different groups of people that are met because basically the synopsis is that we focus on one group of humans, fire gets taken away from them and they have to go and find someone who's got fire so they can bring it back so they can live and eat and all that stuff.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yes. Along the way, they meet lots of other groups of humans, some of whom are very similar, some are very, very different. I took that as meant to mean that these are all different species, but how much would they come into contact with each other? 80,000 years ago, these species may have all been around in the world, but how often did you meet all of them within the case of a year?
00:27:29
Speaker
depending on where you are probably very rarely and probably most populations probably would have lived their whole lives without encountering another one to encounter within the course of a few weeks at most three other species you know that it's possible but yeah it would have been I would imagine it would be very rare
00:27:51
Speaker
But we do know that species are meeting each other, they are interacting, they are sharing genetic material and maybe they're sharing other cultural things like fire. So going back to this, yeah, it did spark lots of thoughts, yeah, which it wouldn't have done in my teenage self. I thought it was interesting coming across what were clearly anatomically modern humans at some point.
00:28:21
Speaker
They're my favourite. Why are they always represented as painted? Alice, what did you think of the representation of that right at the end? Well, not quite at the end, but where they go into their kind of culture?
00:28:40
Speaker
I don't know if it's to do with cave painting and that cave painting is associated with humans coming into Europe. And so this idea that actually they're adorning their bodies with paint as well might be something that comes across a filmmaker's head. They have paint. Why wouldn't they paint themselves? I'm not completely sure where this idea comes from. I mean, we know that
00:29:04
Speaker
from some burials that there's like okra used to make the thread or make the body red. So maybe it comes across from that idea that if they are painted in death, why wouldn't they be painted in life? But I think it's probably just something to make them seem to stand out. And this idea of being more advanced because they're doing something different.
00:29:28
Speaker
that requires more thought and activity and processes to create something like paint versus just skinning an animal and wearing skin.
00:29:40
Speaker
I really liked what they did with the paint. Whether or not they were trying to recreate something that was accurate, what I really loved was that that population which are closest to us, which are us, were made so alien and so
00:29:58
Speaker
were really quite scary and eerie and they were obscuring their features, they were wearing masks, they were exaggerating smiles and I really like just how those that were closest to us were actually looked in some ways the most alien.
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose that does it all. But that is a theme in itself that comes across in several of the films like Owl as well. It happens again. It's a trope though, I think. It's become slightly... I mean, in 1981, it wouldn't have been a trope, I don't think. It would have been nice and fresh. But now it's kind of one of those things that's like, oh, the humans, we're the weird ones. Yeah, it was there in the Inheritors as well.
00:30:46
Speaker
Yeah. In The Inheritors, yeah, absolutely. Have you read that, Alice? No, I haven't. With the holding book. It's really, really, really good from the point of view of the Neanderthals with modern humans coming in and how we're really, really odd. It's funny how they always get them to paint their faces white, though, while white and black rather than using ochre. Yeah. Never really read used, even though that's what we've got evidence for.
00:31:15
Speaker
funny isn't it? Maybe it just doesn't look good on film or something. Yeah, it looks really, one of my colleagues at Primtech when we made some ochre painted their entire face red and I tell you now it looks very scary. Cool. So I didn't see any pictures of that, I just saw the hand prints.
00:31:40
Speaker
I do have issues as well because if you compare it to the book, I think I watched the film first and then read the book and I was really surprised because obviously some parts of the story were changed and so on but the main difference I thought was the lack of language
00:32:03
Speaker
in the film and a massive amount of communication in the book between the people who were meant to be potentially Neanderthals or at least archaic humans of some description. It's so different actually that it seems like they're making such a... that's the thing with film.
00:32:29
Speaker
They have to make it a much more stark contrast, isn't it? Yeah. It's like Pride and Prejudice with the Keira Knightley version that they made for film. And she's as poor as poor can be rather than actually a gentleman's daughter because they had to make it so much more simple for it to make sense. I mean, what is the evidence of language in
00:32:55
Speaker
This is obviously a big question anyway. What's the evidence of language in earlier humans? Well, in terms of the genetic evidence, we know there's nothing genetically that suggests that Neanderthals, for example, couldn't talk. In terms of anatomy, there's nothing to suggest they couldn't talk. Our language obviously has deep-rooted evolution and we know by
00:33:26
Speaker
500,000, 600,000 years ago, there's things like cooperative hunting, there's group fragmentation, there's planned working, there's complex methods of making stone tools. So, you know, language is there at a very, very early stage.
00:33:41
Speaker
I get the feeling that actually in the movie it was about production values and it was about really investing in trying to create authentic different types of humans. It was Anthony Burgess who was brought in to create these different languages for each of them and he was a linguist so they obviously put
00:34:05
Speaker
time into just trying to, again, create this idea of alienness and separateness and different languages. So I do quite like what they did with it. But it was very different to the book, as you say.
00:34:19
Speaker
I think there's also this preconceived notion of prehistory as simple and language is complicated, understanding language is complicated. So I think perhaps in the wider public this idea of early humans having complex language might be quite difficult because they've been taught that it's
00:34:43
Speaker
that it's simple, that technology is simple, that things that they do seem to be simple. It's not. It's all actually quite complex, but it's the way that people are taught about prehistory, the way that people see prehistoric humans.
00:34:58
Speaker
And it's almost like you can't really go too far away from that idea, otherwise it then becomes unbelievable. So you have to go back again and again to the same way of representing things rather than updating. You have to update very slowly.
00:35:19
Speaker
And the book used narrative and used talk, there was a lot of exposition in it that I found really tiring. There was, wasn't there? Yeah, yeah. Also, I'm quite interested with the French connection because I think in France there's a much larger, there's a much higher level of subject knowledge about this period and about the Middle and Upper Paleolithic.
00:35:52
Speaker
because there's national pride in the archaeology of their country and so on. I think it's telling that this was originally a French book in the, you know, very early 20th century. And was the movie a Canadian, French-Canadian production, or...? Ooh, it was a poem, actually. Yeah, I think it might have been as well. Yeah. And certainly,
00:36:20
Speaker
especially going back to the 70s and 80s, you could expect a French audience to have been far more literate in this period of prehistory than, for example, an American or British audience for the reasons that you outlined. And it also feels a very anthropological movie, the way that they've
00:36:44
Speaker
they've approached these different human populations. It seems informed by as much by anthropology as it does by archaeology and that extends to what you were saying about Desmond Morris being brought in as well to try and direct the movements and the body language of these individuals.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I think it is. But yeah, I mean, the central premise, though, also is a problem because, of course, Neanderthals, I mean, as I as far as I was aware, I thought that Neanderthals knew how to make fire. So yeah. Yeah, there was a paper paper published only a couple of months ago that some
00:37:28
Speaker
They pointed out that fire disappears in the coldest parts of the last glaciation in France. They were suggesting the interpreting that Neanderthals could maintain fire, but they were very susceptible to losing the knowledge of how to make it.
00:37:48
Speaker
Yeah, you know, this paper was the basis for the movie that was made, you know, 40 years ago. But, yeah, I don't, I don't buy it. I don't buy this idea of only, they're only able to capture it from the wild, if you like, domesticate it, and then maintain it. You need to be able to make it at will, or it's useless.
00:38:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, as they found, I was surprised that they got, spoiler alert, everyone for anyone who hasn't seen Quest for Fire made in 1981, that when they get back to the tribe that they've left behind to go on the Quest for Fire, they're all still alive, which is great. Fantastic.
00:38:32
Speaker
Yay! Without fire in the middle of a bog with no food. Anyway, sorry I've just spoiled that film for absolutely everyone. I quite liked the mammoth scene though. What did you think, Alice, about that? I thought it was funny that they would have originally been scared of the mammoths, but you know.
00:38:59
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure how I felt about that. I just kind of was like, okay, that's what's happening, is it? That's okay. You don't like this film at all, does you? I wasn't keen on it, sorry. I just, I found it.
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah, I found the music over-dramatic. I didn't like the fact that it had this text at the beginning. I thought that was completely unnecessary. You could have shown how they connected fire. If they couldn't make it themselves, then you could have had a really nice backstory to how they collected the fire and why it was so important and created that connection so that throughout the film, you could have felt that connection of, oh my goodness, they've lost their ancestors' fire. Oh, it's so important.
00:39:49
Speaker
because it was just this bit of blocky text. I was like, I don't really feel that connected to what's going on here or that invested in them getting the fire back, which is really, really bad. Well then they have failed in their storytelling mission, haven't they? If you can't be bothered about the main characters, whether they live or die. Yeah, and I was a bit like you, right? So they're all survived, okay? They've all managed to do that. Oh, and now this is happening.
00:40:19
Speaker
And when they come across the cannibals it's like, oh right, interesting, okay. I suppose there was a headline recently, it wasn't there about cannibalism in the Paleolithic, I think. It draws readers, doesn't it? Values, clickbait.
00:40:39
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, maybe we should leave that one behind. We're going to take another break. And then we've still got several films to discuss, so I don't know if we're going to get through them all. But we'll try and talk a little bit about Clan of the Cave Bear and maybe this owl, the last hunter as well.
00:41:03
Speaker
Hey podcast fans, check out the Arc 365 podcast at www.arcpodnet.com forward slash Arc 365. That's A-R-C-H 365 for your daily dose of archeology. Each episode is less than 15 minutes long and we have some great guests recording about awesome archeology. We also try to throw in some definitions and basic archeological information. So check out the 365 days of archeology podcast only in 2017 at www.arcpodnet.com forward slash Arc 365 today.
00:41:32
Speaker
Mine is also on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and Google Music by typing art 365 into the search. Now back to the show.
'Clan of the Cave Bear': Film Adaptation and Gender Roles
00:41:44
Speaker
Hello, welcome back. Right, now we're going to come on to, we're kind of going almost chronologically through the films, which is probably down to my brain, sorry, but Clan of the Cave Bear was written, well it was published in 1980 and then the film comes out in 1986.
00:42:05
Speaker
sorry that was the historical present tense I hate that so the film came out in 1986 and starred Daryl Hannah and on the poster for it she's got her black and white paint on again but that's because she's with Neanderthals who also paint themselves which is interesting.
00:42:25
Speaker
and who have language. So, the Clan of the Cave Bear film then. What do you guys think? Alice, since you hated The Quest for Fire, how did you feel about Clan of the Cave Bear? I really enjoyed the books when I was younger, when I was a teenager. I actually really enjoyed them. And I really liked Daryl Hannah as an actress, so I was quite happy to watch this one again.
00:42:52
Speaker
But I think there seems to be a theme among stories to do with prehistory or films to do with prehistory and it's migration and movement. Something bad happens to the group and then
00:43:11
Speaker
that someone has to go on a journey or someone has to move groups or, you know. Yeah. But isn't that kind of, and maybe it draws a little bit from kind of the fantasy genre, where there is always, there's often a lot of questing and movement, isn't there, journeying?
00:43:30
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm also not sure if it ties into the idea that prehistoric peoples moved a lot. They were, you know, said to be nomadic, although we're finding that doesn't isn't necessarily the case now. But I think it, as you say, it might be just a general theme from like fan coming over from fantasy, but it can never it has to be something very, very dramatic, you know, and in kind of kind of the cave fair, there's the earthquake. And that's how
00:44:00
Speaker
Ayla gets separated from her parents and meets the Neanderthal. I like the fact that it was a female perspective as well because a lot of the time we end up with just men. Yes, thank you. I know. That's why I love this film because it is from Ayla's perspective and from her adoptive mother, Isa. So there are obviously men in it, some nice men, some pretty nasty men.
00:44:27
Speaker
um but that it's it's yeah i love the fact that it's her story now i also like the fact that creb the other figure in it is disabled because uh my mum's disabled so it was like oh okay this is there's actually something that i can identify with and that he has power and that also that her uh user has power as well or a certain amount of it um so i thought that was uh
00:44:54
Speaker
it was really nice and I thought they did quite well in the film to put that across and with the makeup as well, I thought they did really well. Not that they didn't do well in Quest for Fire, just... And the makeup, I suppose, was pretty good in Quest for Fire, but why love about Climbing the Cave? This film stays very close to the book as well, but they're real people. She makes the Neanderthals into individuals.
00:45:23
Speaker
that you can actually engage with rather than just these are a group of Neanderthals and basically they're all the same. Yes, they have character traits and they have personalities and that there are ones that you aren't going to like and there are ones that you like which actually lends itself really well to films because you have to have the baddie, you have to have the goodie and that works quite well. Otherwise you get into racial stereotyping.
00:45:51
Speaker
Oh, species stereotyping, which is species. Yeah, it's terrible. What do you think about Cloud of the Cave Bear, Matt, about the film version? Yeah, I can't remember now whether I saw the film or read the book first.
00:46:09
Speaker
and I did both very close together. I may have mentioned this before, but I was in a chemistry class and Angela Lum took some of this iron oxide we just made, stuck it on my nose and said, now you look like someone from Clan of the Cave Bear. I think I probably went and read the book first.
00:46:33
Speaker
The film is so incredibly faithful to the book. I think, you know, that's the thing that really stands out to me looking back at it, that what an amazing amplifier for Gene M. Owl's book, because it is really incredibly faithful. Because they could have gone, they could have gone very one million years BC with it, but they're just, it was, very little was left out, changed. It's amazing. Yeah.
00:47:02
Speaker
Yeah, no, no, it was literally a full cinematic realization of that book.
00:47:11
Speaker
Well, any criticism we can make of the film would have to be a criticism of Gina Mal's book. You know, is it feasible that Ayla is going to make all of these discoveries and be responsible for all of this innovation? But no, I really loved it. Funnily enough, when I try and think back of her face paint, I always think about her having a red stripe across her eyes. But that's Blade Runner, isn't it? That's Blade Runner, yeah.
00:47:39
Speaker
This was Daryl Hannah at the height of her cinematic billing, wasn't it? Splash, Blade Runner. Do you think she was allowed to... I don't know.
00:47:54
Speaker
act to her full potential in it. Looking back at it now, she feels a bit constrained being the only, you know, modern human there amongst these other Neanderthals. There isn't much sort of subtlety to her acting in it, you know, compared to say her prince in Blade Runner, which I really love. I don't know whether it was the best platform for her, but yeah. What do you think? A great movie.
00:48:20
Speaker
it possibly works quite well, because would you not feel awkward being taller than everyone else? And yeah, yeah, just being just looking generally different. And I mean, she doesn't necessarily realize how different she looks until she looks into the water and sees her reflection. But I mean, she must have realized. Yeah, yeah, exactly. She must have. And you're like, but you're Daryl. Yeah, I think
00:48:51
Speaker
So I think that works quite well because I'm 5'8", which is not massively tall for a woman, but when I am in an area and there are lots of shorter people than me, it can be like, okay,
00:49:06
Speaker
Right. You do feel awkward, don't you? Because I'm a little bit taller than that. And I always thought I was actually pretty tall, but then around me there seemed to be massive, just huge numbers of tall women, which is great. So I now feel small. I think we're always comparing ourselves to each other. I wonder whether the
00:49:29
Speaker
The film, the way that Neanderthal women were portrayed is interesting and obviously I think Genal or Owl also drew a little bit on some evolutionary biology for that, thinking about how the women were so subservient. And I wonder whether there's any evidence of that.
00:49:55
Speaker
As far as I was aware, there was something recently about Neanderthal female bones having the same kind of stresses put on them as Neanderthal male skeletal remains. And so they may well have both been involved in hunting and things like that, which is a big plot point in kind of the cave bear is that women are not allowed to hunt. Yes.
00:50:19
Speaker
Yes, but yeah, when you look at the bone breakage and damage patterns, yeah, there's very little that you can pull out from the pathology to suggest that there was massive role differentiation amongst Neanderthal or indeed modern human populations at all. But again, I think that's drawing more on anthropology, isn't it, than the archaeological record in Al's realisation.
00:50:48
Speaker
orbit. And obviously that's more modern research isn't it so you know we can't really always be too hard on all of these old books and films.
00:50:59
Speaker
It is a plot device and I guess my criticism now looking back on it would be that you didn't have a strong female Neanderthal character that was capable of a revolution and transformation of self. It had to be an interloper that was able to finally stand up to this evolutionary-embedded patriarchy.
00:51:29
Speaker
What Gene All also did, which we've talked about before, is of course pre-empt the whole humans and Neanderthals into bread, which we now accept fully. But about 10 years ago that still wasn't really very widely accepted, was it?
00:51:45
Speaker
No, but I think if you go back beyond the paradigm that was emerging and strong in the 90s, then it would have been far more accepted. Multi-regionalism and the genetic drift between populations emerged quite strongly in the post-war era and then was challenged by the mitochondrial DNA evidence that came out in the 80s.
00:52:11
Speaker
cave bear was being written that would have appeared quite reasonable and then you would have scoffed at it in the 90s and now I can. Oh I love the vagaries of archaeological theory.
00:52:27
Speaker
So generally, to me, that's my favourite out of all of these films. It actually made me cry, which is a mark of a good film. Well, not necessarily. I cried at the Flintstones, the movie, but that was for other reasons. Anyway, I notice we're not talking about that today. So let's talk about the final one, just a few minutes left.
'Owl, The Last Hunter' and Depiction of Communication
00:52:52
Speaker
For Owl, the last hunter, which you watched, didn't you, Alice? I did, and I thought it was interesting what Matt just said about the fact that with the clan of the cave bear, it's not a strong Neanderthal character to change the situation. It's kind of an interloper. It's someone from outside the group, and in fact, a different species. And I think that's the same with Owl, when the female character is introduced.
00:53:22
Speaker
You know, she's human and changes his ideas of socialising. And the viewpoint you might have towards women or females.
00:53:38
Speaker
Absolutely. I thought that, again, that a lot of the, particularly the reactions towards each other, so the synopsis is that Al is a Neanderthal, all his tribe gets killed, including his baby daughter, and then he decides that he has to go back
00:54:00
Speaker
to find his long-lost brother who's called Oa, he's called Ao, the long-lost brother is Oa, and then he comes across, he gets captured and so does, by some modern humans, Homo sapiens who have also captured some other people from a different tribe who are also modern humans,
00:54:25
Speaker
and Owl manages to escape and this woman goes along with him because she thinks, oh, he can protect me. But then they're quite antagonistic to start with. And some of that is quite, again, is quite based on, I thought it was like, it's very animal-like, the way she's hissing at him and things like that. And it's just as ubiquitous in all of these. I wish they could not do that, basically. Really interesting. I watched it. Did you watch it with the dubbing on, Alice?
00:54:54
Speaker
Or was it just... It did. Because there was a little bit... No, I couldn't find one. I think I found one, but it had... I think it was in Spanish with French subtitles. Right. Because this was a French film as well, wasn't it? Yeah, I think it won an award. Or was that...?
00:55:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. That's a good point, actually. Yeah, I'll look that up. But it's also based on a book. Is it? Apparently. So I don't know how faithful it is to the book because I've never read the book. I thought that acting was really, really well done. I thought the two main actors in it were
00:55:49
Speaker
really, really good. And I really enjoyed their performances. And they both kind of change each other, don't they? Yeah, I liked that, I know. I liked that very much. I mean, first of all, I started out thinking, oh, here we are, another male perspective. And then obviously, halfway through, you get a little, maybe not. Well, at half an hour in, you get to Aki, the pregnant woman. And I thought that was really interesting how he
00:56:18
Speaker
kind of decided to look after her and care for her and wanted to look after her because he associated her with a baby and he associated that with his daughter. I thought that was quite nice. You played out if a little bit simple, but, you know. Yeah. Well, I looked at good grounding for connection.
00:56:37
Speaker
Yeah I watched it without any narration to start with and of course then there are no subtitles either so you're just kind of watching the interaction without understanding the language which was an interesting way to watch it but then I watched it recently with some narration over the top and that basically expounded what the two characters were feeling and thinking
00:57:02
Speaker
and I thought the first time round that Aki was still very minor but the second time round because you heard a woman expounding various things it brought her story out a lot more to me so although I didn't like the the the actual mechanics of how they did that with the with the dubbing over the top it was a bit
00:57:23
Speaker
It's a bit clunky. And they weren't really acting. They weren't voice actors. They were just reading. I don't know. I don't know what they were. Anyway, it was weird. It was a bit weird, but her character came out more. Yeah, but it was nice that they actually put thought into doing that. I agree with you about the kind of clunkiness of putting it over. And again, I guess that leads into this idea that prehistoric humans didn't have proper language that would explain their innermost thoughts.
00:57:53
Speaker
And so that voiceover was needed. But maybe that's something that can be taken away from this that we need to let filmmakers know that they can give complex language into these stories and create something. It doesn't have to just be like Ice Age or cartoons where animals can talk and therefore can have complex modern language.
00:58:14
Speaker
Yeah, but they did actually learn each other's language, didn't they? Which I thought was quite good because at least it did show, they gave Ao a rudimentary language and they could learn each other's words for things and things like that and I thought that was quite good. Yeah, I also think that showed them working together and the willingness of different
00:58:39
Speaker
homo species to work together. I think that's quite interesting. I'm not sure how much that comes up in the archaeological record though. No, but of course there was interbreeding as well. So spoiler alert. Spoilers have been able to talk to each other. Or maybe that's just me thinking that you should talk first.
00:59:03
Speaker
Yeah I think so, because he tries it on doesn't he really without consent and she stops that happening. Good on her. Yeah but I think that goes back either maybe to kind of the cave bear ideas of what Neanderthals were like and maybe quest for fire. Well sadly sorry Matt but I think that actually resonates quite a lot with what men are like. What?
00:59:32
Speaker
I'm sorry, but come on. I'm not even going to defend my entire gender here. I'll take that. Anyway, that's a bit of a downer to end on, isn't it?
00:59:43
Speaker
What was quite nice, I thought, at the end of Owl was that they moved down to southern Europe, don't they? They kind of travel from northern Europe down to central, down to southern Europe. Is that the place where the Neanderthals were? I know it's massive.
01:00:02
Speaker
Is that in southern Europe? Is that when Neanderthals last refuge was? Some of the some of the latest claim dates are from Iberia and certainly Neanderthals are there until very late whether that's the last refuge of the Neanderthals hanging out on the Rock of Gibraltar as some people claim.
01:00:23
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. We haven't got we haven't got enough new dates from from that area. But yeah, you know, the idea that prehistoric people were making journeys of quite that, that extent from what you know, the extreme northern Europe to to southern Iberia, you know, it's sort of it's sort of their sort of implicit in the in the tropes of these prehistoric movies, isn't it that we can
01:00:49
Speaker
quest for fire, they seem to be in the highlands, they seem to be in Kenya and other points. Yeah, they do, yeah. I know, massive distances covered. It happens again in 10,000 BC, doesn't it? We haven't talked about that, but that's such a terrible film. But it is a matter of, because we're just so used to these beautiful films where we hop from one exotic place to another, they have, for some reason,
01:01:16
Speaker
you know prehistoric people were doing that on foot which is great yeah but again it's another it's another trope of these movies and i think it's because um you know there's there's no there's no structure there that would give the discipline to kind of sit within a particular environment they can send their location scouts out and go well let's have a whole smorgasbord of epic prehistoric landscapes you know and and go and film them all and
01:01:44
Speaker
I guess I think now we've talked about some great movies here. Does anyone need to make another one of these movies now? Another movie that's going to explore two different populations dealing with wild animals, orphans, populations wiped out. I mean, does anyone need to make another one? I remember last year watching The Revenant. I don't know if either of you have seen it. No, I've not seen it yet.
01:02:13
Speaker
No. And just thinking, until someone makes a movie as good as The Revenant and sets that in prehistory, where it always comes irrelevant where it's set, you know, when we have a movie that's a really good thriller. Yeah.
01:02:29
Speaker
or an amazing love story or a whodunit or even a zombie movie, you know, a sub genre that inhabits and is constrained by its own plot dynamics, not by we're going to make a caveman
Future of Prehistoric Storytelling in Films and Documentaries
01:02:44
Speaker
movie. You know, that's when I think someone's really going to nail this prehistory in the movies and no one's done that yet.
01:02:51
Speaker
I think you're right. I think probably Margaret Elphinstone's Gathering Night is the one to do or Michelle Paver's Wolf Brother, which has of course, the film rights are passed around Hollywood at the moment. So I talked to Michelle and there's various film scripts that
01:03:12
Speaker
have gone nowhere or yeah that's Hollywood isn't it so but what yeah that would be really good because those are just good stories and they just happen to be set in prehistory. Exactly.
01:03:24
Speaker
They recently tried to revive The Cave Bear, I think. They wanted to do a TV series and there was talk that it would be released a couple of years ago, but the pilot completely failed. Yeah, that was Ron Howard. They decided against it. Yeah, sad. And Ron Howard's an amazing director who's got a lot of pull in Hollywood, so if he can't make it work, what is the kind of hope?
01:03:48
Speaker
I know maybe it's time to give up on the prehistory movies except as you say Alice for children and they I do I am looking forward to early man and I think it looks quite funny and maybe that's that's a way to go horrible histories does cavemen quite well haven't they got a film they've been promised to film horrible histories oh that would be good I think yeah
01:04:13
Speaker
There was a Twitter announcement about that. Cool. I'll have to look that up. So that would be very interesting. And there's a very, I think it's an Italian-made film about Ertsy that is going around all of the kind of arty film festivals at the moment. And at some point, hopefully, I might be able to give my hands on that. That would be nice. I think Ertsy would be a really great character. Is this actually just a good story? Yeah. Yeah. You know, how do the questions that you have from it
01:04:43
Speaker
the interpretation, I'd be really interested in their story about that. Yeah. Well, Werner Herzog's made his documentary on the Paleolithic. Yes, that is beautiful. Made, Werner Herzog has got an actual narrative movie up his sleeve. That would be something to see. That would, wouldn't it? Yes. Maybe that's what also people expect when you think about prehistory and history itself, although you've got some films that do very, very well. This idea of
01:05:11
Speaker
documentaries and being told by an expert and being told by someone what it is and what is happening.
01:05:18
Speaker
rather than having a proper story and connecting you to people. I don't know how often that also happens in archaeology. How often do we actually create stories around the people that we're presenting? We're talking about the archaeology. A lot of the time it's objects and for prehistory that's often what we end up with. We end up with a lot of objects but not necessarily of humans. And so we can tell a story about objects
01:05:43
Speaker
and about painting, cave paintings. But how far does that actually reach into humans and the human psyche? Exactly. That's what I've been trying to say in my entire podcast. Exactly. It's almost that a film needs to repopulate prehistory from the very outset because we know their technology, but we don't know necessarily them. And it's only now in recent years that we have the facial
01:06:13
Speaker
They're not recreations, they forget the proper name. The facial reconstructions and so on and that we can actually start seeing what prehistoric humans look like and what Neanderthals look like and actually putting faces to those names. Whereas before what we were seeing was skeletal remains and people don't necessarily identify with that. No, not so much, except around Halloween.
01:06:39
Speaker
Well, I know that, Matt, particularly you need to get off. I'm going to say thank you so much to Alice and Matt for joining me for this podcast. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you very much. Thanks. Yeah, lovely. Thank you, Matt. That's great. So
01:06:58
Speaker
just coming up in my next episodes I want to talk about the folk stories around of the Rollwright Stones which aren't actually prehistoric stories but they're very interesting nonetheless. There's a brilliant book by Rosemary Sutcliffe
01:07:16
Speaker
that is called warrior scarlet which is set at the end of the bronze age which i really want to talk to somebody about and then i also have to talk about the boy with the bronze axe and i'm really trying to pin some people down to talk about the boy with the bronze axe so keep tuned and keep on watching out for these podcasts
01:07:43
Speaker
This show is produced by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.