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Early Man (film) - Episode 24
240 Plays6 years ago
I give Early Man the Prehi/stories treatment with James Dilley, an ancient technology specialist, and Erin Kavanagh, who is interested in how the past is represented whether that's the prehistoric past or the footballing past. The film is just a bit of Aardman fun, of course, but it opens up wider topics for discussion about how the past is discussed. With plenty of political prehistory in the news, where does this fit in? The fact it was storyboarded as far back as 2011 suggests we may be reading a little too much into it...
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 24
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to episode 24 of Prehistories. I'm Kim Biddelf, and it's really nice that you have come to listen to this today. Now, Prehistories, we talk about the stories told about prehistory. Of course, prehistory itself is before written history.
00:00:30
Speaker
Most of the stories that we're talking about on this podcast are modern stories using evidence or indeed supposition about prehistory to tell stories. But at some point, I will get on to some oral histories that may have been passed down and written down later. And I want to talk about those at some point. Do we get a bit closer to the stories that prehistoric people actually told?
00:01:00
Speaker
But that's not today.
Exploring Modern Films and Prehistory
00:01:01
Speaker
Today we are going to be talking about a modern story. Not a book this time, but a film. And we're going to be deconstructing that a little bit and having fun with it.
00:01:15
Speaker
Of course, the stories that we tell as archaeologists, are they political? Of course they are. We're all political. We all have political beliefs. We can't get rid of that in the stories that we tell and possibly sometimes in the points that we're trying to make and get across.
00:01:33
Speaker
But what we can do is if we explicitly say that or at least realise what viewpoint we're coming from, and you can't really be totally objective, but you can let other people know where you're coming from so that they can evaluate your ideas through that lens, and we can have a discussion about it.
00:02:00
Speaker
the stories that other people tell, that non-archaeologists tell about prehistory. Where do they come from? And are they political? Of course they are. And I think today will be interesting, this podcast will be interesting, because we are going to get some of those ideas coming through about politics that's going on right now.
Guest Introductions: Erin and James
00:02:25
Speaker
Well, without further ado, I shall introduce my guests. Well, I'm going to... So, hello to my guests. Hi, James. Hi, Erin. Hi. Hello. Now, you've both been on the podcast before, and obviously I love having you on, so I've asked you back. Erin, you are a geomythologist, is that right? Yes.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting title. So you're working at the University of Wales Trinity St David at the moment.
Erin's 'Layers in the Landscape' Project
00:02:56
Speaker
What kind of things do you get up to then? At the moment, my main thing is a project called Layers in the Landscape, which is about bringing science and history and art together to re-look at archaeological representation, which includes things like animation, cartoons,
00:03:18
Speaker
Right. Yeah.
00:03:20
Speaker
So this is this is quite good. It is definitely on my radar, too, about thinking about how some of the people are represented in
James' Skills in Early Human Technology
00:03:34
Speaker
prehistory. I'm very obviously keen on that, which has come across, I think, a lot in the Prehistories podcast and some of the other things. And it will come up quite a lot today with or haven't introduced yet what we're going to talk about. But let's
00:03:50
Speaker
have a think about what that might be. James, you're at the University of Southampton, is that right? Yeah, that's correct. And you're studying for your PhD at the moment. Yeah, it'll be completed at some point, some point soon, hopefully. That's great. So it's going well. Yeah, when he's getting there, just at the stage of starting to sort out some of the experiments as it's quite experimentally focused.
00:04:15
Speaker
Lovely. Yeah, you've you are basically early man, aren't you? Oh, there, I've given a little clue away. Well, I like to think of myself as quite refined at times. So, you know, it's I do have shades of bronze on my complexion. Yes, you do. Not quite as advanced as I am. That's a bit boring for me, but certainly sort of neolithic bronze transition, I think, I think suits me quite well.
00:04:45
Speaker
It is a very interesting time, isn't it? Which works quite nicely. And your particular, well, you obviously do make bronze as well, but you're also quite skilled in making stone tools, aren't you?
Analysis of 'Early Man' Film
00:05:00
Speaker
I've got a few of your lovely stone tools that you've made for me.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we flint napping, I guess, is my core thing. It's the craft I've been doing the longest since I was about 10. Yeah, I liked the pun. I heard that too, Erin. But yeah, I mean, a bit like the Mitchell and Webb sketch, bronze is brilliant and it's slightly shiny.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, it can be extremely shiny. It's a pretty never seen molten metal being poured in front of your eyes. It's something special. And I think there's a bit of a bug in that that you can very easily pick up. I can imagine. And to have something that's shiny, almost like a gold weapon or a tool, in fact, it must be amazing.
00:05:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And it's the whole casting procedure is, you know, there's a lot of buildup to a sudden moment where you're creating something in a few seconds and you open a mold and it could be perfect. It could be really bad. There's a lot of tension, whereas generally with flint napping, you're building quite slowly and very visually to a finished stage. There isn't this sudden moment when it all just comes together and happens.
00:06:17
Speaker
Yeah. It is a big change in technology. And as you say, when you go to iron, it's very different again to how you work iron. And I know a few blacksmiths, I need to have a go at that really, but it's a bit different. Anyway, so I mean, the reason why we're delving into this is because today we're going to talk about the film that's just come out called Early Man.
00:06:40
Speaker
which I like to put a little parenthesis on the end and say sick, not with a K. But it's called that for a reason and we'll get onto that later. So it's an Aardman film, the creators of Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run and Shaun the Sheep, which is just so much fun.
00:07:02
Speaker
And all of those fantastic films, which are hilariously funny, they've done a caveman film, if you haven't already seen the trailers, which are like everywhere. And we've all been to see it now. And we thought it'd be really good to get together and chat about it. James, didn't you get to go to the to the premiere?
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah, I was invited to go along and Nick Card actually introduced the film to us.
00:07:34
Speaker
which was pretty special. So I was invited to go along to Leicester Square and I'd come back from Copenhagen a matter of hours beforehand. So I was asleep on the train on the way in and I was half expecting to be fighting to stay awake during the special screening, but I didn't at all. I was fully engaged. So I guess that's testimony to how good the film was.
00:08:04
Speaker
Are you contractually obliged to say that? No, I'm joking. If they're happy to add me in some way to early man 2, then I certainly wouldn't say no. I bet, yeah. Nick Enco, if you're listening. Yeah, if there's a sequel, that would be good. Excuse me, did you go in your furs or?
00:08:34
Speaker
It was tempting, but I was also pretty knackered at the same time, and I wasn't quite up for embracing it fully. So we just saw our local cinemas, didn't we, Erin? Yes. Mine invented an hour away.
00:08:50
Speaker
Well done. Thank you so much for going to that. A lot of local in the store. I know because Erin lives in the wilds of Wales where the cinema is a mile away. So thank you. I knew that it would be really good to hear your point of view on this.
Humor and Historical Inaccuracies in 'Early Man'
00:09:10
Speaker
I mean, obviously it's a fun film. Wouldn't you say, Erin? Yes, I would. What were your initial thoughts about it when you saw it?
00:09:19
Speaker
And my initial reaction was to send my brain to go and wait outside for a bit whilst it stopped having a tantrum. Um, but after we got past dinosaurs and people and the Toba volcano, and I like, she just got myself into the headspace of thinking, it's a mishmash of stuff. And that's fine. It was like, I just had to let go of the representation part first.
00:09:48
Speaker
And then I thoroughly enjoyed it. So you went to your happy place. Yes. Well, my brain did. The rest of me was fine. Yeah. I mean, I, to be honest with you, I didn't think it was, um, that, um, what's the word? It wasn't like a classic Aardman, um, film with, uh, with, with that many laughs for me, but maybe I didn't send my brain to a happy place. I'm not sure.
00:10:19
Speaker
Well, how far are you with football history? Funnily enough, I have written about football history. Oh no, did I do that or did I do rugby? I can't remember. I was writing some things, some random thing. I get to write these random things about history of various things for a teaching website.
00:10:43
Speaker
And I did sports, which is really weird for me. I wouldn't mind doing sword fighting. I love a bit of sword fighting, could do that. But that wasn't on the cards. It was all the stuff that everybody else is interested in. And I'm not sure I did football, actually. I did crickets. There are a lot of football jokes in there that actually are very funny if you're that way inclined.
00:11:10
Speaker
But to be fair, there was only Martin Bates and I in the cinema laughing at them. I'm not sure anybody else got them. Well, there you go. There were a couple of them I got, obviously. So shall we get over this early man thing, first of all? Yeah. So it's called early man because of a particular joke that they put in later, surely. Surely that's the only reason they called it that, don't you think, James?
00:11:36
Speaker
Well, yeah, I think, as Aaron was saying, there's a lot of
00:11:42
Speaker
a lot of jokes are set into the film and some of it is built up around some of the jokes. But from the start, yeah, it's very, very clear that there is no attempt for it to be authentic in any way, which is great. That's fine. I can sit back and enjoy the film. But I kind of afterwards I thought about it and thought, well,
00:12:07
Speaker
You know, the whole thing is kind of a bit of a laugh. I kind of took the title as a bit of a laugh in itself at the way that we used to talk about early man and people in prehistory. And it is very early man heavy, whereas these days it's generally
00:12:24
Speaker
who are prehistoric people, Neolithic people, Mesolithic people. I don't think I'm looking into it too much. Full credit to the Nick Card and his team for really quite carefully thinking about what works and what's funny. There were times when it was quite Fred Flint stony and I think that was intentional to really make it quite fun for a variety of different ages. It's fun for kids and it's fun for adults.
00:12:51
Speaker
who kind of got some of the jokes or football references or even for the archaeologists like ourselves who would see things like the title and think, yeah, they are poking fun at the way we used to refer to these people.
00:13:05
Speaker
Well, I see a lot of headlines with early man and things like that on it, or prehistoric man. And I wonder whether it's not really a thing of the past and that's why it did bother me slightly.
Debating Cultural Reflections in 'Early Man'
00:13:18
Speaker
But I mean, the whole point was that at some point, it's a football, it's basically a football story, right? So at some point, the early man united joke comes in and I thought, oh, that's why they're called it that.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the main crux of it. I think James' point about the 19th century representation of prehistory as being early man, where Neanderthals were lumped together with early hominins, and you've got that mishmash that we then see represented in things like the Flintstones. I think
00:14:00
Speaker
I do think it reflected that extremely well and perhaps poked fun at people who still use those references, a little tongue in cheek. So I think you can either think about it on a very surface level or really go into it deeply and it still stands up. It's when you sit in the middle that it feels a bit uncomfortable. Does that make sense?
00:14:27
Speaker
I think that definitely works with how I saw it. I'm kind of pleased that someone else saw it in a similar view.
00:14:39
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, we don't want to give away too many spoilers. So basically, the story starts with like humans and dinosaurs living together or everybody fighting. Then this massive asteroid comes down and creates a crater, but the asteroid itself becomes the very first, obviously the crater kills all the dinosaurs, but the humans are okay. And they now have something to play with so they can get along and stop fighting. And it is a football.
00:15:10
Speaker
It's a bit hot to start with, and then they manage all right. And then you kind of cut to later in the Stone Age and the tribes that comes together and tries to go hunting for rabbits. And then the Bronze Age people turn up. So it's really about that
00:15:34
Speaker
That's why we could go into the near-lithic bronze transition, which is really, really interesting, which we will do a little bit later. And of course we call it, oh yes, I meant to say for all the American listeners, of course, when we talk about football, we mean soccer. Yeah, the proper football. Yeah, proper football. So can I clear up the dinosaur issue?
00:16:04
Speaker
Yeah. Why the dinosaurs are in there. Yeah. The dinosaurs are in there as a homage to Ray Harryhausen, who was the visual effects designer for Clash of the Titans and More Million Years BC. And so they have two dinosaurs in there, which they've named Ray and Harry, and it's a homage to him. And that's why it doesn't fit in any way with the rest of the narrative. Yeah. Because it doesn't make any sense to the story.
00:16:31
Speaker
There were dinosaurs and then there were people. But that's what that's about. It's a reference to One Million Years BC. So it's a stop-motion animation joke. Oh, lovely.
Portrayal of Bronze Age in 'Early Man'
00:16:44
Speaker
Which is fine if you know about stop-motion animation, but there's probably not that many of us watching it. Well, although I think that Ray Harryhausen is pretty well known, although I didn't get that reference.
00:16:57
Speaker
I do now. No, that's why it's in. Yeah. That's really good. Because, yeah, I mean, I was thinking about One Million Years BC. I mean, we've talked about that on the podcast before. And when you think about what Europe was like, for instance, or anywhere in the world was like One Million Years BC, there are no modern humans. And I would like to see that film made. That would be fantastic. But there you go. It's
00:17:27
Speaker
Oh, maybe there's just two, I just get into this whole thing about needing it to be accurate. Yes, me too. And really, I should just go with the flow. But there's just so much of this caveman thing out there. All the children's things are all about cavemen and saying ugh and all that stuff. Now, I just have
00:17:52
Speaker
my daughter here with me who should be asleep. Now, she came to see early man with me, didn't you, darling? And did you enjoy it? Yes. Was it funny? Yes. And what was the best bit about it? Football. Oh, you enjoyed the football because you like playing football, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. So that was really well done, was it? And was it exciting?
00:18:22
Speaker
Yes. Now what did you and your friend say, your friend Olivia, what did you say after we saw that film? Was it accurate? Was it true? No. No.
00:18:38
Speaker
So my daughter is just about to turn eight in a couple of months and she knows that it's not, you know, it doesn't matter. It's not, it's not as if that's going to be true. Of course it's not. And if you've got, um, you've got it in the Aardman style, then I don't, you know, why do I worry so much about these things? Now we're going to take a break.
00:19:03
Speaker
We're going to take a break whilst I put my daughter back to bed. We'll be back in a couple of minutes to talk a little bit more in depth about some of the issues that we can bring out from this film because it does actually cover some really interesting time periods.
00:19:22
Speaker
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00:19:37
Speaker
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00:20:01
Speaker
that, I
Neolithic to Bronze Age Transitions
00:20:02
Speaker
mean really the big issue that comes out of this film is the fact that the Bronze Age turns up and changes the Stone Age world. Of kind of things that they bring are money and markets, social stratification definitely, patriarchy it seems as well, and civilisation. Now what kind of evidence is there for any of those things happening in the Bronze Age?
00:20:28
Speaker
Where to start? Well, let's start in, shall we start in Britain? Why not? I mean, because it's early Bronze Age Wessex, you know, and that kind of does suggest that there is a bit of social stratification going on.
00:20:48
Speaker
I mean, you definitely have quite a complex social structure in the Neolithic beforehand. It's just coming across as quite different. As soon as you start to get Bronze Age archaeology coming along, particularly through burials, it's where Bronze Age culture and society restructure is best represented. And how does that change? Can you describe it for us?
00:21:11
Speaker
So in a lot of Neolithic burials throughout the UK, particularly in the West, you will see quite group organised constructions of large monuments, whether they be long burials.
00:21:26
Speaker
that have chambers or just earth mounds or portal dolmens with groups of people that in some cases are family members. Whether they're some kind of stamp on the landscape that they're making a claim to as much as a space to bury ancestors is quite interesting. And it's really interesting that for a lot of these long barrows and Neolithic tombs that there's often a quite significant frequency of people that have met a fairly violent end
00:21:57
Speaker
often via blunt force trauma. It suggests the Neolithic is nowhere near as peaceful as we might have thought 10, 15 years ago. Whereas in the Bronze Age, the time when weapons are being produced for the first time that are not tools that could be dangerous, they are weapons, you're starting to see single burials that may be reused.
00:22:22
Speaker
as a secondary burial, but primarily it's things like hiss burials, cremation, urns that are put in pits. It's just very, very different. It's nowhere near as egalitarian as the Neolithic beforehand.
00:22:37
Speaker
And yet, if you look more closely at the evidence that not everybody in the Neolithic was buried in these tombs,
Critique of Outdated Prehistoric Models
00:22:48
Speaker
because otherwise we'd have hundreds more skeletons. So there's some criteria that are being used to select who's going in.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah, and that may be community-based as to what they choose or decide to do, or it might be done to the individual, what they did or achieved in their life. But even as you go forward through the Neolithic pronunciation into the Iron Age,
00:23:13
Speaker
percentage of represented individuals is so small that people must be doing something that ends up almost destroying the remains of their families and communities, whether that be cremation and then scattering of ashes or some other process. But that seems to be the case throughout prehistory. There's always a quantity of people within a community so that it's self-sufficient that are just not represented. And that's either because they haven't been found
00:23:41
Speaker
or because they're being disposed of in a way that we just can't trace.
00:23:45
Speaker
But so by the early Bronze Age, I mean, you do get kind of, there are quite a lot of cremation burials in there, for instance, at Stonehenge, aren't there, and other places in the middle kind of Neolithic. But by the early Bronze Age, you've got these burials of individuals, and some of them, especially around Stonehenge and kind of Wiltshire and so on, are buried with a huge amount of gold and bronze.
00:24:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And you do start to see that from the late Neolithic as well, particularly in Northern England and Scotland and in parts of Wales, where people are starting to be buried with quite personal objects, like jet beads or necklaces of some kind.
00:24:32
Speaker
if that's how they were put together. The interpretations we have today suggest that they were quite ornate necklaces, which is probably the case, or quite finely flaked flint axes that have been published generally only at the blades, which may be an attempt to copy some of the very early metal axes that are appearing on the continent. So they're almost scooter marks of these early axes that are made of metal that they just don't have access to yet.
00:25:03
Speaker
Yeah, so the representation of that kind of social stratification, do you think that's more or less representing what archaeologists have been saying about the change to the Bronze Age, Erin? I mean, that's where they got that idea from, presumably, is because archaeologists have been saying, when you get to the early Bronze Age, you get this individual burial with lots and lots of lovely stuff.
00:25:34
Speaker
Possibly. I mean, the actual archaeological representation of that is that it's something we identify with. It doesn't mean social certification wasn't happening beforehand, just in a way that we don't necessarily recognise in today's society.
Impact of Films on Public Perception
00:25:55
Speaker
And I think perhaps they were reflecting that it was
00:26:03
Speaker
almost idealistic about the Stone Age man living in unity with a mixed racial family, living just of rabbits who seem quite happy to die, and yet actually never do. And there's this sort of idealized approach versus this. Yeah, I mean, actually, how are they living on one rabbit in a tribe anyway? But you've got this pretty, pretty approach.
00:26:32
Speaker
And then you've got this modern city where it's busy and it's bustling and it's competitive and it's hierarchical. So there's clearly a comment being made there. And I think that reflects sort of an antiquarian approach to transition rather than an actual archaeological approach.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah. I hate to use this word because I'm not a massive fan of archaeological theory, but obviously it
00:27:08
Speaker
is important. That was hard for me to say, but it is important. So, the discourse, the public discourse about archaeology, about prehistory is still dominated by those antiquary models, you think. The kind of, yeah, that kind of communal harmonious living in the Stone Age and then going to tribal and then going to state and all that stuff, that kind of evolution of civilization.
00:27:38
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And I think it taps straight into that in a way that I'm not convinced the subtleties of that are necessarily going to be picked up on by everybody viewing it. I think some people will swallow it whole, which could be problematic.
00:28:06
Speaker
Yeah, because it's just a fun film, but it is perpetuating these ideas about how civilisation goes on.
00:28:18
Speaker
Well,
Challenges in Creating Accurate Narratives
00:28:19
Speaker
no, we don't want to spoil the end, anyway. Well, it's not a big thing, but one small thing about that transition as well is that, don't you think that before bronze is kind of invented, discovered, that there has to have been that farming
00:28:40
Speaker
period or at least pottery needs to have been produced because I really feel like that the use of fire is and the control of fire to be able to smelt the ore and to melt the
00:29:00
Speaker
the metals together to make the alloy, that is bronze, really comes out of the control of fire that's needed for all sorts of things, not just pottery, but also roasting grain and things like that, in the Neolithic, which I mean, obviously, that's not represented because the Stone Age is just the Stone Age to a lot of people. The biggest change that I think is between the hunting and gathering to farming, which happens in the Stone Age.
00:29:30
Speaker
I think that was something that was understandably skipped over in the animation. I mean, we've got emerging, haven't we, of mesolithic, neolithic, neanderthals. It's all mishmashed together, which is useful really, because it releases them from having to have a coherent chronology, which would be extremely complex, I think, to do in such a short space of time, if you excuse the pun there.
00:30:01
Speaker
But it does leave holes in the storyline, which I found uncomfortable and difficult to reconcile. I felt like it needed revisiting and addressing just a little bit. What do you think, James? Do you think that that was different?
00:30:26
Speaker
Erin's exactly right there. I mean, you've got a mishmash between hunter-gatherer societies that even touch upon the Upper Paleolithic. And all of a sudden, the Bronze Age appears and quite literally stamps itself on this landscape, almost like, you know, quite
00:30:45
Speaker
an old view of people of the Bronze Age sweeping across and invading the landscape. I was part of a series quite recently on the BBC that was called Invasion and I was involved in the invasion of the Neolithic farmers. Naturally, it was a case of deconstructing that it wasn't this mass invasion of people with their farming and
00:31:11
Speaker
modern ideas all the way from the Middle East. It was a gentle fusion of people and ideas in particular that would have worked both ways and may well have been caused by social pressure in localized areas that meant that some people moved over to Britain and brought certain cultures like types of tombs that you see on one side of Britain and you don't see on the other that may have been caused by the linear
00:31:41
Speaker
vessel cultures of Central Europe or on the other side of Britain on the west from the Iberian Peninsula. This idea of people coming over in one set wave from one side of the map to the other, it's very rarely the realistic case. Not always impossible, but it's very rarely the case. But with films like this, unless they're setting out from the start, they're going to try and be accurate.
00:32:09
Speaker
in any kind of way, it's very, very difficult for them to portray something accurately because they're going to face problems. If they're going to have quite a strict Neolithic society, they're going to have to explain in some way why the society is like this, how it works. And you know, you're looking at a film that could be three or four hours long, just to try and get all of our stuff in. We need them to tell our story.
00:32:33
Speaker
Yeah. And it's difficult to do. You're right. And then, you know, we're to tell a good story. I've said this many times on the podcast that the chronologies have to be drunk to make it into that story.
Discussing Recent Genetic Studies
00:32:50
Speaker
And you can have a prologue, like they have a prologue with the Neanderthals and who also do cave paintings, of course. And
00:32:59
Speaker
And then you go to the later time, as it were. And I think that they've done that, but to do any more than that is just silly, especially if you are making, especially this type of film, it's for kids mainly, and it's for entertaining. And we're being a little bit, you know, it does seem a bit strange for us to sit here deconstructing
00:33:26
Speaker
early man, which is just a phone call. But, you know, in many ways. There's also a set issue that you have to think about with stop motion. I mean, they used 37, I believe, different sets for this. So in creating a cave environment with, I mean, I'm not even going to start on the paleobotany, with a limited fauna and flora, then that gave them a stage to spin everything else off.
00:33:56
Speaker
And they couldn't really have made it more complicated than that. I mean, you're, you're looking at five seconds of footage taking a week to make. It's a huge amount of work. I mean, 40 seconds and that took eight weeks. I mean, there was a limited amount of detail. Yeah. And that's with 120 full time staff and 20.
00:34:25
Speaker
freelancers working on it. There is a limit to what they can do, so they have created one secure set and blurred, I think, a lot of the edges to do with Laura, Florida, Hunter Gathering.
00:34:44
Speaker
It was going to be difficult to challenge what were they eating? I mean, are we in goth cave here? You know, who were they eating? What were they eating? What were they doing? So they do reflect, I think, a broad genetic baseline in the individuals they've got. I mean, you've got a range of skin and hair colours and shapes and sizes. Yeah. So even though they set up this European invasion storyline,
00:35:14
Speaker
Actually, they've already counteracted it with the Doug's tribe in the first instance, which I think is quite nice.
00:35:26
Speaker
is quite nice. And of course, we're recording this on the 7th of February, by the way. I think it won't be until March. But today was the day that broke the Cheddar Man story, where the DNA studies are potentially telling us that Cheddar Man, who was early Mesolithic,
00:35:47
Speaker
or very late upper Paleolithic, had very dark skin and dark hair and blue eyes. There have been other studies of Mesolithic people, other DNA, genetic studies, that are throwing up the same ideas.
00:36:03
Speaker
And actually, you're mentioning before, James, that there was this, it's more complicated than just waves of invasion, bringing first the Neolithic and then the Bronze Age and then whatever, and then the Celts, of course, who always have to come up. But quite a lot of genetic studies are actually, which aren't, they are still, you know, they're not in their infancy as such, but I think we're still working through what the genetic studies mean.
00:36:33
Speaker
But they're starting to bring back those ideas of those invasions a little bit with more evidence of people moving in prehistory.
00:36:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's a really, really difficult one and trying to trace back our ancestry, whether it be a couple of hundred years ago or thousands of years ago, is always in the public interest. People always want to know where they came from or who their ancestors were. There's an economy behind it and there's a background public interest. And I think
00:37:11
Speaker
When I saw the Cheddar Man news, as with all of these bits of news, and I'm not focusing on this in particular, you always have to take them with a pinch of salt and actually think about what's going on behind it. As I've said before, you're going to be getting people who would have come into Britain from possibly all parts of the old world at different times, bringing in new ideas.
00:37:36
Speaker
new artefacts that would have fuelled new motions. We know that people and ideas in the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic Bronze Age and even into the Iron Age are incredibly difficult to track and trace, but we're seeing
00:37:55
Speaker
the reconstruction of the cheddar man based on the genome sequence that they've been working on. That's not necessarily to say that's exactly what they would have looked like when they were in life or when they were buried. We know by looking at Native Americans that once they're outside of the environment that they have been in the past, that their skin tone is either darkened up or lightened up.
00:38:23
Speaker
It's based on the environment that they're in, and that's the case with a lot of archaeology. People and humans are very adaptable. They still would have kept that background makeup that makes them, and that's what we can see and trace now, but how they would have adapted, regardless of race, regardless of even religion. People adapt, they change. That's why archaeology is so brilliant.
00:38:52
Speaker
And it's just a bit frustrating at times, you know, people are very, very focused on, you know, these people are quite different to what we expected. They're just people. We are going to get people who have come from quite a distant land into our archaeology, and that's what makes it exciting. News like this is exciting, but it's not particularly unexpected. It is one individual.
00:39:17
Speaker
Exciting though it is, it is one individual. There may well be and almost certainly are people who will also have come from a distance or certainly their heritage is from quite a distance to where they've been found now. But you know same things like the first Britain etc or to the British Isles.
00:39:35
Speaker
It wasn't Ireland at the time. It wasn't Britain. It was a landmass that was connected to the continent that we have today. There's just so much labeling an agency that's shoved into it to make it very, very sensationalist.
Using Fictional Films in Education
00:39:51
Speaker
I know. We have to just take a break briefly, but we can come back and talk a bit more about this because I can see that you're quite passionate, or here, in fact, that you're quite passionate about this. Okay, we'll be back in a minute.
00:40:02
Speaker
The Archeology Podcast Network has partnered with Tea Public to bring you some awesome gear that looks good, promotes archeology, and puts a few pennies in our pockets so you can get free podcasts. Check out our designs at arkpodnet.com slash shop. That's arkpodnet.com slash shop. Hello, and we're back again. Ah, now we were getting, James was getting quite passionate about the, what were you talking about, James? I know. We were talking about the China man news.
00:40:30
Speaker
Oh, Cheddar Man, yeah, that's right. It took quite a while. Because Erin lives in the wilds of Wales, it took quite a while for her audio to upload. This is something for the listeners to know. Yes, so my mind wandered. Yes, Cheddar Man, and therefore the representation of all of the different types of people in Doug's tribe was really nice, particularly like hearing Richard Iowadhi. I just think he's fantastic.
00:41:00
Speaker
But I think it was, it was, it felt uncomfortable to me that all the Bronze Age people were various European voices and we were the douty Brits. And I just, I just think I'm a bit over that kind of film. What do you, Erin, what do you think? I think that starts a football
00:41:26
Speaker
point. As in the racial and genetic mixture that we're seeing actually on all sides for this, because as much as the archaeology is a mishmash of periods and references, the second narrative that we move into, football is also a mishmash of references. You know, there's a touch of the early Tudor football and the
00:41:55
Speaker
carvings on Gloucester Cathedral, about two men kicking a ball in the air, that's what, 14th century. We've got a bit of that in there, we've got the World Cup in 1966, we've got predictions for 2018. So we've got this combination of histories happening, and that's shown in the racial mix we see in the players and in the voices. And apparently they did try different accents because they were concerned that
00:42:24
Speaker
people would misconstrue it. And then they ended up going back to the combination they had in the beginning and decided, oh, just stuff it, we'll go with it. Because it, it does, it does work. And it pokes, it's not really poke fun, but I think it highlights that element that people are just people, regardless of whether they've got loads of money in the living in civilization, whether they're living in a cave and then
00:42:54
Speaker
eating rabbit doesn't make any difference. I think that meta narrative comes through quite strongly in the film, which fits, I think, with what James was saying about Cheddar Man.
00:43:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's fascinating to see how you're kind of almost mining the film for all of those references to where they got them all from. I love that. And I didn't know that much about the footballing history. So although, of course, some of the references to the 1966 World Cup, which is just one of those cultural memories that obviously came through.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yes, and I mean, Rob Brydon's impersonations are absolutely flawless as well, which I think helps there. I'm lucky or unfortunate, whichever way you want to bring it, in that I have a football historian in the family. So I've somehow found myself with all this knowledge that I really didn't know I had until I was sat in the cinema.
00:44:05
Speaker
And I was recognising all the points of reference. So that was really nice. And it made me then think again about the archaeology and the opening sequences and look at them from a slightly more holistic, relaxed position and say, well, if you can do that with football, you can do that with archaeology. And actually, if this raises questions about what was that reference
00:44:34
Speaker
in football, we're not thinking, oh, well, that doesn't, this part doesn't fit. Oh, that referee looks like Pep Guardiola, but how does that work with 1966? And we don't complain about that. It raises a question. So maybe the archaeological part, the prehistoric part, maybe as with the Ice Age films, it will raise questions for those who was working in outreach rather than providing
00:45:02
Speaker
dogmatic answers that we have to break, so I'm hopeful. Yeah, I mean, in many ways, why do we get so precious about this? And in many ways, those films, the Ice Age films are very helpful and some of the other things that are widespread. They actually provide context at least, so you can work from them in a way. They're a springboard to
00:45:28
Speaker
getting into other things, more detailed things, which you can't do in a story, not like this anyway, a film. You could in a chapter book, you can't so much in a picture book, but when you're with people face-to-face, you can
00:45:49
Speaker
You know, it's the most interactive thing, isn't it? The most interactive way. Yes, I mean, you could use this film, sections of this film in teaching to students quite easily. You could show them the opening sequence and ask them, say to them, right, you've got two minutes, write down a list of things that were right and a list of things that were wrong, or write down all the reference points you can get. And you could springboard from there into discussions about transitions.
00:46:19
Speaker
between time periods and their relation to geography and, you know, were the dinosaurs just outside Manchester? We could
Strategies for Teaching Prehistory
00:46:29
Speaker
take it that way.
00:46:34
Speaker
I know, James, that you sometimes work with kids as well, go out to schools and things like that. Do you have that same kind of, those children bringing up certain things like sloths in the Ice Age and things like that? And they all know about... Yeah, I mean, giant sloths are always a bit of an issue to tackle. When I was working with Gordon Kindersley, there was quite a lot of interest to include things like giant sloths.
00:47:04
Speaker
had to make it very clear that they're very regionally specific. But that's the case with a lot of archaeology things are regionally specific and people just can't seem to understand that some things were the case in some places and not in others.
00:47:21
Speaker
Yes, and that is interesting. Do you think that all of this cultural stuff that goes on, that uses caveman stuff, it's quite useful for us to know if we're going to be talking specifically, particularly to children. So, you know, we have to almost, we're forced to go and see early man because we know that the kids are going to see it and then they kind of come and they're going to talk to us and say this and this and this. And we need to know what they're going on about.
00:47:51
Speaker
No, I mean, I would, to be honest, I think if I had to talk to a group of year three, fours tomorrow, I wouldn't even mention it. I wouldn't, I would try to avoid drawing upon films like early man because otherwise you're making that connection to view the film whilst thinking about
00:48:14
Speaker
people in the past, and I know we're looking at it from that point of view, but to avoid confusion as much as anything, I would... So you kind of start from a blank slate? Yeah, I think it would be far more constructive. I mean, yeah, as Erin said, definitely thinking about it with students and starting to think about it as an archaeological representation, trying to get students to think about outreach. Yeah, great.
00:48:42
Speaker
They're primary school students. I think it's best really to start from blank. I mean, we're archaeologists. We can paint a picture as our job that the kids can find really engaging. Trying to bring in films that are directly, whether purposely accurately or inaccurately, I think is making it confusing. Whereas bringing in other resources that are not an attempt
00:49:09
Speaker
to have an archaeological influence. So we all know how valuable Minecraft is to archaeology at the moment. It's not an accurate, it's not attempting to be any kind of representation of archaeology, but it really, really helps. And it's been surprising how helpful it is. And when I'm trying to describe extraction of metal and smelting of metal, production of metal tools, Minecraft's great. And you just say, well, what do you do with ore? Oh, we put it in a furnace. Yeah, great. Okay.
00:49:36
Speaker
Yeah, they do all of that. It's brilliant. A few years ago would have been really difficult to get over. But as I said, it's not Minecraft is not this archaeology game, or it's not a prehistoric people game in any way, shape or form. Whereas something like early man, 10,000 BC, you know, number of films out there, they are either directly or indirectly having some kind of influence on people's view. And I think they should be
00:50:05
Speaker
not, you know, quite almost policing them apart from each other. But I don't think they're particularly helpful to each other. I agree. And I would have liked a caveat at the beginning of the film, actually, for early man that said that this was not a true story. This is not historically accurate, because it is from a teaching point of view, we start with a blank slate, but the children don't.
00:50:34
Speaker
The children start in a position of having watched early man and Ice Age and they can be quite vociferous in arguing that giant sloths exist and, you know, talking about, you mentioned mammoths and they immediately talk about Ice Age. You can't avoid it. So to understand their points of reference and to be able to gently tease out the fiction and say that that's a cartoon.
00:51:04
Speaker
You know, that's an animation that isn't real. But this mammoth tooth, this, you can hold this in your hands to help them accept the differences between what they're saying. And, you know, critical thinking, four or five year olds are amazing at it. But they do come at us with fiction as their points of reference. And so knowing how to take them to that blank page,
00:51:33
Speaker
I think is important. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly where I was coming
Media Influence on Children's Understanding
00:51:40
Speaker
from. The fact that the children bring this up with you and in some of the answers to your questions when you talk to them, or just randomly whilst you're doing something with them, they'll start talking about it. And I think that it behooves us to know what they're talking about and to
00:52:00
Speaker
be able to bring them back to what is the evidence when we're actually teaching them about this period. But fiction, like you say, Erin, fiction is the way that they have come to this information. And in schools, it's brilliant. And that's great, but it's a different thing to us actually representing
00:52:27
Speaker
what we're saying with examples from early man. Yeah, that I agree with James, that just, that would be really confusing things. But we need to understand where they're coming from to transition then into a different way of thinking about evidence data. And it's, it's useful and the little faces light up and you, you show them a mammoth tooth and they're trying to guess what it is. And then they equate it with
00:52:57
Speaker
you know, the mammoth and everything, it's called an ice age. And suddenly you get an entire class interested. So it is useful. You've got to really know where the pitfalls are so that you can navigate around them.
00:53:14
Speaker
smoothly. Yes, absolutely. And I was thinking, you know, when my daughter said that she knew it wasn't true, this film, I think that, I mean, obviously, she lives with someone who, you know, is a Stone Age woman for a living some of the time. And so there's, you know, she's got a certain understanding anyway, although I have to point out that she doesn't really pay much attention to what I say.
00:53:45
Speaker
I wonder, you know, she's seven. She's in year three. She's just been doing the Stone Age. That's pretty good to know that that's not true. But then it's not cartoon, it's stop motion animation. It's got that kind of look about it that it looks like Shaun the Sheep, which everybody's aware of. It looks like Wallace and Gromit.
00:54:08
Speaker
Um, and everybody knows those are just for fun. So, you know, again, we're, you know, uh, really we can worry too much about, about these representations, but I don't know. I think we can. And actually there's an inclusion, I don't want to spoil it if people haven't seen it. There's an inclusion of a fantastical creature, a creature that has never existed and is made, I don't want to say what it is for anyone who hasn't watched it.
Educational Value of Upcoming Films
00:54:37
Speaker
that they fly in on at one point. And I think that draws attention to, this is fiction. This is not meant to be factually correct. And at the same time, of course, that's... It references football mascots. You know, the most popular British football mascot is connected with this particular creature.
00:55:06
Speaker
So you've got a nice football, couple of football references going on in there, but it also says, look, you know, not everything we're showing here will make sense in a factual way. Which I think covers, covers that fictional element quite nicely. Maybe that's the caveat you were looking for. Maybe I would have liked something upfront, to be honest.
00:55:33
Speaker
I would have liked that a little clearer because there will be people who just believe this straight off.
00:55:40
Speaker
Yeah, maybe, yeah. Now, if there are a couple of other lovely films, I don't know if we're going to be able to talk about them on the podcast here, that have either been released or are coming up. Now, I know, James, you have an outfit based on Utsis, don't you? That's correct.
00:56:07
Speaker
Yeah, so are you, I just don't know how to get hold of this film. Do you have any, I mean, because it's been released only really in kind of arty film festivals and stuff that, what's it called? No, let me say they're German properly.
00:56:26
Speaker
Dermann Åstam Eis, which is about Ertsi, and it's a fictional story about how he might have come to the position where he died. I'm just desperate to see it, but I don't know how to get hold of it.
00:56:47
Speaker
I think it's still at the film festival stage at the moment by the look of it. It will probably be made available later this year. I should have thought or would have thought it would come available via Bolzano Museum where Utsi is housed either on the Facebook page. There will be information, I'll be very surprised if it's not made available in some form.
00:57:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good idea. So we'll keep an eye out for that. And I'd
Reflections on 'Early Man'
00:57:19
Speaker
love to talk to you about it if we manage to get hold of it, but it might be next year. I mean, Ertsey is a very, he's just crying, he was always crying out for a story to be made of his life because we know so much about him.
00:57:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he's one of the most unique finds in prehistoric archaeology. It's, I guess, the most complete individual and his equipment that we have from the very late Neolithic and the unusual circumstances that he was found under just adds to the story, really. He's just a really good case study for a whole number of reasons.
00:58:01
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm desperate to see that film, and I think that's going to be really good fun. Anyway, maybe we'll talk about that more if we manage to get a hold of it. But out later this year is also another Stone Age film, which is called Alpha now, which was called The Salutrium, but they've changed the name of it. It just seems to be part of this
00:58:28
Speaker
genre of film, which we've talked about before about, again, it is trying to be more accurate than say something like early man. But it's the Upper Paleolithic, the struggle for survival, which always seems to be the story in films set in the Upper Paleolithic. It'd be nice to have like a, you know, a drama or something. I don't know. Anyway, that's just my view on it.
00:58:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, for the Upper Paleolithic, it's a time I'm looking at for my PhD, so it will be interesting.
00:59:08
Speaker
I await it with some interest. The fact that they've changed the title suggests that there may be some concern over how accurate they think it is. If they kept it as the salutary, I think they would be quite happy that they've stuck to the name of a specific time period and are happy to represent that time period. The fact that they've changed it suggests that, in my view, that they're
00:59:33
Speaker
they know that there are compromises that have been made.
00:59:39
Speaker
I think that always has to happen in creating fiction about these time periods that we love, sadly. But yes, hopefully, maybe at some point, we shall get to see that and talk about it. But it's not out until September, I think, or later this year. So maybe we can talk about that too. But for now, I just need to say thank you so much to James and Erin for joining me today. Thank you.
01:00:08
Speaker
Thank you for having me. Thank you so much and thank you James. No problem. It's been really good to talk to you. I think we can just say that early man is lots and lots of fun and we need to start worrying about these things. Thank you for listening everyone and
01:00:30
Speaker
Keep your eyes out for the next Prehistories podcast where I'll be talking about the roll right stones in Oxfordshire and myths surrounding Standing Stonesill. This show is produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective.
01:00:55
Speaker
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 chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.