Today we’re joined by Seth Chagi of World of Paleoanthropology to review a stone age classic: Quest for Fire (1981) hits almost all the caveman movie tropes, but to be fair, it probably originated most of them. We talk about the origins of controlled use of fire, “conlangs”, and how this movie has become more scientifically accurate over time.

Check out the World of Paleoanthropology:

https://worldofpaleoanthropology.org/

https://www.youtube.com/@worldofpaleoanthropology

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In this episode:

Watch Quest for Fire on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MV1H_bAt-E

Nonhuman ape sense of humour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJarjlRVZzY

Bonobos laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhlHx5ivGGk

Bonobo sex: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bonobo-sex-and-society-2006-06/

Sabre-toothed cats’ coat patterns: https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/laelaps/did-saber-cats-have-spotted-and-striped-coats/

The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Ape

Anthony Burgess created the Ulam language: https://www.anthonyburgess.org/quest-for-fire/quest-for-language/

Australian firehawks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zcJs16aZ5s

Were there any human tribes who didn’t have the ability to start fire? https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/872kfd/is_it_true_that_ther_arewere_isolated_peoples_who/

Today we’re reviewing the third movie in the Jurassic Park franchise with extra special returning guest and actual star of the film: Dr. Andrew Kinkella! He takes us behind the scenes of his breakout role as “Lecture Attendee #231” and reveals why he gave up his film aspirations to pursue a much more practical career in archaeology.

Listen to Dr. Andrew Kinkella on the Pseudo-Archaeology Podcast: https://www.archaeologypodcastnetwork...

Kinkella Teaches Archaeology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaREZDSg-l3pOyu0AW3tfjA

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In this episode:

The strange saga of Spinosaurus: https://carnegiemnh.org/the-strange-saga-of-spinosaurus-the-semiaquatic-dinosaurian-superpredator/

Spinosaurus, Baryonyx, and Suchomimus: https://www.sciencethatstuff.com/post/2018/03/01/spinosaurus-suchomimus-baryonyx-and-irritator-what-were-they-werent-they-all-just-the-sam

Pteranodon means “Toothless Wing”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pteranodon

Velociraptor had feathers: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/velociraptor-facts.html

Tyrannosaurus had lips: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/t-rex-had-lips-that-concealed-its-teeth-study-says-180981914/

The history of 3D printing: https://www.autodesk.com/design-make/articles/history-of-3d-printing

Egyptian mummy voice reconstruction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Iok_QiE64

Paleontologist Jack Horner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Horner_(paleontologist)

Ross is away today but undergrad student Zach Hoorman is filling in to help us review the first episode of It’s About Time (1966), a sitcom from the creator of Gilligan’s Island about two astronauts who accidentally “break the time barrier” and find themselves stranded one million years in the past. There’s not much real palaeoanthropology to talk about in this episode, so instead Josh does a poor job of explaining Einstein’s theory of special relativity.

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In this episode:

Watch It’s About Time on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QguKIuhEiI

Neanderthal eyes and brains: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21759233

Just-so stories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

Hair in the Palaeolithic: https://www.academia.edu/81780985/Bad_Hair_Days_in_the_Paleolithic_Modern_Re_Constructions_of_the_Cave_Man?f_ri=2403396

Einstein’s theory of special relativity: https://www.space.com/36273-theory-special-relativity.html

The speed of light on a train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVKFBaaL4uM

1960s car crash songs: https://riffmagazine.com/mp3/rewind-20220122/

Firebringer (2016) is a musical play about the discovery of fire by a tribe of polyamourous, matriarchal ancient humans. They also invent stone tools, art, hunting—they pretty much hit all the classic caveman tropes, and even subvert some of them. The only problem is... it’s a musical.

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In this episode:

Watch Firebringer (2016) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmVuNlu0LCk

The earliest controlled use of fire: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2743299

The oldest stone tools: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32804177

Neanderthals hafted tools with birch tar: https://www.science.org/content/article/50000-year-old-tar-smeared-tool-shows-neanderthal-smarts

The oldest cave paintings: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap7778

Divje Babe Neanderthal “flute”: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/holes-in-a-bone-flute-or-fluke

Palaeolithic Lithophones: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0092.1985.tb00229.x

Homo naledi: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/homo-naledi-your-most-recently-discovered-human-relative.html

Early art at Blombos Cave: https://theconversation.com/south-africas-blombos-cave-is-home-to-the-earliest-drawing-by-a-human-103017

Goog Enough on Twitter: https://x.com/goog_enough

Sima de los Huesos: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-sima-hominins-an-ancient-human-cold-case

The Mauer mandible: https://efossils.org/page/boneviewer/homo%20heidelbergensis/Mauer%201

Bae et al. (2023) Moving away from “the Muddle in the Middle” toward solving the Chibanian puzzle: https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.22011

Roksandic et al. (2021) Resolving the “muddle in the middle”: The case for Homo bodoensis sp. nov. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21929

The Middle Pleistocene was renamed to “Chibanian”: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chibanian-age-earths-newly-named-geological-period-180974224/

Evolution (2001) is a star-studded soft-disclosure propaganda film masquerading as a shampoo commercial intended to prepare us for extraterrestrial butt stuff. I think? I mean it doesn’t seem to know what evolution is. In this episode we discuss organic chemistry, asexual reproduction, and Lamarckism, and also firetrucks for some reason.

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In this episode:

Evolution (2001) production information: https://www.cinema.com/articles/458/evolution-production-information.phtml

Tillers and Quillers (i.e. fire trucks): https://www.fireapparatusmagazine.com/features/cantankerous-wisdom-tillers-quillers/

Head and Shoulders “Intensive treatment”: https://reference.medscape.com/drug/selsun-blue-tersifoam-selenium-sulfide-topical-343485

Lamarckism: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-history-of-evolutionary-thought/1800s/early-concepts-of-evolution-jean-baptiste-lamarck/

Asexual reproduction in plants: https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/Biology_(Kimball)/16%3A_The_Anatomy_and_Physiology_of_Plants/16.03%3A_Reproduction_in_Plants/16.3E%3A_Asexual_Reproduction_in_Plants

Stephen J. Gould (1989) Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History: https://archive.org/details/wonderfullifebur0000goul_r6i5/page/n7/mode/2up

Multiple sexes in fungi: https://www.the-scientist.com/this-fungus-has-more-than-17-000-sexes-69930

Starfish Regeneration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_regeneration

Hypothetical types of biochemistry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry

Natural Gas Odorizers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odorizer

Evolution wouldn’t follow the same path twice: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190709-would-humans-evolve-again-if-we-rewound-time

Adam and Eve (Bingo!) Meet the Cannibals (Bingo!) tells the story of two blond (Bingo!) early humans who are banished from their home (Bingo!) and go on a rambling journey (Bingo!) where they encounter dinosaurs (Bingo!) and several tribes of cave people. Of course, everyone will be familiar with the plot because it’s a loose adaptation of the famous story, The Quest for Fire. What’s that? “Bible”? “Genesis”? Never heard of it.

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In this episode:

Where did Cain's wife come from? https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/department/biblical-views-who-did-cain-marry/

Cannibalism in the bible: https://www.openbible.info/topics/cannibalism

Simian and feline immunodeficiency viruses (SIV and FIV): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1659310/

Disease transmission by cannibalism: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2189571/

Can vampires get HIV? https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/comments/nwcs93/vampires_can_vampires_get_hiv_or_aids/

How many holes does a human have? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egEraZP9yXQ

Can you run a string through your entire GI tract? https://www.straightdope.com/21341206/can-yogas-swallow-a-cloth-and-have-it-come-out-the-urk-other-end

Family Guy Seagulls are not cannibals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG0MxhkQ67w

Origin and diversification of birds: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.003

Plants take up chronic wasting disease prions in the lab: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/chronic-wasting-disease/plants-can-take-cwd-causing-prions-soil-lab-what-happens-if-they-are-eaten

Kuru disease: https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/kuru

Did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons? https://www.doesgodexist.org/SepOct06/TheGreatBellyButtonDebate.html

Men don’t have fewer ribs than women: https://answersingenesis.org/creationism/arguments-to-avoid/women-have-more-ribs-than-men/

Was Eve made from Adam’s baculum? https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/ncbi-rofl-what-did-god-do-with-adams-penis-bone

Os clitoridis (baubellum): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Os_clitoridis

If you were watching American TV in 2004, then you remember the Geico caveman commercials. What you might not remember is that they spun off a sitcom: Cavemen (2007), starring Nick Kroll, was cancelled after only six episodes and is considered one of the worst TV series of all time. But how does it hold up to scientific scrutiny? Find out on today’s episode, where we do the research the screenwriters didn’t!

Win some SotSA Merch! Send your mistakes, inaccuracies, and corrections to us by email or social media:

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Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

The Geico caveman commercials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8o_YqzMBoo

Watch the full Cavemen series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE9Q41jqFKU&list=PL81C5835E560AE6BE

Green et al. (2010) A draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1188021

Green et al. (2006) Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05336

Denny, the first generation Neanderthal/Denisovan hybrid: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/24/denisovan-neanderthal-hybrid-denny-dna-finder-project

Interbreeding between archaic humans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans

“Ghost lineages” in human ancestry: https://www.science.org/content/article/mysterious-ghost-populations-had-multiple-trysts-human-ancestors

Oase 1 – a modern human with recent Neanderthal ancestry: https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature14558

Bacho Kiro – modern humans with recent Neanderthal ancestry: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03335-3

Nikolai Valuev (is not a Neanderthal): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Valuev

Allometry: https://www.britannica.com/science/allometry