Walking with Cavemen

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Walking with Cavemen
Genre Documentary
Starring Suzanne Cave, Ruth Dawes, Peter Elliott, Caroline Noh, and Anthony Taylor[1]
Narrated by Robert Winston in Great Britain, Alec Baldwin in North America
Theme music composer Alan Parker[2]
Country of origin UK
Language(s) English
No. of seasons 1
No. of episodes 4 in UK[2]; 2 in North America
Production
Executive
producer(s)		 Richard Dale[2]
Producer(s) Nick Green, Mark Hedgecoe, and Peter Oxley
Running time 100 min.[1]
Broadcast
Original channel BBC and Discovery Channel
First shown in April 1st, 2003
Chronology
Related shows Walking with Dinosaurs, Walking with Monsters, Walking with (Prehistoric) Beasts
External links
Official website
IMDb profile

Walking with Cavemen is a four-part television documentary series about human evolution produced by the BBC in the United Kingdom. It was originally released in April 2003. It was subsequently presented in the United States as a two-part series by the Discovery Channel and its affiliates. The documentary was produced largely by the same team who produced the award-winning documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) and Walking with Beasts (2001), though the original series' director, Tim Haines was not involved.

Contents

[edit] Overview

In the previous Walking with... documentaries, extinct animals were recreated with CGI and animatronics. For Walking with Cavemen, a slightly different approach was taken. While most of the animals depicted were still computer generated or animatronic, the human ancestors were portrayed by actors wearing makeup and prosthetics, giving them a more realistic look and permitting the actors to give the creatures a human quality.

Like its predecessors, Walking with Cavemen is made in the style of a wildlife documentary, featuring a voice-over narrator (Robert Winston in the British release, Alec Baldwin in the North American release) who describes the recreations of the prehistoric past as if they were real. As with the predecessors, this approach necessitated the presentation of speculation as if it were fact, and some of the statements made about the behaviour of the creatures are more open to question than the documentary may indicate.

Each species segment takes the form of a short drama featuring a group of the particular hominid in question going about their daily lives (the search for food, protecting territory, and caring for the sick and injured). The intent is to get the human viewer to feel for the creatures being examined, almost to imagine being one of them (a trait that the documentary links to the modern human brain).

[edit] UK Episodes

The UK transmission and DVD contained four episodes. The North American release merged the first two and last two episodes into two single, separate episodes[2]

[edit] First Ancestors

In the first episode, we see Australopithecus afarensis, specifically Lucy and her relatives. The show follows the tribe of apemen as the have internal conflicts following the death of the alpha male, and eventually an attack by a rival troupe. The attack ends with death of Lucy herself, and her eldest daughter caring for Lucy's now-orphaned baby (her sibling), as a sign of the developing humanity in these "apemen".

[edit] Blood Brothers

  • 3 million years B.C. - East Africa

The second episode then leaps forward to a time when Paranthropus boisei, Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis co-exist. H. habilis is depicted as an intelligent omnivore that is more adaptable than its herbivorous neighbours, which, though are able to eat tall grasses in difficult times, will not be able to survive in the future, when these grasses will die-out at the beginning of the next Ice Age. H. habilis, on the contrary, will continue to survive, until it evolves into Homo ergaster, seen in the next episode.

The episode only briefly shows the H. rudolfensis, remarking that albeit they are taller, they are very similar to the H. habilis.

[edit] Savage Family

  • 2 million years B.C. - Africa and 1.5 millons years B.C. - Asia

In the third episode, Homo ergaster is depicted as the first creature to master the art of tracking, and beginning to develop more advanced form of society (i.e. a proto-human tribe).

The episode also shows Homo erectus spreading into Asia and encountering the enormous herbivoric Gigantopithecus.

In the end, H. ergaster are shown developing or inventing fire and beginning to break-away from their direct dependence on their environment.

[edit] The Survivors

  • 500 thousand, 200 thousand and 150 thousand years B.C. - Europe

In the fourth episode we leap forward to a time when Homo heidelbergensis is living in Great Britain. H. Heidelbergensis is depicted as intelligent and sensitive but lacking in the ability to comprehend an afterlife. Next, we see Homo neanderthalensis hunting mammoths during the Ice age, and learn that they are intelligent but lack the imagination of modern humans. Finally, we see modern Homo sapiens (represented by Bushmen) in Africa, who had to become imaginative and inventive to survive the long drought, and finally glimpse the cave painters of Europe, who had "evolved" the idea of the afterlife and the supernatural, and who are now ready to start the human history as it is also known (and drive-out the Neanderthals to extinction).

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Amazon.com product description [1]
  2. ^ a b c d BBC - Press Office - Walking With Cavemen [2]
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