Customer Reviews

Walking With Cavemen

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I hate to criticize the Discovery Channel, but what programming executive ape decided they needed to dumb-down and Americanize this excellent documentary? The original BBC version, which is what you get here,is vastly superior to the Discovery Channel broadcast of June 15th, 2003. The different vignettes are longer, better narrated (by a British narrator, not Alec Baldwin) and have a real cinematic kind of feeling almost totally missing from the rushed along, tightly edited version we saw on tv. In fact, after viewing this DVD, the Discovery broadcast seems like a mere infomercial for this longer, better version. If you liked what you saw on Discovery, I highly recommend this DVD. It's like watching WWC again for the first time.

I am a fan of Professor Robert Winston and his "Walking with..." series of documentaries. This is in the process of being shown on TV at this moment in the UK and all I can say it is better than I expected. Using real actors and actresses, amazing make-up and special effects, Professor Winston takes us through the lives and times of our remote caveman ancestors, starting with "Lucy" who was more ape than human and ending at a pathway that would eventually lead to us, Homo Sapiens.

It is a fascinating insight to what might have been. Of course a lot of what you will see on this DVD is supposition, mixed in with fact, fiction and a healthy dose of imagination. We will never really know the whole truth of our Caveman ancestors as we only have bones, and cave paintings to rely on but to a certain extent this is enough and Professor Winston does try to give a plausible explanation as to how and why the human race left the trees and evolved into the people we are today.

There are four episodes, First Ancestors, Blood Brothers, Savage Family and finally, The Survivors and each half hour includes a "time-lapse" so that we can rush through pre-history to the next journey of our evolving ancestors.

Professor Winston is a pragmatic narrator who is able to put across a point without being condescending to the watcher, his humour is subtle and his understanding of the human mind is quite staggering. Roll on the next "Walking with..." series; I wonder what it will be called? "Walking with Astronauts?"

Ever wonder what your ancestors were like 100 years ago? Or perhaps wonder what your geneological tree looked like in the middle ages? Ever ponder what your forefathers were doing back in the time of the Greeks & Romans of a few thousand years ago? Or, back even further, what they were like a few million years ago?

Well, it is the latter epoch that is covered by this DVD. It is an overview of human evolution, 7 million years in the making. It takes us from the dawn on man all the way up to about 140,000 years go; long time ago for us, but mere seconds ago on a cosmic timescale.

Along the way the documentary displays diverse humanoids, some of whom make it, some of whom don't. It also demonstrates their interaction with long-extinct species of animals that were around the same time they walked the earth.

I must caution that the DVD pulls no punches when it comes to showing the animalistic traits of primitive man. The rites of courtship, hunting, eating and gutting of animals are all shown with uncompromisingly graphic demonstrations. I would not recommend this video for young videos, nor would I suggest that anyone watch it while eating. Some of it is not the most appetizing of images in the world.

That said, it is quite remarkable to identify just how much we modern humans have in common with these early products of evolution. If we look closely, we will see a lot of ourselves in them.

The late astronomer Carl Sagan once remarked that, if the history of the universe were shrunk to the scale of a calendar year, all of humanity exists would exist in the last 10 seconds of that year. This scientific expose is a glimpse into those 10 seconds. As Stephen J. Gould once said, "We stood up first and got smart later." Here is OUR story of how our ancestors stood up, got smart and began their long, slow and tenuous march towards civilization.

I've read the negative comments on this installment of the "Walking With" series and can only partially agree with them. The production could have been better, but I think we have become spoiled by watching computer generated animals done extremely well and realistic. This version contains many human actors and thus the whole "feel" of the production is different.

Also, not everything produced on Discovery is meant for children. There are still many, many adults who wish to learn about the past and appreciate a more academic presentation then would occur if a show such as this were aimed at a more younger audience. I guess it is taken for granted by a lot of the media that once one becomes an adult, all that matters are sports competitions and sitcoms. This series thus was extremely refreshing to watch.

That being said, I came away from watching "Cavemen" with a newfound respect for our ancestors. All too often they have been portrayed as comical dimwits, running around with clubs and dragging women by their hair. Now I realize this is actually very disrespectful and totally inappropriate. These very ancient ancestors managed to learn to survive some of the worst environmental conditions imaginable, grew more creative over time and with this creativity laid the foundations of modern civilization. As stated in the series, the discovery of fire not only chased away the denizens of the night, but also provided an opportunity for homo sapiens to learn to create,to reflect, become more emotional creatures and allow for the development of higher brain functions.

Neanderthals especially have had to bear the brunt of many a joke. Although their species did not survive, they can hardly be termed a failure. They too were resilient, developed the ability to exist during an Ice Age that we, even with all our modern conveniences, would be hard-pressed to endure. They lost the race in the final stretch, yet their accomplishments are deserving of further study and a more accurate (and respectful) portrayal.

It is no longer funny to see some dumpy looking, grunting renditions of distant homo sapiens. This vision of them is not only misleading, but extremely far from the truth. "Walking With Cavemen" made me realize that because of their temerity, strength and creative thinking, we can today enjoy a world whose origins rest with these long gone, but still amazing, ancient homo sapiens. A wonderful, and thoughtful, addition to the series.

Before I begin this review, I must admit that I am obsessed with human evolution. However, my education on the subject is limited to the few documentary films and educational programs on the subject as well as a few short books. So my review is probably best read as a review of a leisure evolution lover.

That being said I found the documentary very fascinating and enjoyable. However, of all of the documentaries that I have seen on the subject, Walking with Cavemen would find itself a few spots below the top spot.

For anyone interested in the subject, I recommend "The making of Mankind" 7 volume documentary hosted by Richard Leaky. This documentary begins with our earliest 4 legged ancestors and works slowly and carefully through each adaptation along the way. Each volume is approx. 45 minutes and explores not only the major physical changes of each species, but also the important consequences of every stage. The series is much more in depth and pays careful attention to several aspects of human evolution.

The first 5 volumes work cronologically from australopithecus to homo sapien sapien. The 6th volume discusses the begginning of civilization and farming. Each volume is fascinating and could be watched individual of the others.

In the final volume, Leaky explores the idea that Humans are inherently violent and destined to destroy themselves. Leaky explores where this idea comes from and proposes a beautiful and humble counter argument that suggests that humans only thrived on earth because of their recognition of others.

Walking with cavemen is fun and interesting, and has the benefit of being much more recent and therefore probably more accurate, but Making of mankind is, in my feeble opinion, a much greater documentary. It could probably be found in most libraries.

The BBC's "Walking With..." series has been very high quality since its inception. Great visual effects combined with clarity of exposition and just enough "story-telling" to enable most viewers to remain captivated while absorbing decent chunks of information. This latest addition to the series maintains the general format of its forebears but, perhaps inevitably, is the least successful.

It's difficult for humans to have any kind of realistic vision of themselves, so any series that tries to show how we evolved over the millenia (and some of the dead-ends along the way) is going to have problems. In this case there are simply too many gaps and too many leaps across those gaps with only the merest fig leaf of speculation to cover the chasm. And there are some fairly odd assertions about what aspects of adaptation had which effects.

Perhaps the most striking gap is that these episodes miss out on some of the most interesting conclusions we've been able to draw as a result of the last 6 years of genetic analysis. So this series has an "old" feel even though it is recently made. It also misses a lot of hard knowledge we've had for a long time, perhaps because it was too uncomfortable to include. For example, the ape-men are shown being monogamous, whereas we know that in all societies at all times known to us, dominant human males have tried to form and keep harems, either explicity or illicitly. Likewise we know a great deal about the necessity of violence in societies where wealth cannot easily be abstracted, and is thus easily stolen. Aggression is the only defence - and of course greater aggression is the main tactic for theft. Neither of these facts appears anywhere in the series, no doubt because we don't like seeing the uncomfortable truth about these aspects of our species.

Other than that, the makeup and imitation of pre-human gaits etc. is superb and one or two points are interestingly non-obvious: for example, that the development of enlarged and highly visible whites in our eyes is most probably to enhance signalling, so we can detect subtle emotional states in others.

All in all, worth buying but not watching more than once.

Having now seen both verisons I have to say the uncut BBC two part production is the best. Longer, doesn't spoon feed you and the DVD has LOTS of extras - fact files, photo gallery, storyboards, post-production interviews and even 'on location' interviews with actors, the movement director and the effects supervisor. Why buy hamburger when you can get steak?
Seems much longer than just 100 minutes - lots of details and solid story telling.

In case anyone thought from the review below that this is the same as the UK version they should know that it does NOT have a presenter. Instead the wonderfully imagined scenes of what our ancestors were like are presented more in the style of Walking with Dinosaurs, as if you are there, with a voiced narration explaining what you are seeing.

The BBC's "Walking With Cavemen" is a fantastic documentary series that recreates the evolutionary adventure that was the journey from our earliest hominid ancestors to modern humans of today. Using the latest research in the fields of antropology and evolutionary science, the series highlights several key steps along the way from the diminuative ape-like Australopithecus afarensis to, ultimately, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, showing the various stages of physical as well as intellectual advancements. The effects and makeup are well done and help to create an interesting and believable world where our earliest human relatives lived, hunted, fought, and died.

I was very pleased with this series and would highly recommend it and the other "Walking With..." films to anyone interested in ancient life and anyone who wants to get a fascinating glimpse of what life might have been like for our ancestors over the course of 3 million years.

Having watched the tv debut of this series, then the purchased DVD I would have to complement the final product as a better effort, especially from the choice of narration. This topic is very difficult to do, especially with animation of human-like animals where we can be more critical than with dinosaurs. The story lines are a bit tedious but interesting. Still it is difficult to believe we can reconstruct the behavior of the apes and human predecents based on our current database. I still think the effort is worthy. The graphics are very well done, possible not appropriate for a young viewer. In one scene the "cavemen" kill a hooved animal and then degut and eat it. My wife sent our 7 year old out of the room on that one! Perhaps it is such realism that makes the Walking With series so well received. Overall a good effort and worthy purchase for such a difficult and challenging subject.