{"id":990,"date":"2008-03-09T12:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T12:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/03\/everything-i-know-i-learned-from-10000-b-c\/"},"modified":"2008-03-09T12:10:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-09T12:10:00","slug":"everything-i-know-i-learned-from-10000-b-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/03\/everything-i-know-i-learned-from-10000-b-c.html","title":{"rendered":"Everything I know, I learned from 10,000 B.C."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Well, not really. But one thing I love about the movies \u2014 even the really bad ones \u2014 is how they can stimulate interest in subjects that we might not otherwise have looked into. For a history buff like me, it can be especially fun to fact-check movies that are set in the past. If a movie gets something right, great; and if it doesn\u2019t, there is still educational value in figuring out where it went wrong. (See the book Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies<\/a><\/i> for dozens of examples of this sort of quasi-affectionate nit-picking.)<\/span><\/p>\n

So as bad as a film like 10,000 B.C.<\/a><\/i> might be, I have to admit that it got me curious about a number of subjects \u2014 though admittedly not so curious that I bothered to look them up in anything more authoritative than Wikipedia, for now. Below is a list of some of the \u201cfacts\u201d that I found \u2014 and if any of these claims are in error, feel free to correct them, whether here or at Wikipedia itself.<\/p>\n

But remember, this is all in fun; as a moviegoer, I don\u2019t mind the historical inaccuracies in 10,000 B.C.<\/i> anywhere near as much as I mind the fact that the film isn\u2019t all that entertaining.<\/p>\n

So, on to the list:<\/p>\n

In my review<\/a>, I mentioned the fact that sabre-toothed tigers<\/a> lived in the Americas \u2014 and went extinct around the time this film is set, if not a few thousand years earlier \u2014 whereas this film features entire tribes of people who appear to be African.<\/p>\n

In my previous blog post<\/a> on this film, I said I was distracted by the eye make-up worn by Evolet. The earliest known evidence of cosmetics usage<\/a> \u201cis found in Ancient Egypt around 4000 BC.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evolet has blue eyes<\/a>, which is treated even within the film as something new and unusual \u2014 as well it should be, since the genetic evidence suggests blue eyes are a mutation that \u201cmay have arisen in a single individual around the Black Sea region 6,000-10,000 years ago,\u201d i.e. between 4,000 and 8,000 B.C.<\/p>\n

In an even earlier blog post<\/a>, I alluded to the fact that the earliest known city<\/a> \u2014 Jericho or maybe Damascus \u2014 dates to between 8,000 and 10,000 B.C.<\/p>\n

The first pyramids<\/a>, built in Egypt or Mesopotamia or possibly even Greece, date to the 2,000s or 3,000s B.C.<\/p>\n

The domestication of horses<\/a> might have begun in the Eurasian steppes (around Ukraine) as far back as 4,000 B.C., but it didn\u2019t really take off until the 2,000s B.C.; prior to that, horses were hunted for meat.<\/p>\n

The woolly mammoth<\/a> \u201cranged from Spain to North America\u201d but died out around the end of the Ice Age<\/a> c. 9,600 B.C., though \u201cA small population survived on St. Paul Island, Alaska, up until 6000 BCE, and the small mammoths of Wrangel Island became extinct only around 2000 BCE\u201d.<\/p>\n

Metalworking<\/a> \u201cpredates history\u201d, and \u201cThe end of the beginning of metalworking occurs sometime around 6000 BCE when copper smelting became common in the Middle East.\u201d So the villains\u2019 use of swords and gold-plated ornaments might or might not be all that out-there.<\/p>\n

Of course, the filmmakers can always claim the villains brought some of the more technically advanced stuff from outer space, or Atlantis, or wherever it is they supposedly came from.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile<\/a>, on a related note: Just think what fun we will have with all the anachronisms next year, when Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs<\/a><\/i> \u2014 the third film in the popular<\/a> Ice Age<\/i> series <\/a> \u2014 comes out. (The photo below is taken from ComingSoon.net<\/a>\u2018s report on the ShoWest convention<\/a> currently taking place in Las Vegas.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

MAR 14 UPDATE: Pat Graham<\/a> of the Chicago Reader<\/i> isolates some of 10,000 B.C.<\/i>\u2018s other amusing anachronisms.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, not really. But one thing I love about the movies \u2014 even the really bad ones \u2014 is how they can stimulate interest in subjects that we might not otherwise have looked into. For a history buff like me, it can be especially fun to fact-check movies that are set in the past. If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nEverything I know, I learned from 10,000 B.C.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Well, not really. 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