Customer Reviews

Walking With Cavemen

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

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

When watching "Walking With Cavemen" which is a very-well produced educational film - I could not help but laugh every time Alec Baldwin appeared on camera. There's just something so goofy about him - that you half expect, at any moment, he will drop a 2 million year old skull smashing it into 10,000 pieces.

And that hair of his! Can you imagine how much more entertaining this film would be if each succeeding proto-human species donned a hair style that was slowly, inexorably, evolving to look like Alec Baldwin's?

"And here's Cro-Magnon Man, whose demise would have come eons earlier had it not been for the fantastic hair styling technique they developed 200,000 years ago. A hair style that is still widely in use today...", as Mr. Baldwin winks at the camera.

The "Walking with..." series is ripe for parody - if it's not already a parody of itself.

This DVD is wonderful and keeps the audiences attention till the very end. The video is very educational, but appeals to everyone. This video does contain nudity and violence though, so I would not recommend showing it to a classroom. The video walks us through step by step our evolutionary chain. Very little fiction, and everything is based upon facts and science. I would recommend this video to anyone, and it is exciting enough to watch with guests or to give as a gift.

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.

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?"

Over the duration of the 'walking with' series, I've really come to question what validity it has. I know that there is probably some merit in seeing recreations of what the earth's past may have been like, but all too often the actual educational value seems to get lost amidst the need to tell little stories about the animals in question. This started with Walking with Dinosaurs and I didn't find it too annoying there, but there were plenty of times it didn't work. Instead of documentary, it had turned dino-drama. Now I can really enjoy the concept of a dino-drama, but trying to do that and be educational and do both well is a pretty tall order. One might also wonder why they felt the need to tell a story with every episode but that becomes clear once you realize how expensive it must have been to make their characters. It simply wouldn't be economical to show a creature for 30 seconds that you spent a load of money designing the cgi models for, puppets, etc.

And now we come to Walking with Cavemen. For some reason, the creators of the film still feel obligated to stick to prehistoric drama (and by now the novelty has more than worn off), while the quite educational 'making of' disc has been dropped entirely.

Looking back on the whole series, one must accept that it's a sort of magic trick, all smoke and mirrors--but innitially, it works. The problem is, by 'Cavemen' we can cleary see the man behind the curtain and the thing falls flat on its face. The stories are, to be blunt, stupid. The best acting in the world can't keep the costumes from looking rediculous, nor make the story convincing. Ultimately, it's a bunch of people paid to run around in furry suits or naked (as in the later episodes) pretending to be pre-humans. It worked in Kubrick's 2001, I don't know why it doesn't work here.

With all that said, I would have enjoyed a good BBC special on human evolution. The efforts of the team that made this series, the actors, etc. are very much appreciated, but I feel that while this may hook some of the kids, it does so at a great sacrifice. Teaching science is ultimately about getting students to open their mind and question the world around them--that means that when we make assertions in a science program like Homo erectus not having a spiritual life, we actually provide some evidence. Demonstrating the process of inquiry and deduction is more important than the costumes, more important than flashy cgi or creative cut-scenes. It is the core of what a good education program should be about. Instead, we have the creative presentation of content. Just content. Not science.

If you follow that line of reasoning you might come to see why I've given this 2 stars. This is a talented team working for the leaders in quality science programs. I think they can do a lot better.