Quest for Fire

Summary

J. Whittaker: Movie, starring Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nicholas Kadi, and Rae Dawn Chong. After their tribe is attacked by apemen [Australopithecines?] and loses their fire, three Neanderthals [?] set out, meeting hairy cannibals [Homo erectus?] and a hyper-active tribe of fully modern humans. From the woman who joins them, they learn to joke, enjoy face-to-face intercourse, use atlatls, and ultimately to make fire. [Got a lot of hype from using only primitive language designed by A. Burgess and body language by D. Morris. Ultimately a story about becoming human, not too bad, but some silliness – pathetic material culture even for Neanderthals (only stone tool use shown is scraping charred end of spear – Neanderthals without stone tools would be as desperate as without fire), moth-eaten wooly mammoth costumes, absurd mix of hominids from different times, etc. Atlatl use depicted briefly: grooved stick atlatl with crooked handle, light arrow-like darts. Heros use them to triumph over rivals, but naturally learn without practice, although earlier they were shown to be clumsy rock throwers. The depiction shows them loading and throwing, with darts zinging at high speed into enemies, but doesn’t look like the actors really knew how to use them. Wonder who made the gear. See Rosny 1982.]

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• EXARC Experimental Archaeology Collection

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): EXARC Experimental Archaeology Collection Manager

Record Identifiers

ExArc Id(s): 10224

Notes

Rights & Attribution: The information in this record was originally compiled by Dr. Roeland Paardekooper, EXARC Director.