Neanderthal
Review
by : Li
Rapkin 
Neanderthal is a two-hour documentary produced for
the Discovery
Channel. The information content is interwoven with live-action
scenes of life in southwestern France during the late Neolithic
period, about 35,000 years ago, a time when Neanderthals and
Cro-Magnons (that’s us, or at least, most of us) coexisted.
It was around this time that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons
first encountered each other, and although we know how that
story will end, the getting there is all the fun.
There
have been several new discoveries about Neanderthals in the
past ten years that have caused the scientific community to
revise its view of Neanderthals considerably. Formerly looked
on as nasty, brutish and short, Neanderthals are now presented
as a different but equally human species, specifically adapted
to life in Ice Age Eurasia. In fact, the program repeatedly
points out that Neanderthals as a species successfully survived
Ice Age conditions for around a quarter of a million years,
starting before Homo sapiens even evolved. The documentary
does an excellent job of presently information in a way that’s
interesting and comprehensible, and would make a great additional
to classrooms, even in the upper grades of elementary school.
Technical language is kept to a minimum, and the principle
of “show, don’t tell” is strictly followed. Granted, a lot
of what is presented is speculative and based on the cultural
anthropology of non-technologically advanced Homo sapiens
societies, but it does make sense and is internally consistent.
The production does an excellent job of demonstrating the
postulated cultural differences between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons
without calling attention to them.
What’s
really impressive is the quality of the production. The actors
wear full head-and-neck prosthetics that look impressively
real. The producers hired anthropologists and archeologists
as consultants, paying attention to every detail from how
the actors move and interact with each other to the design
of the various tools, clothes, and other objects of everyday
life. Best of all, the storylines portrayed by the Neanderthal
clan and the characters themselves are based on actual archeological
finds. Special congratulations go to the actors playing Neanderthals,
who went through three hours of makeup every day, did shot
after shot in all weather and all terrain, and put up with
Stone Age hygiene while in costume. The camera work is also
fabulous, including some absolutely stunning zooms out from
twenty feet up to high earth orbit and shots that drop from
aboveground to underground. The program makes liberal use
of computer animation for everything from snow to wooly mammoths,
and does a damn fine job of it.
Even if
you’re not a fan of educational television, catch this next
time it’s run. Who knows, you might not be able to resist
learning something.
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