Today we’re reviewing Evolution’s Child (1999), a made-for-TV movie in which a woman is accidentally impregnated by sperm from an Ötzi-inspired ice mummy, and ultimately gives birth to a child with magical bronze age powers—and one fatal weakness. We talk ancient diseases, DNA contamination, and genetic memory, and Ross reassures us that this probably won’t happen at your local IVF clinic.

We rarely the get change to review a newly released caveman movie, so we’re really excited about Out of Darkness (2022), the story of Upper Palaeolithic modern humans venturing into Europe for the first time, and encountering a mysterious enemy. What could it be? Well if you’ve kept up with the field of palaeoanthropology over the last twenty or thirty years, it’s probably exactly what you expect!

Today we’re travelling to the 24th century to discover humans’ earliest ancestors in The Chase, a 1993 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Captain Picard gets a chance to follow the road not taken and fulfill his dream of being an archaeologist. We talk pottery, ancient DNA, and linear progressive evolution.