Episode 73: The Beast from the Beginning of Time (1965)

The Beast from the Beginning of Time (1965) is a story we’ve seen many times: archaeologists find a caveman who wakes up and kills everyone. It doesn’t have the camp of Trog, or the star power of Horror Express, or the quotable lines of The Neanderthal Man, or the catchy surf-rock tunes of Eegah, or the budget of Neander-Jin... Well, enjoy the episode.

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In this episode:

• Watch The Beast from the Beginning of Time on YouTube

• Liquid scintillation counting

• Rigor mortis

• Lichtenberg figures (Lightning fern burns)

• Thagomizer

• Learn more about archaeological giants on Digging Up Ancient Aliens

• The Myth of the Moundbuilders

• J.B.S. Haldane’s “Precambrian rabbits”

Episode 72: Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) tells the story of Hushpuppy, a young girl living with her daddy in the Louisiana bayou, adapting to a changing world: her father is dying, the climate is warming, and prehistoric beasts are returning from the ice to haunt her. Aurochs, the titular beasts, were real Pleistocene animals – although the movie takes some artistic liberties. It’s a wonderful movie with many layers, but the only one we’re really qualified to dissect is the evolution of cows.

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In this episode:

• Aurochs, the extinct wild ox

• Aurochs behind the scenes in Beasts of the Southern Wild

• Get Ross’ book! The Missing Lynx: The Past and Future of Britain’s Lost Mammals

• When the Nazis tried to bring back animals from extinction

• Cows Gone Wild: The Cattle of Heck: Cows Gone Wild: The Cattle of Heck

• The Lascaux Shaft Scene

• Cows kill more people than sharks or crocodiles

• Elysian Fields

Episode 71: Music Videos

Today we’re diving into the music industry and reviewing seven stone age music videos: from Pearl Jam to Wu-Tang Clan, from folk to metal, musicians seem to love the ancient past. We explore the intersection of art and science, the way every generation projects their own ideals onto the past, and the disturbing amount of sperm in these videos!

Featured music videos:

Fatboy Slim – Right Here, Right Now (1998)

Pearl Jam – Do the Evolution (1998)

Stoner Kings – Cro Magnon (2019)

Wu-Tang Clan – Gravel Pit (2000)

Josh Ritter – The Curse (2010)

Caroline Polachek – Welcome To My Island (2023)

Hotlegs – Neanderthal Man (1970)

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In this episode:

• A new placoderm fish was just published with a huge underbite like the one in the Fatboy Slim video!

• The Miller-Urey experiment

• The myth of the 1929 stock market crash suicides

• Cro magnon 1 had a tumorous face

• Stoner Kings: Alpha Male (2019)

• Michael Majalhati, the Canadian Rebel Starbuck

• Hevisaurus

• Winds of Genocide

• Cemican

• Heilung

• Jurassic Park Scarf

• Josh Ritter on Q (2010)

• The Chimera of Arezzo

• Caroline Polachek visits a Przewalski’s horse with Vulture

Episode 70: Master of the World (1983)

We’re getting back to our roots with Master of the World (1983), an Italian film about modern humans and Neanderthals, and cave bears, and cannibalism, and fighting! And herons. And a plot? Well this is an artistic film, so if you didn’t get it then maybe you’re just not as evolved as we are.

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In this episode:

• The world’s oldest spears

• Modern humans ate Neanderthals?

• The Fore people and Kuru disease

• Endocannibalism, finger amputation, and other funerary practices

• You’re Wrong About – Survival in the Andes

• The Last Podcast on the Left – Survival in the Andes

• The Cult of the Cave Bear

• A Cross-cultural Perspective on Upper Palaeolithic Hand Images with Missing Phalanges

• I couldn’t find an ethnographic source for the use of birthing poles, but here’s an article from OrgasmicBirth.com

• Were bees the source of the Shanidar burial pollen?

• Samson killed a thousand men with a donkey’s jawbone

• Chewbacca’s voice

• Badger badger badger…

Episode 69: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

It’s Episode 69, dude! So we watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), the classic time-travel movie starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter as two slackers collecting historical figures to help them pass their history final in order to save a future civilization founded on their band’s music. Imagine how weird that sentence would sound if you had never seen this movie–but of course you have seen it. And just in case you missed it, there are nine seconds featuring cave people in this movie, so it counts!

Win some SotSA Merch! Send your mistakes, inaccuracies, and corrections to us by email or social media:

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In this episode:

• Graphic Designer David Bock designed our logo

• Oldest evidence of controlled use of fire

• Finlayson et al. (2012) Birds of a Feather: Neanderthal Exploitation of Raptors and Corvids

• Neanderthals wore eagle talons as jewellery

• Roebrooks et al. (2012) Use of red ochre by early Neandertals

• The evolution of language

• Acheulean Handaxes

• Know your King Henrys

• The Iron Maiden was an 18th Century myth

• Napoleon wasn’t that short

Bonus Episode: Il Primo Re - Greeced Lightning Podcast

If you like Screens of the Stone Age, you're gonna love Greeced Lightning, a podcast about Greek and Roman mythology and history in movies! Sara and Sam joined us for our review of Attila, and here we present the other half of that collaboration:

Greeced Lightning is back! We’re kicking off Season 2 with a foreign film and a very special guest. Josh Lindal of Screens of the Stone Age podcast joins us for the story of Romulus and Remus and the movie Il Primo Re: twin drama, swamp settlements, ancient hominids, and how often we think about the Roman Empire.

Find Greeced Lightning wherever you get your podcasts

https://linktr.ee/greecedlightning

Episode 68: Brother Bear (2003)

Happy New Year! To kick of 2024 we’re reviewing Disney’s Brother Bear (2003), the story of a human learning to be nice to animals by being forced to live as one. This is low-key a stone age movie – it’s set in Beringia during the Pleistocene, but other than some mammoths and glaciers, it doesn’t shove its stone-age-ness in your face. In this episode we talk cave art, megafauna, and, as always, Canadiana.

Get in touch with us!

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Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• Bob and Doug McKenzie

• Buy yerself a toque, eh?

• Petroforms in Whiteshell Provincial Park, Manitoba

• Navajo Sand Painting

• Indigenous languages of the Arctic

• The Peopling of the North American Arctic

• Bald eagle vs. red-tailed hawk calls

• The last woolly mammoths went extinct on Wrangel Island 4000 years ago

• The St. Paul Island mammoths

• Pleistocene megafauna of Beringia

• HOPE Lab merch

Episode 67: Saving Christmas Spirit (2022)

Saving Christmas Spirit (2022) is the story of a holiday-hating archaeologist who must travel to Scotland on Christmas to save her job, where she falls in love with a failing Scotch distiller (get it? Spirit? Scotch? It’s a pun! Do you get it?). Ross tells us everything wrong with this movie’s depiction of the Scottish Highlands (also we talk about archaeology).

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

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In this episode:

• The Canadian Barn Dance

• The Cairngorm Reindeer Herd

• Reindeer velvet

• The Broddenbjerg idol

• The Ballachulish Idol

• Knocknagel Boar Stone

• Who were the Picts?

• Flipco Hand Held Metal Detector Super Scanner with Beep Vibrator on Amazon

• How ground penetrating radar works

• Glenfinnan Viaduct (Harry Potter Train)

• Scottish Clans

Episode 66: After School (1988)

After School (1988) is the story of Father Mack, a catholic priest trying really hard to justify sleeping with one of his students. What does this have to do with the Stone Age? Well, inexplicably – INEXPLICABLY – the movie is intercut with scenes of cave people frolicking in a Palaeolithic Garden of Eden. Need answers? Too bad, we don’t have any.

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

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Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• Watch After School (1988) on YouTube

• After School on God Awful Movies podcast

• 40% of Americans believe in Creationism

• Mastering the Theremin (1995)

Episode 65: Pokémon (1997-)

Today we’re reviewing two episodes of Pokémon, a dystopian anime series in which children enslave innocent creatures and force them to fight for their entertainment. In Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon, the protagonists stumble upon a paleontological dig where they awaken giant monsters that battle in a climactic showdown. In The Ancient Puzzle of Pokémopolis, the gang stumbles upon an archaeological dig where... they awaken giant monsters that battle in a climactic showdown. Having never seen another episode, we have to assume they all end this way.

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

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Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• Watch Pokémon S01E43 Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon

• Watch Pokémon S02E18 The Ancient Puzzle of Pokémopolis

• The Bone Wars

• The Gilded Dinosaur by Mark Jaffe

• Rocket Robin Hood

• Phylogeny and evolutionary history of the Pokémon

• Satoshi Tajiri, creator of Pokémon

• Alba: A Wildlife Adventure

• Marshallese cowrie shell breadfruit peeler

• Aerodactylus, actually a real pterosaur

• Brian David Gilbert’s Pokérap

Episode 64: The Lost City (2022)

Today we’re reviewing The Lost City (2022), the story of an archaeologist-turned-romance author who gets swept up in an archaeological adventure which parallels the outlandish plots of her novels. This movie features a star-studded cast, including Sandra Bullock, Brad Pitt, Daniel Radcliffe, and Channing Tatum’s butt. But how accurate is the archaeology in this movie? Let’s find out!

Listen to Firebreathing Kittens wherever you get your podcasts!

https://firebreathingkitte.wixsite.com/website

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• El Dorado

• Heinrich Schliemann found, and nearly destroyed, the city of Troy

• The UNESCO 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property

• The Lovers of Valdaro

• The Lovers of Modena

• The “leaky pipeline” in archaeology

• Check out Ross’s book! The Missing Lynx

Episode 63: Black Mountain Side (2014)

We’re continuing our Halloween-themed month with Black Mountain Side (2014), a very Canadian indie horror film in which a team of archaeologists in a remote northern outpost are driven to madness by a Lovecraftian deer-god. We’re starting to get the impression that you can’t write archaeological horror without parasites crawling under skin and impromptu amputations. But at least this one has actual archaeology in it!

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

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Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• Clovis points

• The ice-free corridor

• “Clovis First” debunked

• Meadowcroft Rockshelter

• Monte Verde

• White Sands footprints, dated to 23,000 BP

• Capuchin Monkeys made stone tools in Brazil

• The Cerutti Mastodon Site

• SSHRC – The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

• CRM vs. Academia (Kinkella Teaches Archaeology)

Episode 62: The Ruins (2008)

We’re continuing spooky month with The Ruins (2008), which we reasonably assumed was about archaeology. Turns out the actual Maya ruins on which the movie takes place are really incidental to the plot, which is centred on the least scary thing we can imagine. Here’s a list of things scarier than the monster in this movie: caterpillars; the X-Men franchise; poison ivy; AI-written books. Anyway, enjoy the episode.

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

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Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• Maya architecture

• “Nesting doll” structure of Maya pyramids

• Maya cities discovered with lidar

• Septicemia is blood infection, not bone infection

• “Is there a doctor?” meme

• Beware the Higad caterpillar!

• The Russian sleep Experiment: Creepypasta

• AI is writing books about foraging

• Water Hemlock – the deadliest plant in North America

• Edibility test for wild plants

• Safe plants for survival situations

• Nettle beer recipe

• XKCD on Brassica

Episode 61: Sabretooth (2002)

It’s October, which means it’s time for scary movies! We’re starting with one that is not scary: Sabretooth (2002) is a made-for-TV Sci-Fi channel movie about an evil geneticist and a greedy capitalist who resurrect a Smilodon, which escapes and starts eating teenagers in the woods. This movie has bad CGI, a C- genetics lab, and John Rhys-Davies, who must have taken time off from Lord of the Rings to be in it.

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• Watch Sabretooth on YouTube

• Bear Safety

• How to identify cat tracks

• Josh concedes – there are puppets in the closeups

• Ross’ first paper – Barnett et al. 2005. Evolution of the extinct Sabretooths and the American cheetah-like cat. Current Biology, 15(15), R589-R590

• American vs. British spelling

• Bats – unfairly maligned?

Brief Update: YouTube Video Game Reviews

Recently Josh invited Kim and Ross on a wildlife hike in Skyrim. You can listen to that conversation on YouTube.

If you want to see more stone age video game reviews, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, and let us know which archaeology- and palaeontology-related video games you'd like us to review!

Episode 60: Attila (2001) with the Greeced Lightning Podcast

Today we’re reviewing Attila (2001), a two-part TV miniseries about the infamous king of the Huns, who was a different person from Genghis Khan. We know so little about this period that we needed to invite some guests to help us out: Sara Hales-Brittain and Sam Siegel from the Greeced Lightning podcast join us to talk about trebuchets, armour styles, and how Gerard Butler’s abs defeated the Roman Empire.

Listen to Greeced Lightning

Greeced Lightning on Facebook

Greeced Lightning on Instagram

Email Greeced Lightning

Sara’s Sources:

A translation of Priscus's account of his diplomatic visit to Attila's court

A translation of Jordanes's description of Attila

A great overview of Roman history, including late antiquity and the "fall" of Rome

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• Watch Hollywood Action Movies 2016 English - Adventure Movies 2016 Hollywood - New War Movies 2016 for free on YouTube

• Catapults vs. trebuchets

• Evolution of Roman Armour

• Attila and Lord of the Rings

• Gerard Butler’s abs destroyed the Roman Empire (Reddit film review)

• Viminacium Archaeological Park, Serbia

Episode 59: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) with the New Brunswick Archaeology Podcast

A new Indiana Jones movie came out this summer, so we’re reviewing an old one! Gabe Hrynick and Ken Holyoke of the New Brunswick Archaeology Podcast join us to talk about The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), widely regarded as probably the worst Indiana Jones movie. Is it really that bad? We break down the fridge, the monkeys, and the “magnetism”, and dip our toes into archaeological theory in this episode!

Listen to the New Brunswick Archaeology Podcast:

https://rss.com/podcasts/nbarchaeology/

https://www.instagram.com/new_brunswick_archaeology/

newbrunswickarchaeology@gmail.com

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

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Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• A Belizean Archaeologist sued Lucasfilm over the depiction of the crystal skull

• The real story behind the crystal skulls

• Acquisition history of the Mitchell-Hedges Skull

• Artificial Cranial Deformation

• They’re “interdimensional beings”, not “extraterrestrials”

• Spanish Conquistadors and Peruvian Mummies

• Indiana Jones and Colonialism

• For the Nuer, twins are birds

• The Culture-Historical approach in Archaeology

• Processual Archaeology (The “New” Archaeology)

• Kevin McGeough (2006). Heroes, mummies, and treasure: Near Eastern archaeology in the movies. Near Eastern Archaeology, 69(3-4), 174-185. (pdf)

• The North American House Hippo

• Canada Heritage Minutes

• Drugs Drugs Drugs!

• Don’t put it in your mouth

Episode 58: Ironmaster (1983)

Today we’re getting back to our roots with a true caveman movie: Ironmaster (1983) tells the story of a tribe of stone age bodybuilders and shampoo models who discover ironworking in a volcano and go on a rampage massacring their neighbours with swords, and the only one who can stop them is an oily-chested steroid enthusiast.

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• Who is Sam Pasco and why is nobody talking about him?

• Seriously, check out this movie poster (nsfw)

• Custer State Park, South Dakota

• King Tut’s meteorite dagger

• The Cape York meteorite

• Telluric (Native) iron

• Potential hominin affinities of Graecopithecus from the Late Miocene of Europe

• Pallasite meteorites look otherworldly

• Syphilis and leprosy (Hansen’s disease) in archaeology

• History of the bow and arrow

• How to shoot a bow and arrow

• Thanks to Duncan for confirmation of UofA’s Egyptian Mummy!

• X-Rays and CT scans of the University of Alberta’s Egyptian Mummy

Episode 57: The Mummy (1999) with Jay Jay and Patty

Ross is away today but we’re joined by Jay Jay and Patty from the University of the Philippines to discuss The Mummy (1999), a remake of the classic Universal monster movie which has become a classic in its own right. Regular listeners know how much we love Brendan Fraser and also that we don’t know anything about Ancient Egypt, so Patty and Jay Jay help us navigate the history of papyrus, pigments, and petitions to drink coffin juice.

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

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Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• University of the Philippines Diliman School of Archaeology

• Jay Jay’s ResearchGate profile

• Seti I, second Pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty

• Corridor Crew reacts to The Mummy

• Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt

• What King Tut’s tomb really cursed?

• The history of library catalogues

• The history of the Hebrew language

• The petition to drink the red mummy juice

• Papyrus, parchment, and paper

• Dwellers on the Nile by E.A. Wallis Budge

• Universal’s abandoned “Dark Universe”

Episode 56: Timeline (2003)

Today we’re reviewing Timeline (2003), based on a Michael Crichton novel of the same name, in which archaeology and physics team up for wacky time travel shenanigans. Unfortunately we don’t know much about medieval France, but we do love our time travel movies. Except this one. This one is a stinker.

(Sorry for the audio clipping in this episode, but thank god for backup recordings!)

Get in touch with us!

Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast

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Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

• Timeline by Michael Crichton

• Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals (or did he?)

• The short story about guy that goes back in time and squashes a butterfly is A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury

• The Occitan Language

• Carbon Dating math:

• Qin Shi Huang’s Terracotta Army

• Provenience in archaeology

• DNA transcription errors

• Monkey Dust - The Crusades