This week we take a look at our extremely distant, pre-historic ancestors, in Quest for Fire – a 1981 movie based on a Belgian novel from 1911. In the opening text, we learn that this story is set 80,000 years ago (or 80,036, I guess now). We’re told that early humans had no knowledge of how to create fire and they to find it in nature or steal from other tribes and guard it from the elements. After that, the movie could have just as easily been a silent film–not only did they not try to put English in the mouths of our characters (thankfully), but there are no subtitles translating the grunts and primitive languages the various tribes use. Now don’t let that dissuade you from watching, however, it’s still very compelling and easy to follow.
Worth noting before getting into the plot is that this is a time period with multiple human-related species living on Earth. I had to refer to wikipedia to see how each was classified. Our protagonist tribe is a primitive form of homo sapiens with the more prominent brow and protruded upper lip we tend to associate with cavemen. It’s worth noting that there are two classified subspecies of homo sapiens – we actually homo sapiens sapiens. The other, homo sapiens idaltu, is now extinct. They were in Africa around 160,000 years ago which doesn’t fit with our timeline for Quest for Fire – or location, which wikipedia says is Europe. Africa is the widely-accepted origin of humans with migration occurring first to Europe and southern Asia then throughout the rest of Asia and into the Americas.
It’s more likely that our protagonists are meant to represent the Cro-Magnons, who were homo sapiens sapiens just with larger brains actually (at least the space for a larger brain). So, their appearance in the movie is likely exaggerated.
I thought it was funny when my research led me to the wikipedia page for “human.” I know there’s a wikipedia page on basically everything, but it was fascinating because it’s written without acknowledging that the author of the article is human; not that it’s denying it or trying to be cute; it’s just a very manner-of-fact article, treating humans as the members of the animal kingdom that we are. Allow me to quote the first paragraph, “They are characterized by erect postureand bipedal locomotion; high manual dexterityand heavy tool use compared to other animals; and a general trend toward larger, more complex brainsand societies.”
At the opening of the movie see our tribe sleeping in a cave, huddled on top of each other to stay warm near a fire. A lone sentry sits by another fire at the mouth of the cave keeping the wolves away. Everyone wears loose animal skins over their otherwise naked bodies.
It’s easy for us to forget just what a big deal fire is as we’ve replaced it in a million other ways. But a fire to keep warm at night allows you to live in others where you would otherwise freeze to death; a fire can be used to scare away predators that would otherwise attack; and that same fire can be used to cook food. And that last one could very well be the MOST important. In his 2009 book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Wrangham argues cooking our food is what allowed us to evolve from ape to human in a relatively short amount of time as cooked food allows for far more of the calories to be absorbed by the body. More calories means less time finding food which means more time to make shelter, clothes, and weapons. And more calories for developing more sophisticated brains. So while it’s often discussed that agriculture made civilization possible; control of fire may have made humans possible.
If you’re worried about spoilers for a 36-year-old movie about cavemen you might check back later, otherwise I’m going to get right into it. So the plot sets in motion when our tribe is attacked by a less-evolved tribe – completely covered in hair with no clothes–think smaller gorillas (or people in gorilla costumes, frankly). Again, wikipedia claims these to be homo erectus. And I suppose before we get too bogged down in all this classification I should note that there are ten subspecies of homo erectus alone, not to mention homo ergaster, homo habilis, or the other dozen species under the genus homo. Let’s just give the film a pass here and say there was a time when homo sapiens lived with other related species who were far more advanced than modern apes, some of whom used tools, fire, and created art, but all of whom are now extinct. Some of them were direct ancestors, some were distant cousins with common ancestors, and, like most things, there is some overlap, with interbreeding between different species. My dad proudly notes the neanderthal DNA that 23-and-me revealed he carries.
In the attack and the subsequent escape, the small fire our tribe keeps in a little leather and bone lantern is extinguished. A trio of men is sent a quest to find fire to bring back to the tribe as their survival likely depends on it. Along the way a more modern looking human female starts tagging along after the trio frees her from a band of neanderthal cannibals. She mates up with one of our three fire-seekers (literally–in front of the other two; there’s a fine line between human and animals here… or no line at all). She finally bails to return to her tribe, but our boy misses her and follows. He’s mocked but ultimately accepted by her tribe and they show him how to MAKE fire. It’s an incredibly powerful moment. You can see in his eyes that it had literally never occurred to him that this might be possible. He’s on the verge of tears.
Later his two buddies show up and rescue him and his girlfriend – not that they were exactly captive – and they return to their original tribe with fire… that is immediately accidentally extinguished during the celebration.
BUT, our man character has seen fire made by man and tries to prove it to the tribe, but he lacks the skill to pull it off. Enter his new female companion who succeeds to the awe of the tribe. And, in a beautiful call back to the beginning of the movie, we end with the exact same aerial shot of a cave with a fire in front, only this time, man can create it himself.
Quest for Fire does have an 83% critics’ score on rottentomatoes. You can rent it on Amazon and YouTube. It won the Oscar for best makeup and earned a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign film… I guess it’s a Canadian and French film. Oh, and one of our three fire-seekers was Ron Pearlman, yes Hellboy himself was on the Quest for Fire. It’s also worth noting that Anthony Burgess, the author of A Clockwork Orange–with all its invented, Russian-inspired slang–helped create the primitive languages they use in the film. Definitely an engaging movie and I do recommend it.
[There doesn’t seem to be a lot of other good movies dealing with pre-historic humans. 10,000 B.C. and Clan of the Cave Bear have laughably low scores on rottentomatoes. One Million Years BC has almost acceptable reviews, and could be worthwhile to see Raquel Welch in the costume that graced Andy Dufresne’s cell in The Shawshank Redemption. Though I can say with some certainty that no one looking like Raquel Welch was walking around one million years ago.
A few other elements of the film I wanted to address. Our heroes encounter sabertooth cats and wooly mammoths along the way. The film makers did a great job with the cats. Looks like they put some stripes and prosthetic fangs on lions and shaved the mane of the male. They looked way better than CGI. The mammoths were similarly costumed elephants but they didn’t work near as well and looked kinda silly. I was going to say sabertooth tigers as that’s what I always heard of growing up. Sabertooth tigers were only in the Americas, but other sabertooth cats lived all around the world. And the timeline would work out with these types of cats having another 70,000 years on Earth before dying out. Likewise with mammoths-different varieties were all over and were used by humans for their hides, bones, and meat. Mammoths were often depicted in ice-age era artwork.
I mentioned our trio encountered Neanderthal cannibals. This is very likely possible as well. Cannibalize was not only sometimes necessary when no other food was present, but may have been a ritualized way to dispose of the dead to prevent predators from hovering around to get at the bodies.
As we prepare to jump thousands of years ahead to early civilizations, I’d have to say that the biggest game-changer, now that we’d mastered fire, was agriculture. 10-15 thousand years ago humans began cultivating crops and domesticating animals. Surpluses in food meant more and more of the population could spend time doing something other than helping the tribe acquire food. You could have tailors, blacksmiths, bakers, etc. Writing emerged as a way of keeping records and history was born.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “Cradle of civilization” and while it’s not like all of human civilization sprung forth from one single, initial community, it does appear that it happened first in the Fertile Crescent – a half-moon shaped region extending from Mesopotamia in the east and the Nile River Valley in the west.
And that’s where we’re headed next week – to ancient Egypt where we’ll have a lot to unpack with the story of Moses in 1998’s The Prince of Egypt.