I recently got a copy of the History Channel’s Journey to 10,000 BC: The Real Story of Prehistoric Man’s Fight for Survival in the mail, with a request that I review it here. So, I sat down the other night with my girlfriend in order to see what this special was all about.

Before jumping into the review, I want to offer a pair of caveats. First, this show deals only with Paleo-Indians in a period around 10,000 BCE, which is certainly outside of my realm of expertise. I am by training and by interest a Syria-Palestine archaeologist, not a Paleolithic or Ancient Americas expert. Second, the special was originally produced and aired to coincide with the release of the movie 10,000 BC. While I have yet to see this movie, I have certainly not heard anything positive about it, from an archaeological perspective.

When this show was originally on, I was quite excited, because I was taking a Neolithic of the Near East class at the time, and it seemed like a good thing to watch. Unfortunately, at that time, I was unable to see it. I was thus very excited to be offered the chance to review a copy. However there is nothing at all about the beginnings of the Neolithic in the Near East, or the countless important developments that began to take shape around 10,000 BCE. It seemed to me, that this would have been an important point of some note.

Instead of a broad worldwide study, this special presents a rather narrative based discussion of Paleo-Indian life in North America. To a large degree, this narrative focuses the interactions with the mega-fauna and early Americans. While there is some small note of technology, mostly flint knapping, it doesn’t necessarily offer much knowledge of important things, such as cooking techniques, motility, domestication (dogs), fishing, or other technological skills.  A stunning example of this is the complete lack of mention of any interaction with the sea and other waterways, either in terms of fishing, collecting, or through boats.

The overall narrative at times drifts into what are perhaps overly long discussions of Stanford’s theory that Clovis technology and culture came from Soluteran people in Europe.   Certainly there might be something to this theory, but at present there is no hard evidence, either physically or genetically, to support the ability or reality of a European origin.  This theory colors a broad portion of the story shown in the special.  It eventually breaks into the possible interactions between the Soluteran populations in the east, which includes light haired, blue eyed, bearded individuals, and a western group who came over the Alaskan land bridge, which consists of notably more Native-looking individuals.

Some time is also given to a possible explanation for the disappearance of this Soluteran population in the form of an asteroid.  This is a second theory which is currently highly debated and little accepted.  Supposedly, this collision sparked the Younger Dryas and lead to the death of this population, which would also explain why it is genetically not represented in modern Native American populations.

Overall, the story and interesting and offers a broad, perhaps too broad, explanation of the history of Paleo-Indian distribution throughout North America.  At times it focuses too much on the new and offers too little of the old, as far as theories go.  It would be nice if the animations were a bit more finished, and there was less repetition of the actors in Paleo-Indian outfits.

I can’t say that it is the best possible treatment of the subject, but it was still entertaining and offers some good information.  If you want a chance to see for yourself, try and get a free copy here.

Last night I caught some of the new History Channel show, “Journey to 10,000 BC.” I really didn’t know about in advance to tell y’all. Had I known before hand I woulda surely made an announcement. But no worries, if there’s anything I know about channels like Discovery and History, is that they replay these sorts of episodes so much. Actually, if you’re interested in catching it, it will show again on Saturday, March 15 at 8 p.m.

Anyways about the show, I’m thinking History Channel put this out to coincide with the movie 10,000 B.C., which not surprisingly isn’t that accurate of a movie. Not like I expected it to be remotely realistic, but still I kinda hoped that it would be somewhat informative because it is about as much education most people will get about prehistory in their entire life. Anyways, “Journey to 10,000 BC” wasn’t much better. It had horrible cut scenes and exclusively focused on life in North America about 13,000 years ago. A lot of other very important things were happening elsewhere, such as the emergence of Neolithic revolution, i.e. the Natufian culture that shoulda been also included.

Even though I subscribe to the Siberian origin of native Americans, I did appreciate how Dennis Stanford made a cameo and explained his hypothesis that the Clovis archaeology could have originated from sea-faring Soluteran people from Europe. For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, some of the first archaeological evidence in the Americas are associated with a type of stone tools found in Clovis, New Mexico. The Clovis typology is significantly different from Siberian archaeology, see Siberian tools around that time were largely modified ivory points with a blade inset. Clovis tools were much different. Clovis tools are highly refined thin, fluted projectile points created using bifacial percussion flaking.

Dennis Stanford publicized his hypothesis in 2004, along with colleague Bruce Bradely, in this paper, “The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the New World.” Like I indicated earlier, Stanford suggests that 13,000 years ago or so Europeans made boats and crossed the Atlantic to the Americas. With lower sea levels then, this was more feasible than nowadays… and by then people were crossing large bodies of water all over the world, i.e. Polynesia and the Pacific. The problem with Stanford’s hypothesis is that there’s no evidence of boats in the America’s from that time period, nor is there a genetic European signature in Native American populations. Stanford says that the reason why boats haven’t been found is that sea levels have risen since then and obliterated any trace of boats… convenient. Anyways, his idea is a bit out there, and not substantiated much. It is really possible that the reason why Clovis typology is unique is that arose in the Americas independently.

I also appreciated the discussion the show gave to climate change and glaciation events in North America. This sorta information isn’t readily inserted into shows like these, and help viewers visualize large scale environmental changes. But, I really couldn’t get over the cheesy cut scenes where a prehistoric woman with remarkable Vogue-like complexion was taken down by a smilodon, and early people crossing massive waves in unconvincing boats canoes. So it is totally up to you to watch, I neither recommend it nor thoroughly think it is a waste of time. If you don’t know much about the peopling of the Americas, this show maybe a great introduction to some lines of evidence.

Bradley, B., Stanford, D. (2004). The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the New World. World Archaeology, 36(4), 459-478. DOI: 10.1080/0043824042000303656