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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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...

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...

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.

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).

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.

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...

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!

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!

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.

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 of from Lord of the Rings to be in it.

Recently Josh invited Kim and Ross on a wildlife hike in Skyrim. You can listen to that conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/EfGDRrcb274 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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a classic film by Stanley Kubrick set in the distant future of 2001, when humankind finally evolves into spacefaring starbabies with no help from the AI they designed to help them. But the first act is set at the dawn of humanity, which means we get to review it on our prehistoric podcast!