6. Spears, Archaeologists and Road Trips – Week 1

The Grand Tour Préhistorique is now fully underway, and it could not have started any better. I have made contact with no fewer than two museums, and moreover I was able to film at an active Paleolithic excavation and at a gathering of experts in the field of flint knapping. But above all, I have caught the travel bug.

On September 6, the morning after my goodbye party, I set off with a fully loaded car toward the first stop: the German village of Schöningen, half a kilometer from the former Iron Curtain. In the 1990s, a sharp-eyed archaeologist noticed some bones sticking out of the wall of an open browncoal mine here. This turned out to be a spectacular discovery: scientists found not only the remains of dozens of hunted animals but also a collection of wooden spears no less than 300,000 years old. A beautiful modern museum has been built around it, and excavations are still ongoing today.

On September 6, the morning after my farewell party, I set off with a fully loaded car toward the first stop: the German village of Schöningen, half a kilometer from the former Iron Curtain. In the 1990s, a sharp-eyed archaeologist noticed some bones sticking out of the wall of an open lignite mine here. This turned out to be a spectacular discovery: not only the remains of dozens of hunted animals but also a collection of wooden spears no less than 300,000 years old. A beautiful modern museum has been built around it, and excavations are still ongoing today.

I had already contacted the Paläon Experience Centre there back in July, but after several weeks no reply had come. The archaeological season has a busy summer of digging and then a busy winter of processing all the data, so my email had likely gone unnoticed. But after I sent a reminder the week before my departure, a quick and enthusiastic response followed. The leader of the excavation told me over the phone that a visit was possible, though some details still had to be coordinated with the museum's management before I could do any filming. But it would probably be fine—and maybe he could even open the museum for me on Monday, when it is normally closed. When I then explained that I would be staying in a tent, the man was surprised and offered me a bed in his own house.

I was also incredibly lucky with the timing: on the afternoon of my arrival, a genuine Stone Age event was about to begin, one that only takes place once a year. In the garden of a local legend in experimental archaeology (i.e. recreating ancient working processes), a group of mostly men gathered to work flint. They also made fire with sticks and practiced with the bow and arrow and with atlatls. I fell right into the middle of this playground—I didn't know anyone yet, but fortunately the people were open to being filmed. It turned out that the best flint knappers in Europe were present, as well as several leading archaeologists.

They explained how making a stone tool requires strategy, almost like playing chess. Shaping something from a formless stone involves logical problems: the flint knapper has to anticipate how the force and direction of his hammer, the material of his hammer and the flaws in the stone will cause certain flakes to break off. Step by step, the desired shape (hopefully) emerges. Such descriptions undoubtedly shed light on the intelligence of our early ancestors. I asked what they found so appealing about flint knapping, and the answer was that you can completely lose yourself in it, forget about time, and at the same time connect with a production process that has been ingrained in our behavior for millions of years. It is instinctive to strike a sharp edge from stone—and how satisfying this can be I experienced myself, when after filming I was given a real lesson in it.

After dinner that evening I had the chance to show my film. As usual, I set up my little mobile cinema, but of course it was a bit more nerve-wracking than normal. After all, I was standing before a dozen experts—what kind of criticism (or praise) might come? I can handle criticism of my film well, and the point of the project is precisely to spark scientific discussions, which naturally include critical remarks. After the screening there was applause, but then a silence fell. Just long enough to become awkward. I tried to push the sound of the crickets—which were actually chirping in that garden—into the background with some small talk. Fortunately, the engaged questions soon came, as did the praise, and I got the impression that at first the people simply wanted to be cautious with their criticism.

Questions arose about why I had shown only two people in the film, why there were no women in it, and whether the film was not too idyllic. These led to wonderful interactions, and those present said they found it an interesting project.

My answers were simple. There were only two people in the film because there was no budget for more. I had to tell a story with the limited means I had (€7000 and a lot of goodwill), and more actors simply weren't feasible. The absence of women had a similar reason: it seemed too complex for my production capacities to include a female character. Moreover, if I were to add one, the meaning of the film would shift considerably. The role of women in prehistory is a subject of much debate, and however I chose to portray it, my film would be making a statement within that debate. It is not that I want to assign women the same roles that archaeologists once did (i.e. taking care of the children while the men hunt). In fact, for my next film I am even considering a strong female lead. It is more that I wanted to avoid presenting a female character only halfway, or that the message of the film (which is about art) would be overshadowed by the presence of a female figure (which would then become a statement about gender roles). If I am going to include a woman in a prehistoric film, I want to do it with enough budget and preparation, and those resources I did not have with The Bison's Legs.

As for the idyllic aspect of my film: yes, that was intentional. I stand by this choice, first of all because I have sometimes experienced moments in my own life that could rightly be called idyllic. I believe everyone has such moments at times, and it is not unreasonable to suggest that such moments also existed in prehistory. The film therefore perhaps does evoke the impression that 19th-century artists had of the Stone Age: a carefree golden Eden where people lived without corruption. Therefore I wanted to counterbalance the idyllic picture; it should not be only beautiful. The main character has a bad dream in the opening scene, in which a bison dies. I originally came up with this idea when the forest rangers of the Maashorst showed me the skeleton of a bison that had formed about two years before my visit there. At a second visit, however, we had a stroke of luck: just two weeks earlier, an old, sick bison had been shot to put her out of her misery. The carcass was in an advanced state of decay, crawling with thousands of maggots, and we were able to incorporate this image into the film. Not exactly idyllic.

Nevertheless, the atmosphere of The Legs of the Bison ended up largely idyllic. This was meant as a contrast to the widespread idea that life in prehistory was "nasty, brutish and short." That notion is common in depictions of the Stone Age. I did a small study of all the prehistoric films ever made. There aren't many, only about twenty-five since the beginning of cinema (I've put the full list at the bottom of this article if you're curious). After watching these films, I came to the conclusion that without exception they take violence as their theme. The struggle of man against nature, or of man against man. But was life in the Stone Age really so terrible? We sometimes find evidence of violence in prehistoric skeletons, but so few have survived that we can never make statistical claims about it. And it is easy to argue that people actually tried to avoid violence as much as possible, since everyone knew that any injury could lead to death or lifelong disability. In the end, we will never know how much violence there was on average, but that is not a problem a filmmaker has to solve. Whether my film is accurate in a strict sense depends more on whether the concrete, specific events in the story are plausible. My film takes place over the course of a single day in the life of two people. Is it plausible that two people in the Late Paleolithic lived through one day without violence? I think so. It may seem idyllic, but that is only because our usual picture is so negative. A day with or without violence: both are equally valid options for telling a story, as far as the scientific basis is concerned. Which side of life is emphasized is then the choice of the storyteller.

Returning to my journey: in the days that followed I hardly sat still. On Sunday I visited, together with a very kind Dutch archaeologist, a high-quality flea market in nearby Braunschweig, after which I drove two hours to pick up a Canadian friend. She was a travelling artist who wanted to help me film that week. On Monday we joined a group of PhD students for a tour of the excavation beside the museum. Centimeter by centimeter, the remains of a once-thriving and chaotic ecosystem were being recorded in purely rational terms, and the sharp edges of the excavation pits testified to the exacting scientific approach of the archaeologists.

The leader of the excavation was a remarkable man—an Italian with Catalan roots now working in Germany—and full of surprises. For instance, we did not know there would be a tour of the excavation when we drove to the museum, nor that we would then be allowed to join a private tour of the museum itself. 

On Tuesday we were allowed to film the spears of Schöningen. A truly fascinating discovery. A group of Neanderthals (or perhaps Homo heidelbergensis, but let's leave that in the middle) came here regularly some 300,000 years ago (or maybe 200,000, but let's leave that in the middle) to hunt by the lakeside. At one or more points in time, they left behind throwing spears, a lance, and a few boomerang-like throwing sticks. Just in time, a layer of loess soil blew over the site, and thus these objects remained preserved in perfect condition for all these millennia. Wooden objects! You often hear that the Stone Age should really be called the Wood Age, since most tools were made of wood. But stone is simply preserved more easily. Wood rots, erodes, gets crushed by glaciers, or burns. And so we rarely recover the weapons, masks, musical instruments, dwellings, backscratchers, and ritual staffs that must have existed. But in Schöningen they are there: a few pieces of wood preserved in a German brown coal seam. They pierce through the glass of their display case into our consciousness, reminding us that our knowledge will always be more limited than we like to think.

By then we had moved into the home of the local old doctor, where the Dutch archaeologist had already been renting the upstairs floor for eight years. In his apartment, crammed with antiques, we spent several long evenings dining together and drinking cheap sparkling wine. The place sat at the top of a nineteenth-century house, complete with a beautiful botanical garden. We could sleep in the cellar, which usually served as the card-playing room. Herr Doktor was eager to show us the unusual plants in his garden, which my Canadian companion diligently sketched, and he offered us the wonderfully sweet Japanese apples that were perfectly ripened at that very moment. We took a day here to relax before heading off to the next prehistoric adventure: a visit to the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte in Halle, near Leipzig.

The Landesmuseum held extraordinary finds, but since it was a national museum, bureaucracy made it more difficult to get permission to film. In the end this wasn't possible, but an expert from the Paleolithic department gave us a fascinating guided tour that once again inspired me. Subtle Venus figurines, hundreds of thousands of years of flint-tool development, and reconstructions of Neanderthals looking back at you with striking soul-filled eyes. The exhibition designers in Halle felt that a museum visit should be an experience, and we had interesting conversations about the different challenges of doing science, making exhibitions and making films. Our guide was very enthusiastic to help with the project and agreed to read the script for the next film.

By Friday it was already time to say farewell to Schöningen. I gave the excavation leader and the old doctor a bottle of home-brewed beer, while I gifted the Dutch archaeologist I a piece of fossilized, polished wood that my grandfather had given me to pass along. As lovely as this place had been, I had a schedule, and there was still so much to see. Sadly, my Canadian friend had to fly back to her home country, but another friend arrived in Prague on Saturday to travel with me for a week. New adventures began there, but those are stories for another time.

September 2025

P.S. Below is a list of all the prehistoric films I have been able to find so far. The rule is that they must actually take place in prehistory. Films about time travelers or frozen cavemen waking up in the present (e.g. Encino Man (1992)) don't count. The films on this list don't need to be scientifically accurate—otherwise there would hardly be any left. I believe I've got them all, but if you know any more, please send me an email (see Contact page). Do keep in mind that these are mostly terrible B-movies, and they are certainly not all worth watching—unless, like me, you are a completionist when it comes to prehistoric films.

1. Man's Genesis (1912)
2. His Prehistoric Past (1914)
3. The Primitive Man (1914)
4. Flying Elephants (1928)
5. One Million B.C. (1940)
6. Fire Monsters Against The Son Of Hercules (1962)
7. One Million Years B.C. (1966)
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
9. When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)
10. Creatures the World Forgot (1971)
11. Le Chaînon Manquant (1980)
12. Quest For Fire (1980)
13. Caveman (1981)
14. Il Padrone del Mondo (1983)
15. The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986)
16. Missing Link (1988)
17. The Flintstones (1994)
18. Ice Age (2002)
19. RRRrrrr! (2004)
20. Homo Erectus (2007)
21. 10,000 B.C. (2008)
22. Ao The Last Neanderthal (2010)
23. The Croods (2013)
24. Iceman (2017)
25. Alpha (2018)
26. Out of Darkness (2022)

There are also borderline cases—films that only partly take place in prehistory. For example Three Ages (1921), History of the World: Part I (1981), Year One (2009), and Early Man (2018). And 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is actually a borderline case as well, since only the opening sequence is set in prehistory, but that film is such a classic that it deserves a place on the list. In the end, drawing strict categories isn't very easy, and moreover, not necessary. If we broaden the concept of "prehistoric films" to "hunter-gatherer films," a number of very interesting works about and by Indigenous groups come into view. A few notable examples are Pathfinder (1987) and The Fast Runner (2000).