Caves of Mystery - a review of documentaries

On pbs passport right now, there is a series called First Peoples. It has 6 episodes. It is not only utterly fascinating but also strikingly beautiful in the landscape filmed in it. The episodes cover the departure and arrival of waves of early humans from the cradle of humanity in Africa to - 1:The Americas, 2:Africa, 3:Asia, 4:Europe, and 5:Astralia. Naturally humans didn't arrive in those places chronologically, but it is the way they decided to open the series. Humans evolved in Africa over milions of years in many branches of hominids from primates. I can't remember many of the kinds of hominids, but some of them were Homo habilis, homo erectus, homo ergaster. The evolution is NOT a straight line but more like a shrub with many branches some of which existed at the same time as others.

This is such an evolving history, that even up to 2 years ago, new species and new information has been discovered. Some of the most recent discoveries have been Denisovans in the Balkans and Homo Naledi in Africa.

My introduction to this history was through the world of Art which begins with the art in famous caves like Lascaux and Chauvet in France, and Altamira in Spain among others. Anyone who loves art must be entranced by the cave art at Lascaux and Chauvet in particular. The animals depicted on the walls, both painted on with charcoal and ochre, as well as incised into the walls, are so alive they fairly gallop off the walls! They are truly splendid works of art. And they are the first works of art done by the newest and most successful branch of humanity, Homo Sapiens - US.

If you have the patience for it there is a fabulous book by Yuval Noah Harrari which was improbably enough, a NYT bestseller, called Sapiens. If not, watch these documentaries and you will be captured by this mysterious and evolving discovery of our human origins.

A good place to begin is the pbs series First Peoples. Passport costs a one-time fee of $60 which is a great bargain because you can watch EVERYTHING PBS - Masterpiece Theater, NOVA, Finding your Roots, every pbs program there has been PLUS Walter Presents, which is a European distributor that offers all the most popular tv series showing in Europe.

If you have Netflix, you can also watch Unknown Cave of Bones. It is a great voyage of discovery that the viewer can make with the archaeologists down a cave network where early hominids, not quite apes, not quite humans, carried their dead and buried them. This is a shattering discovery because until this cave was discovered in the 21st century, it was thought that burying the dead and making and using tools was what separated us from early branches of hominids. But these small brained hominids not only carried their dead through a maze of tunnels to a burial chamber where they dug the graves and arranged the bodies, but they also buried one with a stone tool! It wasn't ever thought that hominids this primitive made tools. To go along on this journey with the archaeoogists, anthropologists, and the many kinds of experts working in radiology and scanning technologies as well as forensic reconstruction, tune into this great documentary. I felt the reverberation of their excitement at each discovery.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams, is a beautiful documentary by a long time favorite German filmaker of mine, Werner Herzog. He has the balance of being just a bit eccentric and different without losing the plot, so his films are just that little bit out of the ordinary but not so much off track that you get lost. In this film, his own personal engagement is palpable. It is like exploring with a lively friend. The filming on all of these documentaries is gorgeous but most so in this one. Also, the caves filmed by Herzog are no longer open to the public due to damage by outdoor air and breathing which brought mold and erosion to the ancient wall art, so this is your chance to see spectacular cave art that you can't see any other way.

Each of these documentaries is so engaging that I have watched them more than once. Some I have seen three or more times like Cave of Forgotten Dreams. And if you are captivated, you may want to rent a most gorgeous film which I saw three times in the theatre and half a dozen times on tv called Quest for Fire! It is beautiful in the landscape and totally immerses you in a past that is gone forever. I believe the film was loosely based on the novels of French author Jean Auel. The books were surprising best sellers at the time they were released in 1980. I read them all, but if I remember correctly the first was Clan of the Cave Bear. I gave them all away years ago.

I am always engaged in trying to pare down my enormous collection of books. Every room in my small house has a floor to ceiling wall to wall book case and living here is like living in a cosy little dusty book shop. Well I hope you are tempted to watch one or all of these documentaries and if you do and want to talk about them contact me at

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happy Trails - even back into the millions of years ago! Jo Ann

ps. If you want to visit a museum into our South Jersey pre-historical past, go to Greenwich Prehistory Musseum and see the immense collection of stone projectiles and the clay pots reconstructed from those left behind by Indigenous people. This little museum is in a town worth your visit on its own merits. Most of Ye Greate Street houses are from the 1700's.