10,000 bc

PointBlank

Well-Known Member
Another bunch of muppets chucked in an environment they will never understand. Why do they never pick at least 50% practical people I will never know! (Actually I do, viewing figures)

Channel 5 for those that don't know
 
Another bunch of muppets chucked in an environment they will never understand. Why do they never pick at least 50% practical people I will never know! (Actually I do, viewing figures)

Channel 5 for those that don't know

becsuse a bunch of people getting on with it and doing well would be dull as dishwater
 
Watched the first couple of episodes of this. There do seem to be one or two people with the right attitude and a few rudimentary skills that might do well, but the rest of them seem to be layabouts who eat more than their fair share of food and do nothing. Or find things to cry about instead of getting stuck in.

But it's reality TV and if there aren't arguments and tears it's no good.

I can understand them not knowing how best to gralloch and butcher the deer at the beginning. With no prior experience to speak of, (except a poacher who no doubt didn't know how to do it properly) I guess they did okay with that. But then not to even think about the best way to use the meat and let most of it get fly blown?? Then of course there was "shitgate" where one of the numpties who does nothing except eat took a dump in the camp rather than go to the latrines in the night.

Their thoughts on trying to catch some bigger game (there appear to be deer and boar) or indeed any game also seem to need a bit of work if they want to eat anything more than berries and acorns.
 
Ten years ago we a somewhat similar concept of a show here called "surviving Nugent". The recruited city folk to come out and do a week long reality show with a world famous Rock and Roller (Ted Nugent).

On one of the first episodes they roll up to his ranch, he greats them, they are all excited, and he shows them there camp site. Then he asks if they would like a chicken dinner. They all say yes, so he goes to the truck and brings back an axe, and a crate of live chickens. Embeds the axe in the log next to the fire and walks away.

eventually hunger gets the best of some of them and they manage to cleanly kill but horrendously dress and cook the birds.

Not all the show was that entertaining, but it was at least more interesting than most of the garbage on the TV
 
Ten years ago we a somewhat similar concept of a show here called "surviving Nugent". The recruited city folk to come out and do a week long reality show with a world famous Rock and Roller (Ted Nugent).

On one of the first episodes they roll up to his ranch, he greats them, they are all excited, and he shows them there camp site. Then he asks if they would like a chicken dinner. They all say yes, so he goes to the truck and brings back an axe, and a crate of live chickens. Embeds the axe in the log next to the fire and walks away.

eventually hunger gets the best of some of them and they manage to cleanly kill but horrendously dress and cook the birds.

Not all the show was that entertaining, but it was at least more interesting than most of the garbage on the TV

surviving Nugent wa awesome... No trace of it anywhere nowadays, would love to see it again if anyone has any copies!!
 
The wife and I watched 10,000 BC and thought it was quite a laugh! Some people just haven't got a clue and I suspect that the program makers carefully chose the participants for their lack of common sense and intelligence purely to boost the viewing figures!
Who with even the smallest amount of common sense is going to leave valuable meat lying around to get covered in blow fly eggs and attract predators?
What about the chap who claimed to have found a great spot for forraging - and then got lost while trying to lead his mates to it?
Even the wife laughed at the trap they built with the intention of catching a wild boar - My wife is not a "Hunter" by any stretch of the imagination but knew enough to realise that wild boar are tough critters and all that "trap" was going to do was to bounce off a wild boad and maybe pee it off a little!
They believed that they had found a "game trail" so they promptly proceded to walk straight down it so that any game would have scented them and did a runner in double quick time!
They have a professional archer on the "team" - Why haven't they nominated him to get straight out and try to get out after some fresh meat?
They have 4 of them in one hut who thought it was fine to sit around and do nothing except eat a load of the food while the others were trying to work to improve their situation - I suspect that in pre-historic times those 4 would have been outcast from the "settlement" in double quick time!
Programs like this show how much of a waste of space some people can be and how little idea they have about survival and make you wonder what chance the participants would have of surviving for more than a few days on their own in the real outdoor world! But then again, some of us are also dumb enough to watch this programs (Myself included) so who is the winner - The program makers!
 
I forced myself to watch up until the point where I spotted the safety shoes & one of them started crying because he missed his nan. I gave up in utter contempt following that.......the participants are obviously carefully-selected to ensure there's as much potential fro clash as possible. A utterly cringe-worthy result from an initial premise that had so much potential to be a seriously fascinating piece of experimental archaeology
 
First I've heard of it, all I can think about is Raquel Welch in those skimpy furs.
:old::love:

Yes, the tailoring is just as bad on 10,000 bc, totally implausible that our ancient ancestors could have survived a European winter, let alone an ice age in such ill fitting dysfunctional clothing.

atb Tim
 
I have a blacksmith friend who was involved with an iron age reenactment series a few years ago. You won't have seen him and his wife because they just got on with making stuff. They sometimes appeared in the background of yet another hissy fit scene between other members who were having difficulties living as a community and were alienated by not having a 9 to 5 at the local council offices and picking up their supplies from Tesco.

I think the only thing they discovered of archaeological value was that the free ranging chickens created dust baths in the doorways of the huts and archaeologists had always wondered what these little bowl shaped depressions were in alignment with the post holes when they were digging on iron age settlements...

It seems all these "reality" tv reanactments are just set up to fail. Anybody living in 10,000bc would obviously have been born in a camp established by surviving forebears; they would have been brought up learning how to hunt and survive from the accumulated knowledge of their parents and they would not be having to "unlearn" about the joys of microwave ready meals.…the nearest equivalent to reproducing that would be to have a team of Ray Mears and Bear Grylls types living in a community having spent their lives studying the period technology….or better still pop over to Australia or the Kalahari and spend some time with real bushmen...

Alan
 
Easy to watch and critisise, but whilst i could skin a deer with a knife, a flint might take learning.

And preserving meat?,, smoking is it that easy?
cooking utensils? Build a trap for a pig ? how, a pitfall? .. kill once caught, how, sharp stick?
 
I agree, it can't be easy. But even the things that modern man is supposed to be good at, such as organisation and hygiene are too difficult for this crowd, so keeping shelters water proof and hunting/gathering must be well beyond their capabilities. No doubt we shall see.
 
Easy to watch and critisise, but whilst i could skin a deer with a knife, a flint might take learning.

And preserving meat?,, smoking is it that easy?
cooking utensils? Build a trap for a pig ? how, a pitfall? .. kill once caught, how, sharp stick?

We are now using ceramic knives that are dead sharp. Flint is the original ceramic knife. Have a look at obsidian knives in the google search engine.
Hang meat over a fire at the right height and it will smoke, dry and preserve it. Pig traps are easy and usually sharp sticks driven by a bent stick. I spent some time in the forest in Brunei with the local Iban people. They trap almost everything using natural materials, usually bent poles and rattan fibre. They also use dead weights (logs) for some. The only thing they did use which was rather unconventional was the older style coke can ring for the trigger! You'd skin a deer with your teeth if you had to!
MS
 
I've got a couple of flint knives that my chicken scratched up, they are well crafted and although made for a smaller hand than mine quite easy to use, they have a slightly serrated cutting edge.

atb Tim

neolithic tool 002.jpg
 
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Easy to watch and critisise, but whilst i could skin a deer with a knife, a flint might take learning.

And preserving meat?,, smoking is it that easy?
cooking utensils? Build a trap for a pig ? how, a pitfall? .. kill once caught, how, sharp stick?

Flint is a superb material for many uses & flint knives are very effective, in fact i have seen flint used to do every job on a Reindeer carcass that they would be expected to do, and then used different shaped/sized flints to create pickaxe heads from antler, strip down a skin, make needles, buttons, toggles, strip sinew & tendons & even carve out a small bone to produce a whistle type instrument.

I was told that until the Mousterian period (middle Paleolithic) flint was not shaped as we know it and they used it as found, after that it was shaped or knapped into smaller sharper specific tools, and from this progression skills progressed, however not all camps or settlements had the same evolutionary speed which is why we think some tribal dominance surfaced, which some evidence suggests may have led to Cannibalism..(not sure if C5 will let that run...)

Smoking meat (that is if they caught any, those most successful were semi nomadic so followed the migration) is again easy as MS says, its knowing the correct fire heat, type of wood & length of time needed to preserve, that requires the knowledge, as far as clothing is concerned, some of the most beautiful products made from animal skins require lots of time & knowledge & skills handed down generations, but the basics using skin, sinew & tendon a small knapped flint and wooden/bone needles should be expected as the very least.

The making of utensils for both cooking and collecting are an art in their own right, from skin bags to bark bags & containers, reeds & grasses woven into baskets, bags or traps and even skulls all used to carry water and food or collect water/other liquids such as saps honey etc and food..living from day to day is not the same as existing in a well organised knowledgeable community, it is these little details that make for survival of a tribe or clan..

On the subject of food collection many of the hunter gatherers and indigenous people were far more aware than we are today as to the seasonal bounty, what is edible and where to find it, they would i expect also have better time management skills!! be stronger, hardier & much more attuned to the surroundings, they would also not be put off by a few fly's or maggots and would not pay too much attention to use by dates..!

Having spent time in some odd places with some quite interesting people i would say that until you are put into the uncomfortable position of being dependent on your own skills & ingenuity in a very unfamiliar world then criticism should be limited, as without doubt even the 'I could do that easy brigade' will make any number of schoolboy errors in as many hours.

It is easy to use a fire steel, and some maya dust.. next time your out in the woods in the rain just strip to your pants & try to light a fire with flint & iron, not steel...and see how you get on..I would expect 95% + of you fail to keep warm..
 
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