Just for laughs: all the historical errors in One Million Years B.C.

Just to get one thing straight: I like this movie, I really enjoyed it.
And I wasn't even expecting the slightest amount of realism of historical correctness. So don't attack my with "Oh please, what were you expecting." -- I know. ;) But still, just for laughs, I thought I'd start this topic.

Because just one of the many possible ways to enjoy it is that in this film you can see how much our understanding of pre-history has improved over time. I'm not sure that even for 1966, the image this film gives was a representative view of ancient history for that era, but I have no doubt that there used to be times when people believed that some of the things you see in this film were correct. Which is fine, I mean science develops over time of course. Still, even for 1966 standards I think this film was mainly an 'exploitation' piece made purely for enjoyment, disregarding a lot of things that even at that time people knew were historical 'inaccuracies' (to put it mildly). But like I said; don't take this topic too seriously, I'm not judging the film for it, I just thought it would be fun what things we can come up with it. I'll make a start, and feel free to add to the list.

1. Dinosaurs
The obvious fact that people or their descended-from-apes prececessors never co-existed with dinosaurs, by a margin of about few hundred millions years.

2. Modern humans
The, slightly less obvious, but still pretty obvious fact that about 1 one million years 'people' didn't look like in this film. Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record in Africa about 195,000 years ago. About 800.000 years earlier, and the predecessors of Homo Sapiens would have looked a lot more like apes than they do in this film.

3. Age of the Earth
The film opens with what I guess is supposed to look like the formative days of planet Earth or maybe even the Big Bang, with shapeless colorfull clouds (of dust?), then a very loud explosion, then a lot of lava, just before the story commences. Even though it is not mentioned how much "just before" means here, the Earth is 4,5 billion years old, and the Big Bang was more than 13 billion years ago so there is a gap of about 4.499.000.000 years between the formation of the earth (let alone the Big Bang) and the era where this filmed supposedly takes place. This gap is 'understaded' here at the very least; it is presented in a way that suggests that these ape-men lived right after the Earth was formed. Not even mentioning the fact that what looks like a 'Big Bang' here is shown áfter the dust clouds, which seems like the wrong way around in the order of things, hehe.

4. Mindless violence
No doubt humans (or their predecessors) were a lot more 'violent', or 'physical' in any case (like many animals are) before they formed a real language, and before people learned to speak, read and write to develop their brains even more and learned to express their emotions and quarrels in a more 'civilized' manner. But the way this film presents it, is as if people were about to seriously hurt or kill each other every minute over the smallest of quarrels. A man is cast out (i.e.: thrown off a cliff) for touching the food ahead of his turn, and men are constantly fighting as if they really want to kill each other. If you look at the way animals solve such conflicts; it rarely ever comes to real violence, usually a 'bark' or a quick hit/bite by a superior is enough. After all, nobody benefits, nor does 'the tribe as a whole', from killing or seriously injuring members for every little quarrel. Also, it seems quite unlikely that adult individuals aged in their 30's or 40's would have to be reminded of the social hierarchy by way of (severe) violence on a daily (or hourly) basis as is the suggestion in this film. You might expect social hierarchies to be somewhat stable, and the people involved accustomed to them by the time they are adults, and not contested on a daily basis, for the good of everyone involved.

5. Neglect or abuse of elderly members
Contrary to what this film seems to suggest, I think elderly people were revered and cherished, rather then treated as dogs the way they are here.
Also, I think elderly people were a little more rare than suggested in this film. In other words: reaching old age (50 or 60+) was a lot more special than it is nowadays, which is probably part of the reason why elderly people were revered in primitive cultures all around the world, be it in Europe, Africa, Asia or (native) America, as shaman's, medicine (wo)men, priests, 'wise (wo)men' or whatever you wanted to call them. In any case; old people had experience (wisdom) and were an assett rather than a threat. After all they wouldn't compete for sexual partners anymore and I think they would eat a lot less then strong young men/women, so why get rid of them or treat them as dogs? I think in a lot of primitive cultures, elderly (wo)men were also instrumental in developing arts and crafts; like making baskets, jewelry and even clothing and instruments and knowing where to find good food. Again: experience and wisdom were probably valuable enough to not treat old people as dogs.

6. (Female) clothing
An obvious one. Again: I wasn't really expecting anything else from this film, but I'm still listing this one just to be complete. Bikini's or "two piece swim suits" if you will, weren't invented until the Greco-Roman cultures (so let's say a maximum of about 3.000 years ago or even later), nuff said. :P

7. Combatting a wild animal
I am not denying that for 'ceremonial' uses people might have battled animals on occassion. But for 'everyday' purposes like gathering food, I think it pretty unlikely that people would battle an animal as dangerous as a wild boar. Of course, 'danger' would be the whole idea of such a battle, but I think it would be a bit *too* dangerous and it is much more likely that people would kill a trapped boar (if that is indeed how people caught boars) with a spear or something, with as little dangerous combat as possible. The known cases were people battle animals, like in Ancient Greece, were not really people who did such a thing out of free will; the might Gladiators were usually outcasts or prisoners or other people that were somebody's "property" and whom the people in power wouldn't mind being killed by a wild animal for spectator enjoyment!
Also, I don't think you can pull the tusk from a recently-deceased boar's jaw with one bear hand unless you are The Hulk. :P

Feel free to add to this list.
And again, don't consider this a 'bashing' of the film; I like it and I enjoyed watching it. :)

Bonus:
As a bonus I thought I'd add one thing that this film did get right:
Indead fire making (and cooked food) is thought to have been invented about 1 or 2 million years ago, so that's one thing in this film that might very well be possible.