roland emmerlich needs to study history
The movie is so inaccurate even a pre schooler knows more history than him.
shareIt's not a historical tale, though. It's a story within a story. That is to say that we're seeing a tale that a fictional character is telling. In my view, it was intended as an exploration of myth making, combing real world myths with some made up ones to present the viewer with a story that is supposed to be viewed as inherently unreliable.
It's become customary to try to fit modern myth stories into a historically accurate context so there are people who don't necessarily get when a story deviates from that form for a legitimate reason versus when it's just being lazy in regard to research. However, there's nothing wrong with seeking to imitate an actual myth story. For example, read any Arthurian tale and you're likely to find that the author viewed the time period written about through the lens of their own society. The weakness or strength of a king is reflective of the weakness or strength of the king of their time and you find court and knightly tradition that would not have existed when Arthur was supposed to live (among other things).
Therefore, if your concept for a story is that it's a story from a begone era it makes sense to create purposeful inaccuracies. This is perhaps too nuanced for most movie goers, who tend to see things in black and white terms. To those people, I would suggest they study literature and learn about these different forms of presenting a story.
That said, while I get what the people behind this movie were going for, I don't think they did a particularly good job of it. There is a degree of deeper allegorical meaning to be found in the story (as should be the case for any story trying to imitate an older myth tale) but it loses itself too much in trying to go for what it thinks will look cool to a blockbuster audience. However, in order to critique the real flaws of the movie, it's important to first understand what it is and is not.
Another movie that does this is "300." The idea that we're watching a Spartan's retelling of events while depicting their enemy in monstrous terms is rather smart. As anyone who does any serious research into mythology knows, monsters are simply a dehumanized other. In general; dragons aren't dragons, demons aren't demons, giants aren't giants, and so on. Rather, they're people who are given monstrous attributes to make violence against them more palpable or relate their perceived monstrous acts in allegorical terms. Although I think that movie does a better job of this than "10,000 BC" (albeit with its own modern flourishes as opposed to a super serious look into the kind of story a Spartan might have actually told) people still get tripped up on unreliable aspect of the story because don't understand the framing of what they're seeing.