MOST people who saw the BBC鈥檚 Walking with Dinosaurs series adored
the computer-generated beasts because they gave viewers a real feeling for the
biggest reptiles that ever lived. Everyone, that is, except for the academics,
who positively bristled at the heady mixture of fact and fiction. And me. Now,
it鈥檚 not that I hate the idea, it鈥檚 just that on balance I鈥檓 not sure where all
this dynomation and faction passing for hard information will end.
In the cause of truth, I must declare an interest: I am the author of
Neanderthal, the book which accompanies the Channel 4 mini-series of the
same name. Channel 4 tried to go one better than the BBC and revivify the
everyday life and death of Europe鈥檚 Neanderthals. No computer animation here but
real, live Neanderthals toughing it out in an Ice Age landscape. Not for the
squeamish or vegetarian, their way of life is portrayed in all its gory glory of
game hunting, rough sex and occasional infanticide.
Of course, these Neanderthals are actors with cleverly made latex faces that
allow facial expression to surface. Fleshing out the bare bones of the
Neanderthal face is not controversial鈥攁fter all, their skulls show that
they had beetle brows, receding chins and probably large noses. But other
expedients are less acceptable.
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We all understand that popular entertainment requires drama. But to invent
Neanderspeak is surely pretty iffy. In the series, we are given anatomical
evidence that Neanderthals had some kind of language. But spoken words don鈥檛
fossilise, so there is no way of getting close to what their language was
actually like. The more complex arguments for and against its syntactical
development are inevitably not explored in a medium that requires simple
storylines.
The slice of time Neanderthal selects is towards the end of the
Neanderthal era, when our ancestors, the Cro-Magnons, turned up. And this
requires another liberty to be taken regarding skin colour. Neanderthals had
become palefaces while Cro-Magnons, more recently out of Africa, were still
darker-skinned. This is legitimate speculation, but still only speculation. Most
viewers will need more background to make sense of why the old racial stereotype
of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons has been stood on its head, otherwise we are in
danger of creating new myths.
Some of the hard facts of the stones and bones are explained in the
voiceover, but much of the basis for the social and behavioural side is
inevitably elided. And while an accompanying book can do much to redress the
balance by exploring these questions, such books at best sell a few thousand
copies, while the TV audience is millions.
The good news is that The Making of鈥� programmes, which allow for
deeper questions and expose some of the conceits in the production process, are
increasingly popular. The bad news is they are rarely shown at the same time as
the original series. Clearly we鈥檒l have to do a hard sell on the schedulers and
their advertising clients if we are to persuade them that punters can, and do,
learn to love the devil that lies in the detail.