Nehaveigur

Why are there no movies, TV series or even novels set in the paleolithic? After all, it’s the epoch that made us who we are, and genetically we haven’t changed much in the 11,700 years since. Some of us eat a “paleo diet” with the kinds of food we think were common back then, such as vegetables and meat, while avoiding grains and other foods that we’ve started to cultivate only more recently. The rationale is that we should give our bodies what they adapted to during the hundreds of thousands of years before we settled and became farmers. At least that’s the theory.

Why don’t we apply the same reasoning to entertainment? Since we have evolved to hunt Pleistocene megafauna and live in small, nomadic groups, isn’t it reasonable to expect that there’s something deep within us that craves those things, and that those cravings could be sated, or at least tickled, with a paleo-themed movie or Netflix series? There’d be plenty of material, starting with cave paintings and other paleolithic art, and animations of animals like the woolly rhino, mammoths or cave bears.

There’s plenty of entertainment set in ancient Rome, or ancient China, or during the Middle Ages, or among the Vikings, but hardly anything that’s set in traditional societies. Hollywood has made hundreds of movies set in the Wild West, but none set in pre-Columbian North America.

The only novel set in the Paleolithic I’ve come across is Shaman. It’s by one of my favorite authors, Kim Stanley Robinson. It’s set around the time the Chauvet cave was painted, and it’s so vivid that one reviewer started dreaming about the novel’s characters after reading it, which is exactly what one would expect from something that reaches back to our deep roots.

In practice, the paleo diet isn’t all that healthy. We have had time to evolve to adapt to new types of food such as milk products and grain. Maybe it’s the same with our interests and desires, and the paleolithic is forever gone.