Live from New York: It’s the Stone Age! Today we’re reviewing an anthology of sketches from Saturday Night Live, the long-running American variety show, featuring Cockney cavemen, osteological phobias, Nile Valley girls, a real banger about Ancient Rome, and a lot of celebs humping each other.

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Bluesky: @sotsapodcast.bsky.social

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

Watch our Stone Age SNL playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MDF68rM3VM&list=PLzzOAyef3Dyrhg07MnEfFircHodV_OPjj

Don’t You Go Rounin’ Round to Re Ro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6p0W4ZsLXw

The earliest known fermented beverage: https://historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3424

Moosa et al. (2021). Sexual dimorphic parameters of femur: a clinical guide in orthopedics and forensic studies: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8811676/

The March of Progress: https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/sites.wustl.edu/dist/1/1202/files/2018/10/MarchofProgressComplete-192k4uo.png

Sapolsky and Share (2004). A Pacific culture among wild baboons: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020106

Maya vs. Aztec Calendar: https://mymayansign.com/blog/aztec-vs-mayan-calendar/

Ancient Rome Meme: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2023/09/21/tiktoks-roman-empire-meme-explained/

Hadrian was hella gay: https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/antinous-and-hadrian

Eosimias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eosimias

Orang Pendek: https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Orang_Pendek

Today we’re playing Caveman Movie Bingo again! Creatures the World Forgot (1971) is another 70s caveman-sploitation film that’s heavy on the stereotypical tropes and light on plot. Despite the name, it might be most notable for not featuring any forgotten creatures.

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Get in touch with us:

Bluesky: @sotsapodcast.bsky.social

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

Watch Creatures the World Forgot on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/creatures-the-world-forgot

Play Caveman Movie Bingo: https://bingobaker.com#681e1d01d32b436e

Ostrich eggshell beads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrich_eggshell_beads

Ostrich egg water bottles: https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/213331

Elephant bird eggshells: https://www.colorado.edu/today/2023/02/28/ancient-eggshells-unlock-discovery-extinct-elephant-bird-lineage

Formicola and Buzhilova (2004) Double child burial from Sunghir (Russia): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15197816/

Dance of the Tiger (1995) by Björn Kurtén: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/dance-of-the-tiger/paper

The Asaro Mudmen of Papua New Guinea: https://www.tribes.world/en/community/who-are-the-asaro

The Dogon People of Mali: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon_people

Big news! An American biotech company announced this week that they have brought the dire wolf back from extinction! We’ve honoured this great achievement by watching the prophetic film Dire Wolf (2009), a gory werewolf movie in which an American biotech company brought back the dire wolf from extinction... to create a military bioweapon! We’ve got our eyes on you, Colossal Biosciences...

Visit our new website! https://screensofthestoneage.com

Get in touch with us:

Bluesky: @sotsapodcast.bsky.social

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

Watch Dire Wolf (2009) on Tubi: https://tubitv.com/movies/641656/dire-wolf

The Dire Wolf (Aenocyon dirus): https://tarpits.org/stories/our-evolving-understanding-dire-wolves

Bone Clones Dire Wolf Skull: https://boneclones.com/product/dire-wolf-skull-tarpit-finish-BC-020T

Colossal Biosciences: https://colossal.com/

Colossal’s Dire Wolf preprint on BioRxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.09.647074v1.abstract

Perri et al. (2021) Dire wolves were the last of an ancient New World canid lineage: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-03082-x

Janczewski et al. (1992) Molecular phylogenetic inference from saber-toothed cat fossils of Rancho La Brea: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.89.20.9769

Hank Green – They Didn’t Make Dire Wolves, They Made Something...Else: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar0zgedLyTw

Beth Shapiro (2020) How to Clone a Mammoth: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691209005/how-to-clone-a-mammoth

Today we’re reviewing Lisa the Skeptic, a classic episode of The Simpsons in which Lisa discovers an apparent angel skeleton at an archaeological dig. In this episode we dig into hoaxes, the use of AI in academic writing, and the work of Stephen J. Gould. But in a larger sense, this episode will settle the age-old question of Science vs. Religion (spoiler alert: Capitalism wins).

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Bluesky: @sotsapodcast.bsky.social

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

The Burgess Shale: https://www.burgess-shale.bc.ca/

Stephen J. Gould: https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/

The Cardiff Giant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Giant

AI in academic writing: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/generative-ai-in-academic-writing/

Operation Flagship: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnd0p192kn2o

Operation Flagship on Stuff You Should Know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYcGopqLvEs

The Prophecy (1995): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7PSZ7NDEgU

Kenneth Copeland is evil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20y2Alkbc30

Christian Science reading rooms: https://apnews.com/article/christian-science-reading-rooms-religion-65a68fb88b7db958aa1c939e0d69719d

Anomalocaris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalocaris

Billy Beer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beer

Today we’ve reached a milestone – 100 Episodes!! To celebrate, Josh is taking Kim and Ross on a trivia-based tour of some of the best and worst movies from our podcast’s prehistory. What have we learned after nearly four years of caveman movies? Let’s find out! Plus, a bonus review of Mastodons (1997).

Visit our new website! https://screensofthestoneage.com

Get in touch with us:

Bluesky: @sotsapodcast.bsky.social

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

Watch Mastodons (1997): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXU3BC9Zie4

Part horn sound effect: “Party Horn Close 03” by Lucas_Schacht -- https://freesound.org/s/713658/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Mistress of the Apes (1979) tells the harrowing tale of Susan, an anthropologist who lost her pregnancy and learned of her husband’s murder in Congo Kenya in the same week. But she remained strong, without showing any visible signs of emotion whatsoever, until she learned to love again, in the arms of a Homo habilis her husband had discovered prior to his death (his murder was unrelated).

Content warning: this movie contains multiple scenes involving sexual assault.

Get in touch with us:

Bluesky: @sotsapodcast.bsky.social

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

Watch Mistress of the Apes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o9bYwBLBiU

Homo habilis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis

Australopithecus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus

Koko banga saka: https://translate.google.com/?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&text=koko%20banga%20saka&op=translate

African Genesis (1961) by Robert Ardrey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Genesis

Congolian Rainforest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congolian_rainforests

Jimmy Kimmel – Can you name a country? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRh1zXFKC_o

Rick Mercer – Talking to Americans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHUWas-yQSw

Timbits: https://company.timhortons.com/ca/en/menu/timbits.php

Writing systems: https://www.britannica.com/topic/writing/Types-of-writing-systems

Ape sign language was a bunch of babbling nonsense: https://bigthink.com/life/ape-sign-language/

Curious George (2006) tells the tail of the beloved eponymous monkey (sic) and reimagines (and sanitizes) The Man in the Yellow Hat as an archaeologist. This movie sets up a thoughtful and nuanced take on archaeological ethics and neocolonialism, and then says “Fuck it, it belongs in museum after all.” But George is soooo cuuuute!

Get in touch with us:

Bluesky: @sotsapodcast.bsky.social

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

The History of Curious George: https://www.curiousgeorge.com/history/

Nicholas Wade (2007). In Lice, Clues to Human Origin and Attire. New York Times: https://cell2soul.typepad.com/cell2soul_blog/files/Lice.pdf

Aiello and Wheeler (1995). The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis. Current Anthropology: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/204350

Richard Wrangham (2009). Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Profile Books: https://dn790008.ca.archive.org/0/items/pdfy-DDoNCJJ_Wt0qOH7e/Catching%20Fire%20%5BHow%20Cooking%20Made%20Us%20Human%5D.pdf

Ann Nicgorski (2006). Curious George’s Bad Example. Archaeology Magazine: https://archive.archaeology.org/online/reviews/curious.html

Curious George and the Looted Idol (2006). Archaeology Magazine:

https://archive.archaeology.org/0605/news/insider.html

Alfred Russel Wallace: https://wallacefund.myspecies.info/content/biography-wallace

Kirk Wallace Johnson (2018) The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century. Penguin Random House: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44153387-the-feather-thief

Jim Corbett: https://www.corbettnationalpark.in/corbett-heritage.htm

Clovis Culture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture

Today we’re reviewing two films from a brutal, primitive time in humanity’s past, when both politics and romance were conducted through violence: the early 20th Century! His Prehistoric Past (1914) and Clubs are Trump (1917) follow suspiciously similar plots in which Silent Era stars Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Snub Pollard dream of a simpler time when they could commit violent assaults unimpeded and sexually harass women.

Get in touch with us:

Bluesky: @sotsapodcast.bsky.social

Facebook: @SotSAPodcast

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/

Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com

In this episode:

Watch His Prehistoric Past (1914) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iOVyT2rz6c

Watch Clubs are Trump (1917) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vJWimG0AOI

Victorian Calling Cards: https://hobancards.com/blogs/thoughts-and-curiosities/calling-cards-and-visiting-cards-brief-history

The Truth about “Caveman Courtship”: https://daily.jstor.org/the-truth-about-caveman-courtship/

Timeline of Human Fossil Discoveries: https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/a-timeline-of-fossil-discoveries/

Piltdown Man: https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-problem-of-piltdown-man/

Archaeoraptor fossil hoax: https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/fake-dino-bird-explained-1.274812

Cheetah fossil hoax: https://evolutionnews.org/2023/06/fossil-friday-the-oldest-cheetah-was-yet-another-fraud/

The scientific hoax that rocked Japan: https://spyscape.com/article/the-man-who-forged-ancient-artifacts

The Hays Code: https://www.npr.org/2008/08/08/93301189/remembering-hollywoods-hays-code-40-years-on

Winnipeg 1920 exhibit at the Manitoba Museum: https://manitobamuseum.ca/step-into-the-past-winnipeg-1920/