In the cinematic marvel that is Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space Odyssey, the iconic commencement unfolds like a cosmic ballet. Before whisking the audience on an interstellar odyssey through the realms of space and technology, the film’s legendary introduction commences with the Dawn of Man spectacle, where primal hominids engage in a visceral dance with fractured bones.
This fleeting yet potent vignette has metamorphosed into a ubiquitous emblem of science fiction, finding unexpected resurgence in a whimsical homage featured in this year’s Barbie universe.
In a captivating conversation with Penguin Books UK, the distinguished paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak delves into the renowned scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Slimak places this evocative moment in the vast expanse of Africa, a staggering three million years in the past.
The bone-clashing encounter of the australopithecines, according to Slimak, is a depiction that he deems both remarkably precise and entirely conceivable. In his expert evaluation, Slimak awards this scene a perfect score of 10 out of 10. Feast your eyes on Slimak’s full endorsement below:
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We must be somewhere in Africa, let’s say 3 million years ago, and maybe we’ve facing some kind of Australopithecines. It’s two groups, and one group is taking the advantage on the other because they use bones. Here it’s a tibia. And they took that bone, and there’s a crime. I don’t know if it’s the first crime. So it’s kind of Abel and Cain, you know? The original crime. In this vision, which is pretty accurate and plausible.
But there’s also an idea: the idea that what we are today is a result of millions of years of interactions. And that we began to be homo with war and aggressivity and territoriality[….] That’s a very interesting scene. Our own way to be humanity is the result of aggressivity, territoriality, and at the end we will become what we are because we have this long history of kind of interactions where we have to be better than the others. But it doesn’t say it. It just opens a box and he lets you think about it. So let’s, out of generosity with Stanley Kubrick. Let’s give ten.”