Ice World

I've shown this film to hundreds of elementary school children, as a part of teaching about the stone age. It's the best representation I've ever seen of human life that far back. It's beautifully acted and directed, with excellent illuminating scientific commentary.

Just as I believe it's important to give children (and adults, too) a sense of our place in space, by revealing to them the Earth as a planet orbiting a star in a galaxy, etc., giving them a sense of our place in the grand unfolding drama of the lives of homo sapiens is vital for developing a sense of how the lives of our distant human ancestors set the stage for the humans we have become and the civilization we have created. Bravo to all involved with this outstanding film!

Ice World is a Discovery Channel documentary concerning three people living 24,000 years ago in England during the last ice age. They live very much like plains Indians, with tee pees, buckskin clothing and long hair.

Aki and Mora are a couple with a child on the way. Brom is their tribal chief. As the ice cap advances they flee southeast towards warmer weather. At that time there was no English channel and they walked to France and over several months on to present day Czechoslovakia. This is a fictional account of how people might have coped back then.

The scenes of our three twenty-somethings trying to find another tribe to join up with are intermingled with discussions by archaeologists lecturing about cave paintings and findings that correlate with the basic story.

I found myself caring about the three characters and hoping that they make it. All dialog of the three prehistoric people is in prehistoric (and probably made up) language.

The movie made me appreciate the struggles of very distance ancestors and was well made. It was filmed in northern Canada.