Native names aren't stereotypical

I recently wrote about the "indigenous" name Evolet in 10,000 B.C. This phony-sounding name got me thinking, so I looked up some Native baby names. Here are some of the ones I found:

Abey
Aleshanee
Anoke
Aponi
Bly
Chilali
Chimalis
Deslin
Elan
Elu
Helaku
Istas
Jacy
Kachine
Koko
Makya
Mitexi
Motega
Namid
Nodin
Olathe
Pilan
Sahale
Sakari
Sakima
Shako
Taborri
Tainn
Takoda
Tayen
Tyee
Wyanet
Wyome
Yuma

Can you tell which names are male which are female? Probably not. That's because indigenous languages don't necessarily follow the same patterns as English. Girls don't get feminine names like Lisa, Maria, or Evolet and boys don't get masculine names like Tom, Dick, or Harry.

For more on 10,000 B.C., see The Best Indian Movies.

Below:  "My parents liked the names Amelie, Bernadette, and Celine because they sound so pretty and French and feminine. But I'm glad they chose to name me after my aunts Evelyn and Violet. Besides, I like Evolet because it reminds me of Eve."

Indians in 10,000 B.C.

[Spoiler alert] Here's how someone describes the master race--the people building pyramids using mammoths--in 10,000 B.C.:They are not men like us, Baku. ... Some say they came from the stars. Others believe that they flew across the great water when their land sank into the sea.Clearly they're supposed to be Atlanteans or aliens. But several clues suggest they may be Mesoamerican Indians.

First and foremost is their appearance. These people--let's call them Atlanteans--have bald heads, topknots of hair, and pendants in their ear lobes. This was a very typical look among the Maya.

A good example of this look is the non-Maya Black Hawk, war chief of the Sauk Indians (below). He would've fit right in with the Atlanteans of 10,000 B.C.



Other clues

An Atlantean priest throws one of the tribesmen off a pyramid as a human sacrifice. It seems such sacrifices are part of the Atlanteans' culture.

The Atlanteans have a map that shows both sides of the Atlantic. (I think--it flashed by too quickly to be sure.) So they didn't just come from an island in the Atlantic. They explored the Americas and met the Paleo-Indians there, at least.

The African tribesmen give D'Leh what appears to be a chili pepper at one point and kernels of corn at another. These presumably came from the Americas. The Atlanteans could've bred the corn using their advanced genetic techniques millennia before the indigenous Americans actually did it.

The Atlanteans' master ship--the one they try to flee in--is big enough to cross the ocean.

Many people have speculated that the Egyptian pyramids inspired the Mesoamerican pyramids. It could've been the other way around.

What it means

This is just speculation, but at least two theories explain the movie's "facts":

1) The Atlanteans seeded both the "New" and "Old" Worlds with their culture and technology. Hence both sides had the same type of monumental architecture.

2) The Atlantean culture arose in the Western Hemisphere--one of those lost Mesoamerican civilizations so often seen in fiction. It eventually disappeared, but its impact was lasting enough to influence later Mesoamerican cultures.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Movie vs. reality in 10,000 B.C.

Some comparisons show how phony the tribal cultures are in 10,000 B.C.:

Movie:  "Behold! I've discovered a planet!"

Reality:  "Our forefathers discovered the 'wanderers' eons ago. When Venus the evening star appears in that notch in the mountains, we know it's the vernal equinox. That's our signal to begin watching for the annual mammoth migration."

Movie:  "Four-legged demons! Ai-eeee!"

Reality:  "The first men on horseback surprised us, but we quickly realized they were just like us. We tried to trade for horses; we even tried to steal some. But there isn't enough grass for them to forage on the mountaintop."

Movie:  "See the 'great birds' floating on the water!"

Reality:  "Sewing huge pieces of cloth and fastening them to catch the wind is a neat trick. But it's not practical in our mountain home. When we want to visit our neighbors, we simply paddle across the lake in our birch-bark canoes."

I could go on, but I trust you get the point.

The indigenous people in 10,000 B.C. are a primitive, superstitious lot--more so than any real tribe. After decades of experience, they're still ignorant of horsemen and sailboats. They haven't mastered the bow and arrow or basic astronomy. Their greatest achievement is a net.

This is Hollywood's version of indigenous people. Even when they overthrow an evil empire, they're still "noble savages." Other than a random prophecy or two, they don't have any culture or religion. Nor are they intelligent enough to develop agriculture, domesticated animals, or the other trappings of civilization. They need a master race of Atlanteans to give them these things.

D'Leh's heroics in 10,000 B.C. are the last gasp for tribalism. As the movie states repeatedly, the Yagahl's way of life is doomed. Progress is the only alternative for these primitive people.

In other words, being indigenous is bad and being civilized is good. Hard to believe that Indians survived another 11,492 years without horses, ships, gunpowder, or the printing press. Yet somehow they managed.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Below:  "We're a bunch of half-naked savages. We haven't even invented the bow and arrow yet."

Rescue mission in 10,000 B.C.

Continuing my analysis of the problems in 10,000 B.C.:

Long-distance operators

D'Leh's people, the Yagahl, are afraid of the "four-legged demons" (men on horseback). Later, the African tribesmen are awed by the "great birds" (sailboats). Both examples of this superstitious attitude are nonsense, as I explained here.

The slave-raiding horsemen wear helmets or armor with horns or spikes. It couldn't be more clear that these men are supposed to be evil. That the bad guys dress like monsters from hell is a pure Hollywood convention.

These slave raiders march their captives all the way to the Nile River, which is a ridiculously long journey. Is it really productive to ride horses to the top of a mountain to capture a few slaves? Wouldn't the raiders be better off looking for slaves at lower altitudes?

And wouldn't they be better off looking for slaves closer to their final destination? Their trek is easily 1,200 miles or more, which is a long way to go for a payoff. With the captives walking, the journey would take several months. After all the food and supplies they'd use, it's hard to imagine the slavers profiting.

Whitey to the rescue

In the desert, D'Leh frees a saber-tooth tiger from a trap. The big cat later helps him. This isn't exactly a mistake, but it's one of the oldest plots in the world. Androcles and the Lion, anyone? The lack of originality here is stupefying.

D'Leh soon encounters an African tribe. Though they've shaved their heads, these black men have painted faces, scarification tissue, and accouterments made of bones. As with the Yagahl, these are all indicators of a primitive, exotic tribe.

The Africans have a legend that the one who talks to a "Spear Tooth" will free their people. In other words, they've been waiting for a long-haired white man who comes out of the desert and speaks to the (animal) spirit. Jesus Christ and Holy Moses, Batman!

So a blue-eyed girl is supposed to save the brown-eyes and a white man is supposed to save the black men. Though the Caucasian and African tribesmen form a multicultural army to free their kin, the movie has an undertone of racism. The closer one is to the Anglo standard of beauty, the more likely one is to be a hero or savior.

Sticks and stones

Like their northern brothers, the African tribesmen don't wear shirts, even at night when the desert gets cold. That's because you don't get the full effect of a spearchucking savage horde unless they're as naked as possible.

The tribesmen and the slavers both use spears. The slavers also use swords and slings. But no one uses a bow and arrow until the slaver's captain at the end. The filmmakers apparently saved this moment so they could show a lot of dramatic hand-to-hand fights followed by one dramatic shot.

This is a glaring omission. The slavers and Africans have coexisted with an advanced civilization for decades. Why have the slavers adopted metal swords but not the bow and arrow? Why haven't the Africans adopted either?

They might as well wear signs saying, "We're primitive people who have barely risen from the mud. We bow to you, our superiors, who have mastered the bow and arrow. Please enslave us because we're so backward and ignorant compared to you."

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Below:  "Floating pieces of wood? Don't be silly. They're big birds!"

Tribal life in 10,000 B.C.

The movie 10,000 B.C. is instructive for what it says about Hollywood's perceptions of indigenous people. Let's go through the mistakes and stereotypes to compare Hollywood's version of indigenous culture and history with the real thing.

But note: When I say "mistakes," I'm not talking about the anachronistic inaccuracies. E.g., the presence of domesticated horses, metal, sailboats, and pyramids in 10,000 B.C. Many critics noted these "mistakes," but they're relatively easy to explain.

Many critics also slammed the movie's rapidly changing geography, but it's possible to explain that too. The tribesmen start in snow-covered peaks--perhaps the Caucasus Mountains between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. They pass through what looks like a rain forest--which may be the "lush forests of what is today Southern Iraq/Kuwait--the fabled Fertile Crescent." They cross the Sinai Peninsula and end up on the Nile River.

No, I'm talking about more subtle mistakes and stereotypes. These have the cumulative effect of making indigenous people seem much more primitive and superstitious than they really were. To Hollywood, these people are basically ape-men with good plastic surgeons.

Some like it cold

The Yagahl tribe lives on a mountain. The surrounding peaks are covered in snow, showing how cold it is. But the Yagahl huts are on top of a rise, exposing them to wind, storms, and freezing temperatures. This is silly; no tribe would choose to live in the coldest spot in the region.

The tribesmen have braided and dreadlocked hair, mud and paint on their faces, and dark makeup around their eyes. This serves to make them look more exotic and otherworldly--i.e., primitive. If they didn't have these excesses, they'd look almost modern.

During the day, the men often go bare-chested. Even though it's sunny, this is still a mountaintop with snow-covered peaks nearby. They should be wearing shirts if not coats--but again, being half-naked makes them look more primitive.

The lady Evolet

Evolet the orphan girl arrives to fulfill a prophecy about bringing life to the tribe. Her name is unnaturally soft- and French-sounding, reminiscent of the first woman Eve. It's obviously a gimmick to make her seem more feminine.

Because of Evolet's blue eyes, the tribe knows she's different, special, anointed. Couldn't she have had a birthmark or a wart on her nose? No, it has to be the Anglo epitome of beauty to mark her as the tribe's savior.

The rest of the tribe looks suitably Eurasian. A couple of the actors have Chinese or Asian surnames; one is Maori. But Evolet is played by Camilla Belle. Despite having a Brazilian father, she looks like Lindsay Lohan. She's totally out of place among the others--a typical Hollywood starlet playing a typical Indian-style princess.

Our hero D'Leh tells Evolet he's discovered a star that behaves strangely--i.e., a planet. In reality, most indigenous tribes knew about the planets. They marked the seasons by them. They probably did this for tens or hundreds of thousands of years before 10,000 BC. So portraying D'Leh's observation as if it were brand-new makes tribal people look ignorant.

The mighty poor hunters

Like Indian buffalo hunters, the Yagahl hunters crawl amid a herd of mammoths. Then they spring up, shout, and wave their arms to goad the beasts. This is more foolhardy with mammoths than it is with buffalo, since the animals can crush the hunters with one misstep.

The hunters stampede the mammoths through a narrow pass where they try to catch one in a net. Considering how much work it would take to make a large net, this seems inefficient. Why not spear the passing mammoths or drop boulders on them? Why not herd them into a cul-de-sac and then spear them or drop boulders on them?

For that matter, why not drive them off a cliff as the Indians did with the buffalo? These tribesmen take more risks and hunt less efficiently than their Paleo-Indian counterparts in North America. They're a white man's fantasy of a tribe, not an anthropologically accurate tribe.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Below:  Those lips, those eyes! "Leave me alone, you big hairy paparazzi. I have a photo shoot tomorrow and I need my beauty sleep."

Review of 10,000 B.C.

I recently watched 10,000 B.C., a movie that got some of the worst reviews of 2008. It's relevant here because it stars a typical tribe, features several indigenous races, and may even include Indians.

You probably know or can guess the story: A prehistoric mammoth hunter journeys through uncharted territory to rescue his true love and secure the future of his tribe. In other words, your typical quest.

Alas, the critics were correct, as they usually are. 10,000 B.C. is one of the worst major motion pictures in recent years.

The reviews below are so right-on that I suggest reading them in full. I'll simply quote the most telling lines:

Human Civilization:  The Prequel[A]t its best—which may also be to say at its worst—“10,000 BC” feels like a throwback to an ancient, if not exactly prehistoric, style of filmmaking. The wooden acting, the bad dialogue, the extravagantly illogical special effects may well, in time, look pleasingly cheap and hokey, at which point the true entertainment value of the film will at last be realized.10,000 B.C.10,000 B.C. is one of those movies where one is tempted to ask aloud, "What were they thinking?" Its across-the-board clumsiness is surprising. One doesn't expect intelligent scripting or deep characterization from Roland Emmerich, but the film's lack of energy, poor special effects, and monotonous pacing lead to an inescapable conclusion: 10,000 B.C. isn't only brain-dead, it's completely dead. It's inert and without a heartbeat.Review:  10,000 B.C.10,000 B.C. is plainly trying to borrow from other films--the muscular liberalism of Gladiator, the mythic majesty of the Lord of the Rings films, the vulgar vitality of 300, the chase structure of Apocalypto, the Hollywood history of Clan of the Cave Bear and Quest for Fire and even the anachronistic action of One Million Years B.C., where Raquel Welch faced stop-motion dinosaurs. 10,000 B.C. is too sprawling and super-sized to reach us as drama, though, and too thin and threadbare to excite us as entertainment; it's huge but hollow, small but slender, and wholly forgettable.So boring a caveman could do itIt also doesn't help Emmerich's cause when most of the characters are about as exciting as watching paint dry. Somehow Emmerich has been able to make most of the humans in the film much less interesting than the mammoths, saber-tooth tigers and terror birds that barely get any screen time.10,000 BCCharacters can be defined simply by their archetypes: the warrior hero, the savage villain, the loyal friend, the brave child. There's no depth to their stories or the overall story the film tells. Instead it's the occasional action scene mixed with sweeping wide shots. Everything else seems like filler.

I hope I'm wrong, but I can't help but think that 10,000 BC started out as an idea that sounded like, "Wouldn't it be cool if we had woolly mammoths and saber toothed tigers and people all in the same movie?" and went from there.Comment:  Some additional thoughts on 10,000 B.C.:

Almost every character is one-dimensional. In fact, I'd say the only two-dimensional character is the slave raider. He protects Evolet from harm but wants her for himself--his two simple dimensions.

The dialogue is stiff, unnatural, and portentous. Here's a typical example:A good man draws a circle around himself and cares for those within. His woman, his children.

Other men draw a larger circle and bring within their brothers and sisters.

But some men have a great destiny. They must draw around themselves a circle that includes many, many more.

Your father was one of those men. You must decide for yourself whether you are, as well.

10,000 BC is full of storytelling flaws, cultural mistakes and stereotypes, and historical errors and anachronisms. Every couple of minutes you're thinking, "No, wrong. No, wrong. No, wrong." You can't suspend your disbelief because the movie rarely if ever gets anything right.

The special effects are more video-game real than real real. And yes, 10,000 BC saves them for a few set pieces. There's little of the grandeur you see in a Jurassic Park movie, where impressive animals roam everywhere.

How 10,000 B.C. came about

I'm not sure if Emmerich thought of the mammoths or the pyramids first. Maybe it was a tie. Someone may have said, "Wouldn't it be cool if the ancients used mammoths to build the pyramids?"

From that he developed a few special effects for a caveman video game. Which would explain everything. As a viewer, all you care about is the 15 or so minutes of effects-laden action. 10,000 BC would work pretty well as an action/adventure video game with no plot or characters.

But then Emmerich got a "bright idea." People might pay good money to see an extended version of his prehistoric video game. If he threw in a few phony cultures and cardboard characters, he could make the game into a movie.

I'm not sure of the details, but I'm confident of the sequence. Effects first, then plot, then characters. Which is the opposite of how it should be, of course.

I gather Emmerich claims he was inspired by Quest for Fire. I'd say that's a crock. 10,000 B.C. is more like his tribute to the pulp fiction of the 1950s and 1960s. It's Hercules meets One Million Years B.C.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Worst of 2008 At the Movies

In At the Movies, the much maligned review show, Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz recently named their worst movies of 2008. Perhaps not coincidentally, three of their picks--Twilight, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull--had Native subplots or themes.

These were probably the biggest films of the year with Native aspects. Yet Lyons and Mankiewicz not only picked them as the worst but specifically said Twilight and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull were the most disappointing. What does that tell you?

It tells me that Hollywood still isn't close to doing Native characters and stories right. That Hollywood is willing to exploit Native cultures for exotic "color" but not to study and understand them. That for all the talk of how liberal Hollywood, it's downright conservative when it comes to profiting off of people.

Of course, I should add that I gave Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a 7.5 and Vantage Point, another of Mankiewicz's picks, an 8.0. So you can't believe everything these critics say. I haven't seen many 2008 movies yet, but I'd say The Dark Knight is the most disappointing and 10,000 B.C. is the worst of the ones I've seen.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Paleo-Indians in Journey to 10,000 BC

Another pseudo-documentary contributes to the claim that Native Americans weren't here first after all:

My thoughts on History Channel’s “Journey to 10,000 BC”I’m thinking History Channel put this out to coincide with the movie 10,000 B.C., which not surprisingly isn’t that accurate of a movie. Not like I expected it to be remotely realistic, but still I kinda hoped that it would be somewhat informative because it is about as much education most people will get about prehistory in their entire life. Anyways, “Journey to 10,000 BC” wasn’t much better. It had horrible cut scenes and exclusively focused on life in North America about 13,000 years ago. A lot of other very important things were happening elsewhere, such as the emergence of Neolithic revolution, i.e. the Natufian culture that shoulda been also included.

Even though I subscribe to the Siberian origin of native Americans, I did appreciate how Dennis Stanford made a cameo and explained his hypothesis that the Clovis archaeology could have originated from sea-faring Solutrean people from Europe.Some commenters respond:A. Douglas
March 11, 2008 at 9:12 am

Trying to tie Europeans to the first migrants of the Americas and Clovis points is far-fetched and borders on ignorance. All that was mentioned by Dennis Stanford was pure unsubstantiated theories, clouded by his own desire to associate his ancestors with the first Americans. Also, his ideas that because Clovis points resemble a few Solutrean points mandates that the makers originate in Europe (southern France), is nothing but a sorry attempt to back his theory.

concolor1
April 1, 2008 at 2:36 pm

I’m right in the middle of watching the History Channel piece, and I was irritated how the “paleo-Indians” had distinctly “non-Indian” beards and non-Siberian features. I was correct in surmising this was a “lead-in” to the “Solutrean Hypothesis,” which is the darling of Dennis Stanford and a few others, but has scant chance of finding acceptance and consensus among mainstream science.

I tend to overreact on this stuff, but then I live in Utah where selling non-Siberian origins of Native Americans is a religion, a business, and the focus of a large university that routinely disseminates religious apologetics as part of its curriculum.

They routinely adopt the insulting tactics of Lawrence Brown above, who erroneously projects a gap in his own knowledge onto others; in point of fact, the only DNA evidence that suggested possible European presence in the New World was the presence of “Haplogroup X” in mitochondrial DNA found in Native Americans.

As my friend, Simon Southerton (author of “Losing a Lost Tribe”) points out, however, a much more closely related X-lineage was found among the Altai in Southern Siberia, and this evidence is powerful enough to constitute proof of Native American’s Asian origins, particularly when combined with the archeological record.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Rediscovering America:  The New World may be 20,000 years older than experts thought.