Before We Ruled the Earth is a two-part Speculative Documentary narrated by Linda Hunt (or John Slattery, depending on the cut), which aired on TLC in 2003. It chronicles the evolution of humans and our struggles with the dangerous megafauna we once coexisted with.
Part one (“Hunt or Be Hunted”) focuses on our early evolution, from the ancestral Homo ergaster to anatomically modern humans, while part two (“Mastering the Beasts”), focuses on how Homo sapiens spread across the globe and conquered our bestial competitors.
Tropes used in Before We Ruled the Earth:
- Bait-and-Switch: The very first segment features a trio of H. ergaster trying to scavenge a Megantereon kill and subsequently getting attacked by the sabretooth, suggesting the “man vs beast” theme will (as usual) focus heavily on predatory animals. But the next one focuses on an H. erectus clan hunting a herd of Megaloceros and from then on, the dangerous beasts consist almost entirely of herbivores.
- Bears Are Bad News: “Mastering the Beasts” opens with a clan of Cro-Magnons inspecting a cave that they aim to inhabit, only to find out that it’s already occupied by a hibernating cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), who then confronts them and brutally mauls one of the hunters to death.
- Brutish Bulls:
- Played straight with the auroch (Bos primigenius), who is depicted as very aggressive and dangerous, which is Truth in Television based on historic accounts.
- Subverted with steppe bison (Bison priscus) and later the extant American bison (Bison bison), who mind their own business and only fight back when the humans go after them.
- Cruel Elephant: Subverted with the woolly mammoth in the Beringian segment, as it was attacked by a trio of hunters and wounded, causing it to (naturally) lash out at them and kill them. When the hunters’ widowed wives try going after it later, it freaks out and bellows at them but then tries to run away, only to succumb to its wounds.
- Downer Ending:
- For the Neanderthal clan in the final segment of “Hunt or Be Hunted”. They start off thriving in their home but are then faced with a particularly harsh winter and struggle to find food. Three hunters are forced to leave their clan and head off into the blizzard to make a kill, but one of them freezes to death in his sleep, another gets trampled by a bison (but survives) and their quarry gets taken by two newly arrived Cro-Magnons. The Neanderthals watch the strangers in confusion and walk off, with one of them wounded, while the narrator assures us that their clan won’t survive, and of course, their entire species will soon be supplanted by their African relatives.
- The woolly mammoth’s side of the story in the Beringian segment. It was attacked by hunters and survived, but was badly wounded (with a spear stuck in its shoulder) and eventually left behind by its herd while crossing a river, then the hunters’ widows arrived and managed to kill it after it collapsed from its injuries.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Humanity's arc through the series. Homo ergaster was just a humble scavenger and forager scrapping by on the African savannah, but its descendants would eventually become rulers of the Earth, and wipe out many species in the process.
- Gentle Giant: The ground sloth Megalonyx jeffersonii. When a Clovis boy falls into its cave and wakes it up from its nap, the sloth doesn’t react aggressively and merely observes the kid with idle curiosity, despite unintentionally scaring the shit out of him.
- Gory Discretion Shot:
- Brutally averted with the elderly Homo ergaster who gets caught by the sabretooth, as we see the cat pounce on him, pin him down, and throttle him (we only don’t see it directly stabbing its fangs into the man’s throat). Some cuts remove this bit, playing this trope straight.
- Zig-zagged with the mammoth attack. The second hunter to be killed gets stomped by the mammoth, but we cut away from it and to the remaining hunter running for his life, but the latter’s death is explicitly shown, when the mammoth rams him and then squashes him to death with its massive tusks, though it’s shown from a distance.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: Both the humans and the beasts are only trying to survive, but of course, since Most Writers Are Human, the humans tend to triumph in the end.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: This series goes out of its way to avert this trope and showcases just how dangerous giant herbivores such as bovines, large deer, and especially elephants can be, even more so to ice age hunters armed only with torches, spears, and their human wits. Out of all the beasts that fight and maim the ancient humans, only two are carnivores, the saber-toothed cat Megantereon and the cave bear (which was mostly herbivorous anyway).
- The Juggernaut: While the other herbivores are shown as more than capable of killing humans, the woolly mammoth, in particular, completely destroys a trio of hunters, chasing them across the tundra and killing them one by one, all while having a spear embedded in its shoulder. This is what happens when you enrage a 6-ton elephant and fail to incapacitate it before it can go on the offense.
- The Marvelous Deer: The Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus) is certainly magnificent (and imposing) and gets hunted by the European Homo erectus, but they are more than capable of putting their massive antlers to good use, and kill several of the hunters when the latter's hunt goes south. But after the hunters learn how to keep their torches lit for extended periods of time, they successfully drive the elk herd over a cliff.
- Mushroom Samba: In the first segment of “Mastering the Beasts”, a young shaman-in-training and two hunters go on a ritual hunt that is meant to help a recently deceased companion (killed by the cave bear) pass on into the afterlife, but in order to decide which animal they are supposed to pursue, they perform a ceremony where they eat berries with hallucinogenic properties before entering a cavern filled with paintings of various animals (possibly Chauvet or Lascaux itself) and see a painting of an auroch come to life, which they interpret as a message from the spirit world.
- Panthera Awesome: The saber-toothed cat Megantereon cultridens is the first beast to appear in “Hunt or Be Hunted”. Though smaller than its more famous cousin (and likely descendent) Smilodon, it’s still depicted as a powerful and deadly predator that struck fear into the hearts of our early ancestors in Africa.
- Reused Character Design: Some of the CGI models shown here also appear in other documentaries from the early 2000s. Discovery Channel’s What Killed The Mega Beasts? (which aired a year earlier) featured the same woolly mammoth and ground sloth model, though in the latter case, it was for Megatherium rather than Megalonyx. Similarly, Giant Monsters (which also aired in 2003) used the same model for Megatherium once more, and the Megantereon model for Smilodon.
- Start of Darkness: During the Pleistocene, humans mostly killed for their own survival and in self-defense, but as they gradually got better and better at it, and started controlling their environments more and dominating their competitors, it would have serious consequences for Earth and its wildlife down the line. The narration in “Mastering the Beasts” keeps alluding to this.
