History Main / OneMillionBC

* HollywoodPrehistory, a trope about inaccurate portrayals of prehistory, formerly called "1 Million BC".

* HollywoodPrehistory, a trope about inaccurate portrayals of prehistory, formerly called "1 Million BC".

[[redirect:HollywoodPrehistory]]

!This trope is [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16768606850.82249500 under discussion]] in the Administrivia/TropeRepairShop.
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[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cavemen_vs_trex.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Pfft, so inaccurate. [[ComicallyMissingThePoint Dinosaurs didn't drag their tails]].]]
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->''"Come with us back to the days of the caveman, when every woman wore furs, every man had a private club, and backyard barbecues were truly mammoth!"''
-->-- '''Kermit the Frog''', ''Series/TheMuppetShow''

The days when gruff, thick-browed, club-wielding cavemen and [[NubileSavage sexy cavewomen]] in body-baring [[FurBikini fur teddies]] roamed the earth alongside [[AnachronismStew non-avian dinosaurs]]. Most humans were of low intelligence and [[HulkSpeak communicated primarily in grunts]], but this didn't stop them from inventing a sophisticated system of BambooTechnology, most of which incorporated rocks, sinews, and [[DomesticatedDinosaurs small dinosaurs]] who really didn't seem to mind the fact that they'd been locked under a counter and forced to serve as a primitive garbage disposal for the vast majority of their waking lives. ("[[WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones It's a living,]]" after all...) It's not uncommon for various versions of prehistoric humans, such as apes still barely down from the trees, brutal {{Frazetta M|an}}en, mostly modern-looking tribal people and early agriculturalists experimenting with things like "wheels" and "fire" and "bronze", to share the world, variedly coexisting and fighting with one another. Even less realistic settings than usual can include LizardFolk and SnakePeople, usually as shared antagonists for the various humans and near-humans.

These settings usually consist primarily of barren, rocky landscapes, usually dominated by the looming silhouettes of barren peaks or ever-smoking volcanoes. Breaks in this dominant terrain will almost invariably consist of dense jungles, primordial swamps, and bubbling tar pits. More occasionally, barren fields of ice and snow may also turn up. The fauna will be a grab-bag of Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic species, with saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths rubbing shoulders with dinosaurs and sail-backed reptiles while giant insects buzz past, pterosaurs wheel overhead and giant marine reptiles rule the seas. Given the low priority scientific realism plays in these stories, the beasts will often sport any number of unrealistic or outdated traits -- tail-dragging dinosaurs still turn up from time to time, and don't expect to see a feather on any one of them. Oftentimes, these will be full-on {{Prehistoric Monster}}s more similar to dragons and other fantastic beasts than to anything that ever lived on Earth.

Real "cavemen" were quite different -- although of course, it entirely depends what point in prehistory you're focusing on. They (at least in the last 100,000 years or so) were as intelligent as modern humans (and maybe more) and had complex language. They used bows, spears, slings, and knives as well as clubs. They lived in tents or huts, sometimes structures built of mammoth bones, and maybe the mouths of caves but never deep inside. Most prejudices about cavemen were originally applied to Aboriginal Australians, pygmies, Native Americans, and black people, with claims they were closer to our ancestors (thus "[[GoalOrientedEvolution less evolved]]" or more ape-like).

This setting is nowadays a DeadHorseTrope. If there's a specific year it died, it would have to be 1981, in which it suffered the blow of two [[GenreKiller Genre-Killers]]. One was ''Film/QuestForFire'', it being a much more realistic take on the lives of prehistoric humans, and the other was ''Film/{{Caveman}}'', it being a silly parody of the "cavemen and dinosaurs" genre. Between those two films, fur-clad cavemen battling stop-motion dinosaurs became something that audiences could no longer take seriously. Insofar as this setting turns up in media after 1981, it's always as either a parody of or homage to older works. And if it wasn't already dead in 1981, it was further killed a few years later with the advent of Dinosaur Renaissance media like ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'' and ''Film/JurassicPark'', which endeavored to portray dinosaurs with more scientific accuracy and certainly did away with any notion of them living alongside cavepeople, by establishing any mammals that lived with the dinosaurs as not more than [[MeekMesozoicMammal small, scurrying creatures]]. The popularization of the idea that a meteor impact caused the extinction of the dinosaurs may have further contributed to this trope's decline, as did the growing popularity of the last ice age with its large prehistoric mammals (especially [[MammothsMeanIceAge mammoths]] and [[SnowySabertooths saber-toothed cats]]) as a stark contrast to the dinosaurs and other reptiles which are usually associated with tropical or warmer climates.

RealLife is a '''very''' downplayed example of this -- anyone with decent paleontological knowledge will be aware that obviously all known non-avian dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles went extinct '''long''' before the first hominid appeared (although there are theories that some dinosaurs survived into the Paleocene period). But during actual 1 million years BC, in the middle Pleistocene period, before the global glaciation, our ancestors had discovered primitive tools and fire while diversifying into multiple subspecies and starting to migrate from tropical Africa into Eurasia. The majority of megafauna was mammalian and while there were huge flightless birds like moas and elephant birds (the closest equivalent of non-avian dinosaurs) and large reptiles like turtles, crocodiles, and lizards, most of them lived in the continents of South America and Australia (and on the islands of New Zealand and Madagascar, in the case of moas and elephant birds respectively), so early humans didn't encounter them most of the time (Well, except for the crocodiles and flightless birds) Granted, the majority of megafauna died out circa 11,000 BC with the end of the last ice age which forced modern evolved humans to abandon their hunter-gatherer ways and settle down with the invention of agriculture that gave birth to the first civilizations, which ends the prehistoric era with the invention of writing and marks the beginning of recorded human history.

Named after [[Film/OneMillionYearsBC the movie of the same name]], which is quite well-known for its gratuitous usage of the trope.

See {{Prehistoria}} for a VideoGame level or setting set here, and AgeOfReptiles for this time period's typical rulers. Contrast with LostWorld, another setting full of dinos and cavemen, but separated from the modern world by geography rather than time.
----
!!Popular tropes from this time period are:
* AllCavemenWereNeanderthals
* AnachronisticAnimal
* ArtisticLicensePaleontology
* BambooTechnology
* BehemothBattle
* TheDiscoveryOfFire
* DomesticatedDinosaurs
* FrazettaMan
* FurBikini
* HandsomeHeroicCaveman
* InventingTheWheel
* LivingDinosaurs
* MedievalPrehistory
* NubileSavage
* PrehistoricMonster
* PteroSoarer
* {{Slurpasaur}}
* StonePunk
----
!!Works set in this time period are:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
%%* ''Anime/MagicalShoppingArcadeAbenobashi'': One episode is set in a parody of such a setting.
* ''Manga/{{Perman}}'': One episode is almost entirely comprised of an ImagineSpot Mitsuo is having where he imagines he and his friends live in the Stone Age.
%%* ''Manga/WildRock'' is set in a fantastical prehistoric time.%%Which is?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Asian Animation]]
* ''Animation/HappyHeroes'': Season 6 introduces the planet Guling, which has several features making it much like a prehistoric setting such as inhabitants resembling cavemen who live in caves, alongside lots of dinosaurs living alongside them.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Card Games]]
* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'': Jund, one of the five Shards of Alara, is pretty clearly based on this trope, though it gets away with it by being pure fantasy. Actual dragons replace the dinosaurs, brutal reptilian humanoids lord it over tribes of primitive humans and [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent ratlike goblins]], and the land itself is dominated by ever-present, smoke-spewing volcanoes looming over chokingly dense jungles and festering tar pits.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comedy]]
* Creator/{{Otto}} employed this trope when he said that the Neanderthals started walking upright because they wanted to get their hands away from all that dinosaur shit.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
%%* ''ComicBook/ArchieComics'': A series of "Caveman Archie" stories have prehistoric versions of Archie and the rest of the Riverdale gang.
%%* ''ComicBook/CherryComics'': "Clan of the Care Bear" in ''Cherry'' #5 features Cherry as a sexy cavegirl in prehistoric times.%%Which are an example of this why?
* ''ComicBook/GarfieldHis9Lives'': ComicStrip/{{Garfield}} lived his first life as a sabretooth cat in a world of barren soil and volcanic peaks. The animated special takes one step further with a parody of creatures emerging fully formed from the sea.
-->'''Narrator:''' In those days, the first everything was crawling up out of the sea: the first snake. The first chicken. Crab grass. [[AnachronismStew The first real estate salesman.]]
* Creator/MarvelComics: The Savage Land partly justifies and partly averts this trope. It's a preserve created by aliens that has various proto-human and humanoid tribes mixed with mammals and dinosaurs drawn from various past eras, mixed together in an artificial, mostly subtropical environment... in present-day Antarctica.
** ''Devil Dinosaur'' is about a young hominid (Moon-Boy) who befriends a mutant TRexpy after rescuing him from more savage hominids, with Creator/JackKirby claiming " "After all, just where the Dinosaur met his end, and when Man first stood reasonably erect, is still shrouded in mystery." Later writers have established that the characters actually come from a parallel world where dinosaurs never went extinct.
* ''ComicBook/MonicasGang'': The ''Pitheco'''s stories are largely influenced by this setting and are homages to the genre, starring the titular caveman (whose full name is "''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Man Pithecanthropus erectus]]'' [[SesquipedalianSmith da Silva]]" [[note]]Silva being the Brazilian equivalent of Smith[[/note]]). He lives in a prehistoric village called Lem (the name itself being a parody of Lemuria) in a world of barren soil with volcanoes in the background, in which humans coexist with non-avian dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts and live in caves. Older stories from Pitheco were even more focused on fantasy elements, featuring {{Cyclops}}, wizards and other fantastical creatures. This also applies to the ''Horace'' stories, a mellow and philosophical vegetarian baby ''T. rex'' who [[AscendedExtra started as a character in the Pitheco strips]] and interacts with several other animals from different periods.
* ''ComicBook/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicIDW'': In "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicIDWIssue51To53 From the Shadows]]", when Shadow Lock's magic traps the main characters in miniature worlds based off of museum exhibits, Pinkie and Applejack are sent into one based on Equestria's prehistoric era. There, they find a jungle-covered, volcanic landscape where dinosaurs and thick-browed, slow-minded cave-ponies live together.
%%* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'': One of the time periods that Superman appears in during his involuntary time travels in ''ComicBook/TimeAndTimeAgain''.
* ComicBook/TheGreatPowerOfChninkel: The story appears to take place on a fantasy world, but [[spoiler: it turns out the events take place on our world one billion years in the past]].
%%* ''ComicBook/{{Tor}}'': A foreword in the modern collected edition apologetically says "Although it was already known to anyone who cared that men and dinosaurs had never dwelt on Earth at the same time...."
* ''ComicBook/TraggAndTheSkyGods'': The setting features cavemen battling dinosaurs and alien invaders.
* ''ComicBook/JurassicLeague'': The setting is a homage to this type of genre with [[AnimalSuperheroes dinosaur versions]] of the Justice League and prehistoric humans being shown living at the same time.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Strips]]
%%* ''ComicStrip/AlleyOop''
* ''ComicStrip/{{BC}}'' takes place in a world of barren plains and rocky mountains home to cavemen dressed in tailored pelts, the occasional dinosaur, and a variety of {{Intellectual Animal}}s. It also seems to be taking place in a bizarre AlternateUniverse filled with modern humor and Fundamentalist Christianity. Johnny Hart is a (young-earth) creationist, so he may actually believe dinosaurs roamed the earth with cavemen.
* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': Calvin's dinosaur {{Imagine Spot}}s early in the strip's run were set in a vaguely jungle-like landscape where tail-dragging tyrannosaurs coexisted with cavemen and sabre-tooth tigers. [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness These were phased out]] as Bill Watterson did more research on dinosaurs, and afterwards only depicted animals together which would've actually coexisted, and with more accurate anatomy.
* ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide'': Gary Larson occasionally depicts tail-dragging dinosaurs and neckless, hulking, heavy-browed cavemen together, typically in barren, rocky landscapes and the occasional jungle, and not without some shame on his part, even though it was [[RuleOfFunny for the sake of humor]]. In ''The Prehistory of the Far Side'' anthology, he suggests that "there should be cartoon confessionals where we could go and say things like, 'Father, I have sinned -- I have drawn dinosaurs and hominids together in the same cartoon.'"
%%* ''ComicStrip/FrankAndErnest'' make frequent stops here.
* ''ComicStrip/PrehistoricPeeps'', an 1890s cartoon series drawn by Edward Tennyson Reed and published in ''Magazine/{{Punch}}'', may be the TropeMaker. It depicts cavemen living with dinosaurs in a primeval imitation of contemporary Victorian society. Even in the 1890s, paleontologists were perfectly aware that dinosaurs and humans never lived together, but RuleOfFunny obviously applies here. The comic received a cinematic adaptation in 1905, but it's now a lost film.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Commercials]]
* The American Dental Association used to air commercials featuring a character named Dudley the Dinosaur, who promoted dental health. The character lives in an anachronistic setting where all the characters are anthropomorphic prehistoric creatures, including dinosaurs, mammoths, and saber-toothed cats.
* ''Advertising/{{GEICO}}'': The "caveman commercials" feature stereotypical-looking thick-browed Neanderthals with GeniusBruiser personalities from this era, somehow still living in modern times and acting like an oppressed minority, as does ''Cavemen'', the short-lived TV series based on the Neanderthals from the commercials.
* ''Nissin Noodles'': The 90s commercials with ridiculously tiny cavemen hunting various prehistoric beasts like woolly mammoths and giant pterosaurs in a wasteland.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64PWX_GwVQk This]] [=FedEx=] Super Bowl commercial shows a caveman trying to send a delivery by ''Pteranodon''... which promptly gets eaten by a ''T. rex''. The caveman's manager then suggests the titular mail service, only for his subordinate to complain that "[=FedEx=] doesn't exist yet". The caveman then kicks a Troodontid dinosaur out of frustration, only to get crushed by a sauropod's GiantFootOfStomping.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheCroods'' takes place in the fictional Croodacious period, where a family of cavemen meet a Cro-Magnon inventor with fairly modern ideas and gadgets. There are no dinosaurs, but there are bizarre MixAndMatchCritters implied to be missing links of modern species.
* ''WesternAnimation/EarlyMan'' is about a tribe of Stone Age cavemen fighting against villains from the more advanced Bronze Age. It's a huge AnachronismStew, with the plot hinging on a ''soccer match''. A prologue featuring their ape-like ancestors is set in the "neo-Pleistocene" era, the very day dinosaurs went extinct.
* ''WesternAnimation/IceAge'' follows the exploits of TalkingAnimal versions of Ice Age megafauna, including some creatures already long extinct by then, in a landscape of glaciers, ice fields and rugged hills. It manages to sneak in dinosaurs and Mesozoic sea reptiles, although these at least have the decency to live in a LostWorld and emerge from [[HumanPopsicle within blocks of ice]] respectively. Somehow the onset of the ice age and its ending are only a sequel's width apart, and continental drift is a major plot point in the fourth movie.
* ''Animation/TheMissingLink'' (known as ''B.C. Rock'' in the US) is the story of the first human born among apemen, and naturally it is set in this era. To be precise, the first scene takes place on May 25th, 196,303 B.C.
* ''Animation/PleasantGoatAndBigBigWolf'': In the seventh film, Weslie, Paddi, and Wolffy all end up stuck in prehistoric times after Paddi messes with Mr. Slowy's time camera, and the others have to go find them. While there, the three meet various prehistoric goats who live in a village, and Wolffy, who has had his body swapped with Paddi's during the mishap that got them trapped there in the first place, accidentally ends up engaged with one of the prehistoric goats, Miss Lotus.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Live Action]]
* ''Film/TenThousandBC'': Replace cavemen and dinosaurs with cavemen, Ice Age beasts, and pyramid-building Egyptians and you get this movie. It's an obvious homage to ''One Million Years BC'', and adopts the same "eh, whatever" attitude towards accuracy. Some dinosaurs ''do'' still factor, with the Cenozoic Era's own apex predatory dinosaurs, the Terror Birds, appearing in a sequence that intentionally invokes the RaptorAttack trope.
* ''Film/BillAndTedsExcellentAdventure'': This is one of the eras visited by the duo. The cavemen don't appear until the group is about to take off, though. They're carrying burning torches.
* ''Film/BruteForce'' (a 1914 SilentMovie by Creator/DWGriffith, also known as ''The Primitive Man'', ''In Prehistoric Days'', and ''War of the Primal Tribes'') is probably the earliest surviving film to depict cavemen and dinosaurs living together. This mainly consists of a brief scene with a ''Ceratosaurus'', which is announced by an intertitle reading, "one of the perils of prehistoric apartment life." The majority of the film's plot concerns two primitive tribes fighting over women. Notably, the women are clothed in grass dresses rather than the now-customary {{Fur Bikini}}s, which probably wouldn't have met with 1914 standards of female modesty. Besides, bikinis hadn't been invented yet.
* ''Film/CarryOnCleo'' depicts the Britons as [[AnachronismStew dinosaur-hunting cavepeople at the time of the Roman Empire]]. RuleOfFunny applies, obviously.
* ''Film/{{Caveman}}'', an open parody/comedy take on the genre, is set in "One ''Zillion'' years ago". October 9.
* ''Film/HistoryOfTheWorldPartI'': The opening scenes, during which the cavemen, um, "discover themselves".
* ''Film/{{Noah}}'' suggests there were dog-sized dinosaurs with dog-like behavior that coexisted with humans before being wiped out by the flood.
* ''Film/OneMillionBC'', made in 1940, is the TropeNamer, and both this film and its 1967 remake titled ''Film/OneMillionYearsBC'' may be the combined TropeCodifier. The 1967 version is chiefly remembered for the mind-blowing sight of Creator/RaquelWelch (MsFanservice incarnate) in a FurBikini. Creator/RayHarryhausen, who animated most of the dinosaurs in the remake, comments that he did not make ''One Million Years B.C.'' for "professors... who probably don't go to see these kinds of movies anyway."
* ''Film/RRRrrr'': There's a human tribe where ''everyone'' is named "Pierre" ("Peter" in French, although the joke is that it also means "stone"). All prehistorical animals have sabertooth, somehow.
* ''Film/TyrannosClaw'' is a Korean take on the genre, set in the Jeulmun pottery period with most of the film revolving around a cavemen tribe worshipping a T-Rex as their "God". Plenty of prehistoric monsters appears as well, including a pterodactyl trying to feed the heroes to it's young and a friendly triceratops.
* ''Film/WhenDinosaursRuledTheEarth'' (1970) is also a good example. A thematic follow-up to Hammer's earlier ''Film/OneMillionYearsBC'', the movie features a love story across different caveman clans and tons of stop motion dinosaurs.
* ''Film/YearOne'' features Hunter Michael Cera and Gatherer Creator/JackBlack as cavemen gatecrashing Biblical-narrative events. The problem is that while the story of Cain and Abel could be set at OneMillionBC, early Israelites like Abraham are much less so. And ''then'' there's those Romans showing up. AnachronismStew all around!
* ''Film/YorTheHunterFromTheFuture'' starts this way, complete with dinosaurs, giant lizards, women in furskin bikinis and barbarian heroes, only for it to be subverted with it being in fact a future world AfterTheEnd, not a prehistoric one.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/BeforeAdam'', a historical novel by Jack London, is the story of a man who dreams he lives the life of an early australopithecine. The majority of the story is told through the eyes of the man's hominid alter ego, one of the Cave People. In addition to the Cave People, there are the more advanced Fire People and the more animal-like Tree People. Other characters include the hominid's father, a love interest, and Red-Eye, a fierce "atavism" that perpetually terrorizes the Cave People. A sabre-cat also plays a role in the story.
* ''[[http://www.amazon.com/Bone-Dry-21st-Century-Reference/dp/0440219280 Bone From a Dry Sea,]]'' by Creator/PeterDickinson, is partly set four million years ago in a culture based on the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis aquatic ape hypothesis,]] and partly following the archaeologist who's digging up its remains.
** Also by Peter Dickinson "The Kin" series. Set in a later prehistoric era where modern homo sapiens have evolved and are just beginning to leave Africa. But still live alongside other human subspecies.
* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAncientDarkness'': YA fantasy set in Northern Europe just before the beginning of recorded history.
* ''Literature/EarthsChildren'' is a fairly well-researched attempt to construct realistic Ice Age cultures and involves clashes between ''Homo sapiens'' and Neanderthals. [[ScienceMarchesOn Science has marched on]] concerning some of the material Jean Auel used, and Ayla and Jondalar's technological inventions can only be believed as allegories for the inventions of multiple generations of RealLife people, but for the most part these books are quite believable and realistic. Their biggest problem is the AnachronismStew of ''Homo sapiens'' material culture, mixing multiple Paleolithic eras together, and arguably the near total lack of ValuesDissonance in the prehistoric ''Homo sapiens'' cultures (with the one major exception of greater sexual freedom/no knowledge that paternity exists-at first). Neanderthals however, provide more ValuesDissonance.
* ''Literature/TheEvolutionMan'' is set in a fictionalized version of prehistoric Africa, following a family of early hominids who are in some manner aware of the fact that they are still relatively primitive and are actively attempting to evolve towards ''Homo sapiens''. Among other things, the story features characters discussing their precise location on the geologic timescale, recalcitrant Uncle Vania who refuses to move past the ape-man stage, hominids running the gamut from largely modern people to hoary {{Frazetta M|an}}en, the invention of cave paintings, religion, fire, cooking and clothing, unsuccessful attempts at domesticating the dog and a running commentary on the evolution of humanity and the Earth.
* ''Literature/{{Fartago}}'', a [[http://fartago.blogspot.com blog novel,]] is set at around the time ''Homo habilis'', the first Hominid species, gained awareness. However, much of the novel's references [[LampshadeHanging underscore]] the fact that most portrayals of these early Hominid species portray them as a lot like us, but minor references in the novel prove the writer, Tony Caroselli, [[ShownTheirWork actually knows what he's talking about]] and is only [[RuleOfFunny making stuff up for comedy's sake]].
* ''Literature/QuestForFire'' (the source material for the aforementioned film) is a 1911 novel by J-H Rosny set 100,000 years ago. It concerns a tribe of neanderthals who lose their coveted fire and must battle hostile tribes and prehistoric beasts to get it back. It has aged better than most other examples as many of the author's [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology speculations]] (multiple human species living contemporaneously, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis a race of dwarf humans]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantopithecus giant pleistocene apes]]) [[AccidentallyCorrectWriting have turned out to be accurate]].
* ''Literature/{{Ram}}'', a Finnish children's book series by Maijaliisa Dieckmann, is about a girl called Ram living in prehistoric times, supposedly in what is now Finland. Her parents die on a long hunting trip and she is left to take care of her little brother alone with the grudging help of the neighbours who have too many children and elders to feed to care for two orphans. For emotional support, she turns to her dead grandmother who she believes is the family's spirit protector. The books also deal with discrimination as Ram's family is originally from another clan and they are thought of as outsiders in the village. In a later book she leaves the village with her brother to find her parents' original clan and rejoin her distant relatives. The author is a well-known and respected historical novelist so the depiction of the era is very accurate and life-like.
* ''Literature/StoneSpring'' is set at the end of the most recent glaciation. The prehistoric inhabitants of the land that once connected Britain to the rest of Europe embark on an ambitious mud wall building to hold off the rising tide.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'': The finale, which occurs 150,000 years before present day, veers into this. The [[spoiler:proto-humans]] the main characters observe, however, seem to avert the traditional cavemen stereotypes with [[spoiler:Baltar]] commenting that they use tools and have a primitive society but is unsure if they have a comprehensive language. [[InferredHolocaust It's an educated guess]] that this also becomes the way of life of the [[spoiler:Colonials]] thanks to [[spoiler:Lee Adama]]'s decision to [[spoiler:get rid of all technology and live a primitive, simple life]].
* ''Series/{{Bones}}'': Booth trolls Bones once by claiming that it's a "fact" that cavemen fought ''Tyrannosaurus rex''. Bones is unable to tell if he's kidding or not, but hopes he is.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild An Unearthly Child]]", the first story of the original series, sees the characters travel to prehistory and encounter a tribe of cannibalistic cavemen looking for the secret of fire. No dinosaurs, however.
** The back story to "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E2DoctorWhoAndTheSilurians Doctor Who and the Silurians]]" is that the Silurians domesticated dinosaurs and enslaved early hominids, despite the Silurian era being hundreds of millions of years too early for ''either'' of these, or indeed anything resembling LizardFolk. "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS9E3TheSeaDevils The Sea Devils]]" has the Doctor claim that this is "a complete misnomer" (and never mind that he used it at the time) and they should actually be "Eocenes", which is ... better, but not by much (you can fudge the dinosaurs surviving somehow, and at least primates existed, if not hominids).
* ''Series/GhostsUK'': Robin’s memories in “Not Again” are set in a more historically accurate version of this trope.
* ''Series/ItsAboutTime'': The astronauts Captain Mackenzie and Lieutenant Canfield accidentally break the time barrier and get stranded in One Million B.C. Features dinosaurs, prehistoric flora and fauna, and cavepeople speaking broken English. Eventually, Mackenzie and Canfield go back to the future, bringing with them a family they befriended.
* ''Series/LandOfTheLost1974'': {{Justified|Trope}}. The titular Land is an abandoned alien zoo, explaining the mix of dinosaurs from various eras and the [[LizardFolk Sleestak]] lost civilization.
* ''Series/LandOHands'': The titular land is a prehistoric world where cavepeople live with dinosaurs and ice age animals... that are made with BareHandedPuppetry.
* ''Series/PowerRangersTimeForce'': Played absolutely straight in the "search for the Quantasaurus Rex" arc, where Wes and Eric see ''Triceratops'' and ''Stegosaurus'' and get chased by an irate ''Tyrannosaurus'', before Wes finds fairly advanced wall-paintings of the aforementioned Quantasaurus Rex.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Music]]
* The Music/IronMaiden song "Quest For Fire" depicts a world of cavemen and dinosaurs, but mainly focuses on the cavemen.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Pinball]]
* Creator/{{Gottlieb}}'s ''Pinball/{{Caveman}}'' is set here. As one of the first pinball machines to use video screens, the player also had control over a caveman, and would guide him through a maze on the screen.
* ''VideoGame/ProPinballTimeshock'': The story involves a scientist traveling through time to four different eras to collect four time crystals. One of those eras is the "Prehistoric Age," filled with dinosaurs.
* ''Pinball/TimeMachineZaccaria'' features three time periods, the present, the future, and a distant past filled with dinosaurs
* ''Pinball/TheFlintstones'': As it is based on the popular cartoon, this is also set in the distant past where cavemen live alongside dinosaurs.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'':
** ''Lands Out of Time'' introduces the "World of Banded Night", which includes dinosaurs, cavemen, ape-men, even ''lizard-men'' and the ruins of an ultra-tech civilization.
** ''Big Lizzie'' pits cowboys vs. banditos and dinosaurs in an alien preserve.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Paleomythic}}'', by Osprey Publishing, is a LowFantasy game set eons in the past on [[FictionalEarth Ancient Mu, a Pangaea-like supercontinent]] that has every sort of climate and ecosystem. The best material is flint or obsidian, otherwise you'll be settling for bone and hide. While dinosaurs are extinct (closest thing are giant lizards the size of elephants), Ice Age mammals such as mammoths and beardogs still live and thrive. Besides these mundane if exotic animals, there are also several BeastMan varieties and ghosts and animal spirits to contend with. It's SwordAndSorcery without the heavy metal, exotic castles and high-powered sorcerers.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'': The Mountains of Mourn, where the ogres live, are a bitterly cold, barbaric land where the ice age never truly ended, still roamed by primordial beasts long extinct in the rest of the world -- including mammoths, woolly rhinos and saber-toothed tigers -- and ruled by barbaric tribes of primitive, shamanistic warriors.
* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': Cretacia, the homeworld of the Flesh Tearer {{Space Marine}}s, is based primarily on this trope. The planet is an untamed DeathWorld covered in dense jungles and steaming swamps, home to ferocious reptilian predators the size of a small mecha, even bigger herbivores capable of crushing Marines underfoot without even noticing, blood-drinking insects the size of a grown man, and tribes of primitive, savage humans descended from ancient colonists who tried to tame the planet.
* ''TabletopGame/Planegea'': Is essentially the prehistory of a StandardFantasySetting like ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms''. Humans and early versions of other fantasy races survive in a primordial world that is still in the process of being formed.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/ChoiceOfGames'': In ''Silverworld'', eleven million years in the past, the Stone Age River People contend with dinosaur-riding [[LizardFolk the ophidians]] and their horrifying monster, [[TRexpy the Tyrant]].
* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'': 65,000,000 BC has all the expected features -- bow-legged cavemen and a hot cavewoman who speak in YouNoTakeCandle, who coexist with dinosaurs. The twist was that the dinosaurs are a civilized race who are in the middle of a stated war of racial survival with the humans.
* ''VideoGame/FarCryPrimal'' takes place in a valley somewhere in Eastern Europe at the end of the Ice Age, home to three human tribes -- one of fairly realistic Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, one of cannibalistic savages, and one of pseudo-Aztec sun-worshipping agriculturalists -- alongside a collection of Pleistocene fauna that was either long extinct by the Mesolithic, never native to Europe or both, such as saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, and the Eocene ungulate ''Megacerops'', alongside some more realistic inclusions such as woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos and cave lions, all mixed together in a setting of temperate forests shading into icy wastes to the north.
* ''VideoGame/LiveALive'': The Prehistoric Scenario has more or less all the boxes ticked off: it's the only scenario with no actual dialogue, with the characters instead using body language and, at most, the occasional PictorialSpeechBubble. The cavemen, excluding the protagonist and TheHeavy of the scenario, are all club-wielding {{Gonk}}s with big round noses and raggedy hair, and the one female human shown (despite there being two tribes shown, all of them are men) is a NubileSavage with few clothes. Humans ''don't'' live alongside dinosaurs, most of the enemies are prehistoric non-dinosaur animals that are slightly more accurate. The notable exception is the final boss of the scenario: Odo, a ''T. rex'' worshipped as a divinity and implied to be the last of the dinosaurs. As it's the most comedic of all the scenarios, it doesn't really ''have'' to be in any shape or form accurate.
* ''VideoGame/WarParty'' has primitive humans with neolithic technology interacting with an riding dinosaurs as well as ice age mammals.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/DawnOfTime'' stars a cavegirl and her ''Triceratops'' companion, making it a natural example of the trope.
* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'': [[http://www.egscomics.com/comic/2011-08-16 In one strip,]] Nanase fantasizes about her current girlfriend being jealous of her former suitors in the form of her as a club-wielding NubileSavage in leopard pelts beating up other cavemen in a volcanic prehistory as a pterosaur flies overhead.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheBackyardigans'' sometimes pretend to be cavemen, though the dinos are optional.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheBrothersFlub'': The eponymous brothers at one point end up trapped in a world with a prehistoric motif. This world is populated by prehistoric equivalents to the main and supporting characters of the show, including the brothers' boss Tarara Boomdeyay.
* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'': In "[[Recap/DuckTalesS2E1TimeIsMoney Time is Money]]", Scrooge travels back to 1 Million BC to find a land in which caveducks coexist with dinosaurs. FridgeBrilliance: It makes sense that in a world of intelligent anthropomorphic birds their ancestors did interact with dinosaurs.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'': In one episode, Timmy wishes there was no such thing as technology, so Cosmo and Wanda turn the clock back to the stone age.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' is one of the most iconic examples in western animation, with civilized cavepeople living in a world full of dinosaurs, mammoths, pterosaurs, sabertooth cats, and other creatures.
* ''WesternAnimation/GertieTheDinosaur'': Gertie the sauropod lives in a landscape of barren rocks inhabited by herself, a woolly mammoth, and a few {{Prehistoric Monster}}s more similar to medieval dragons than anything else.
* ''WesternAnimation/GoofTroop'': "Clan of the Cave Goof" features the prehistoric ancestors of Goofy and Pete in a ''Flintstones''-esque world of cave people, dinosaurs, and Stone Age equivalents of modern inventions.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Histeria}}'' made this (and the time before it) the subject of the episode "The Dawn of Time".
* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' has three shorts of this type: "Prehistoric Porky", which takes place in One Billion, Trillion BC and shows Cavepig Porky's near-fatal chase with a saber-tooth tiger; "Daffy and the Dinosaur", which takes place "millions and billions and trillions of years ago" and shows a caveman hunting Daffy Duck; and "Pre-Hysterical Hare", where Bugs Bunny finds a caveman's documentary about life in 10,000 B.C.E.
* ''WesternAnimation/LoveDeathAndRobots'': In "[[Recap/LoveDeathAndRobotsIceAge Ice Age]]", after the fridge is unplugged and thawed out and its miniature world's development is reset, it becomes home to primitive, ''Australopithecus''-like apemen sharing a tropical landscape with scaly dinosaurs.
* ''WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse2013'': "[[Recap/MickeyMouseS5E8OuttaTime Outta Time]]" has Mickey and Donald use a time machine (ItsALongStory) to visit this setting and rescue Goofy, who had accidentally used the same time machine earlier. The objective was to bring Goofy back to the present day before all life became descended from him, and it shows - thanks to Goofy's presence, the dinosaurs and cavemen all have Goofy heads.
* ''WesternAnimation/MrBenn'': In "Caveman", Mr. Benn visits a stone-age community who live right next to a dusty and dangerous road, frequented by dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, but want to live in the fresh green countryside. There's just one problem: there are no caves. Mr Benn has the answer; they can build stone huts.
* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'': "[[Recap/PhineasAndFerbTriStoneArea Tri-Stone Area]]" is set in 27,000 B.C., where "Phineagrunk and Gurb" invent the wheel. The wildlife, however, is strictly Cenozoic.
* ''WesternAnimation/Primal2019'' is set at the vaguely-defined "dawn of evolution", with a caveman as the main protagonist. The AnachronismStew and [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology artistic license]] of this trope are [[InvokedTrope gleefully embraced]]; dinosaurs, humans and other animals from various geologic periods coexist (as well as completely fictional creatures such as a GiantSpider) and there’s zero attempt to make the prehistoric animals look realistic, with most looking like something you’d see in an old Creator/RubySpears cartoon. It’s a prehistoric world that runs on pure, undistilled RuleOfCool. [[spoiler:Midway through Season 1 the show reveals the existence of full-blown magic, firmly establishing the setting as a pure fantasy world and potentially [[AWizardDidIt explaining]] the most impossible aspects]].
* ''WesternAnimation/SheepInTheBigCity'': In one episode, General Specific and Private Public end up here while trying to chase Sheep through time. This being a PostModern show, the first thing they encounter is a sign reading "[[LampshadeHanging Welcome to the most clichéd time portal of all.]]" (This leads Specific to comment "[[ComicallyMissingThePoint We're in [=1970s=] New Jersey?]]")
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'': Season 9 begins with the Smurfs traveling to the prehistoric past to bring a baby dinosaur home, and encountering an evil cave child that captures Clumsy and uses him for the "magic power" he possesses of being able to start a fire.
* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS3E14Ugh Ugh]]" (aka, "Spongebob B.C. -- Before Comedy") depicts a WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones-esque version of Bikini Bottom where [=SpongeGar=], Patar and Squag discover fire.
* The ''Series/TheSuperMarioBrosSuperShow'' episode "Quest for Pizza" is set in "Cavemanland," a prehistoric world populated by cavemen and dinosaurs, or at least dinosaur-like versions of Mario enemies.
* ''WesternAnimation/SuperMarioWorld'' runs with the fact that the game is set in a place called Dinosaur Land and has the show set in the Stone Age, populating the place with lots of cavemen, including [[ReplacementScrappy Oogtar the Not-Toad]], and a variety of dinosaurs and dinosaur-like monsters.
* ''WesternAnimation/TexAveryMGMCartoons'': "The First Bad Man" mixes a cartoonishly inaccurate version of caveman life with Wild West tropes as it tells the story of the first outlaw in Texas, Dinosaur Dan.
* ''WesternAnimation/ValleyOfTheDinosaurs'': Played with. On the one hand, the valley people and the neighboring tribes live in caves in a land where dinosaurs and other pre-human animals are still running around. However, except for the pre-human animals and the fact that everyone speaks English, it actually depicts early cave people rather realistically, from the way they look and dress, to their government and lifestyle. The valley people and neighboring tribes actually seem to be living like how many UsefulNotes/NativeAmerican tribes once did (besides the whole living in caves thing).
* ''WesternAnimation/TheWackyAdventuresOfRonaldMcdonald'': "Have Time, Will Travel" features Ronald [=McDonald=] and friends time-traveling to the prehistoric era, which is shown to have dinosaurs co-existing with caveman counterparts to the [=McDonaldland=] gang. Hamburglar actually brings up that this wasn't how things actually were in prehistoric times and attributes it to something being wonky with Dr. Quizzical's time machine.
[[/folder]]
----

[[index]]

[[/index]]

* ''Film/HistoryOfTheWorldPartI'': The opening scenes, during which the cavemen, um, "[[ADateWithRosiePalms discover themselves]]".

RealLife is a '''very''' downplayed example of this -- anyone with decent paleontological knowledge will be aware that obviously all known non-avian dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles went extinct '''long''' before the first hominid appeared (although there are theories that some dinosaurs survived into the Paleocene period). But during actual 1 million years BC, in the middle Pleistocene period, before the global glaciation, our ancestors had discovered primitive tools and fire while diversifying into multiple subspecies and starting to migrate from tropical Africa into Eurasia. The majority of megafauna was mammalian and while there were huge flightless birds (the closest equivalent of non-avian dinosaurs) and large reptiles like turtles, crocodiles, and lizards, most of them lived in the continents of South America and Australia (and on the islands of New Zealand and Madagascar, in the case of moas and elephant birds respectively), so early humans didn't encounter them most of the time (Well, except for the crocodiles and flightless birds) Granted, the majority of megafauna died out circa 11,000 BC with the end of the last ice age which forced modern evolved humans to abandon their hunter-gatherer ways and settle down with the invention of agriculture that gave birth to the first civilizations, which ends the prehistoric era with the invention of writing and marks the beginning of recorded human history.

RealLife is a '''very''' downplayed example of this -- anyone with decent paleontological knowledge will be aware that obviously all known non-avian dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles went extinct '''long''' before the first hominid appeared (although there are theories that some dinosaurs survived into the Paleocene period). But during actual 1 million years BC, in the middle Pleistocene period, before the global glaciation, our ancestors had discovered primitive tools and fire while diversifying into multiple subspecies and starting to migrate from tropical Africa into Eurasia. The majority of megafauna was mammalian and while there were huge flightless birds (the closest equivalent of non-avian dinosaurs) and large reptiles like turtles, crocodiles, and lizards, most of them lived in the continents of South America and Australia, so early humans didn't encounter them most of the time (Well, except for the crocodiles and flightless birds) Granted, the majority of megafauna died out circa 11,000 BC with the end of the last ice age which forced modern evolved humans to abandon their hunter-gatherer ways and settle down with the invention of agriculture that gave birth to the first civilizations, which ends the prehistoric era with the invention of writing and marks the beginning of recorded human history.

RealLife is a '''very''' downplayed example of this -- anyone with decent paleontological knowledge will be aware that obviously all known non-avian dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles went extinct '''long''' before the first hominid appeared (although there are theories that some dinosaurs survived into the Paleocene period). But during actual 1 million years BC, in the middle Pleistocene period, before the global glaciation, our ancestors had discovered primitive tools and fire while diversifying into multiple subspecies and starting to migrate from tropical Africa into Eurasia. The majority of megafauna was mammalian and while there were huge flightless birds (the closest equivalent of non-avian dinosaurs) and large reptiles like turtles, crocodiles, and lizards, most of them lived in the continents of South America and Australia, so early humans didn't encounter them most of the time (Well, except for the crocodiles and some flightless birds like moas) Granted, the majority of megafauna died out circa 11,000 BC with the end of the last ice age which forced modern evolved humans to abandon their hunter-gatherer ways and settle down with the invention of agriculture that gave birth to the first civilizations, which ends the prehistoric era with the invention of writing and marks the beginning of recorded human history.

RealLife is a '''very''' downplayed example of this -- anyone with decent paleontological knowledge will be aware that obviously all known non-avian dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles went extinct '''long''' before the first hominid appeared (although there are theories that some dinosaurs survived into the Paleocene period). But during actual 1 million years BC, in the middle Pleistocene period, before the global glaciation, our ancestors had discovered primitive tools and fire while diversifying into multiple subspecies and starting to migrate from tropical Africa into Eurasia. The majority of megafauna was mammalian and while there were huge predatory flightless birds (the closest equivalent of non-avian dinosaurs) and large reptiles like turtles, crocodiles, and lizards most of them lived in the continents of South America and Australia, so early humans didn't encounter them most of the time (Well, except for the crocodiles) Granted, the majority of megafauna died out circa 11,000 BC with the end of the last ice age which forced modern evolved humans to abandon their hunter-gatherer ways and settle down with the invention of agriculture that gave birth to the first civilizations, which ends the prehistoric era with the invention of writing and marks the beginning of recorded human history.

RealLife is a '''very''' downplayed example of this -- anyone with decent paleontological knowledge will be aware that obviously all known non-avian dinosaurs and other Mesozoic-type reptiles went extinct '''long''' before the first hominid appeared (although there are theories that some dinosaurs survived into the Paleocene period). But during actual 1 million years BC, in the middle Pleistocene period, before the global glaciation, our ancestors had discovered primitive tools and fire while diversifying into multiple subspecies and starting to migrate from tropical Africa into Eurasia. The majority of megafauna was mammalian and while there were huge predatory flightless birds(the closest equivalent of dinosaurs and large reptiles like turtles, crocodiles, and lizards ) most of them lived in the continents of South America and Australia, so early humans didn't encounter them most of the time (Well, except for the crocodiles) Granted, the majority of megafauna died out circa 11,000 BC with the end of the last ice age which forced modern evolved humans to abandon their hunter-gatherer ways and settle down with the invention of agriculture that gave birth to the first civilizations, which ends the prehistoric era with the invention of writing and marks the beginning of recorded human history.

RealLife is a '''very''' downplayed example of this -- anyone with decent paleontological knowledge will be aware that obviously all known non-avian dinosaurs and most other Mesozoic reptiles went extinct '''long''' before the first hominid appeared (although there are theories that some dinosaurs survived into the Paleocene period). But during actual 1 million years BC, in the middle Pleistocene period, before the global glaciation, our ancestors had discovered primitive tools and fire while diversifying into multiple subspecies and starting to migrate from tropical Africa into Eurasia. The majority of megafauna was mammalian and while there were huge predatory flightless birds and large reptiles like turtles, crocodiles, and lizards (the closest equivalent of dinosaurs) most of them lived in the continents of South America and Australia, so early humans didn't encounter them most of the time (Well, except for the crocodiles) Granted, the majority of megafauna died out circa 11,000 BC with the end of the last ice age which forced modern evolved humans to abandon their hunter-gatherer ways and settle down with the invention of agriculture that gave birth to the first civilizations, which ends the prehistoric era with the invention of writing and marks the beginning of recorded human history.