Webinar: Camp Croods at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Aired February 23, 2021
Gale Robertson:
Hello, everyone out there. Welcome to our Family Program, "Camp Croods at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History." My name is Gale, and I'm an educator at the museum, and I'm so excited to be hosting this program for you today. Before we begin, we'd like to make a special thanks to Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, our sole sponsor for today's public educational program. We deeply appreciate their support, which enables us to discover, create, and share new knowledge with the world free of charge, today and every day.
Today's Camp Croods program is all about how humans, both in the prehistoric times and in the modern times, create art, share stories and express themselves in different ways. We will be joined by two special guest experts, archaeologist, Briana Pobiner, from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and production designer, Nate Wragg, from Dreamworks Animation. They will share with us how human expression, communication, and creativity is represented in ancient human artifacts from prehistoric times, which you'll see in our virtual tour of the Hall of Human Origins, and how it's portrayed in the movie, "The Croods: A New Age," which is available today on digital and Blu-ray.
While we wait for more people to join our program, and before we meet our special guest, let's go over some logistical things to help you navigate the Zoom platform. The program today will be about 60 minutes long. There will be a recording of the program posted on our website next week, that you can refer to if you have to leave early or if you want to watch it again.
To ask us questions or comments during the program, please use the Q&A feature, which you can find either at the bottom or the top of your screen. We do not have a chat feature during this webinar, so anytime you want to talk to us or ask us questions or answer any questions, it'll be through the Q&A feature. Now, we will try to answer as many questions as possible. We may not answer them immediately. However, there will be a Q&A section during this program where we will just take as many questions as we can and ask them of those experts. So just hold on tight and we'll try to get your questions answered then. Also, we have closed captioning available. So if you want to turn these on or off, click on the CC button that's located near the Q&A feature.
Now, while our museum is closed, we are broadcasting programs to you from our homes, and we love hearing where our viewers are tuning in from. So where are you joining us from today? Please use the Q&A feature to tell us. I am coming to you from my apartment in Washington, D.C. All right. So I'm going to open up my Q&A. All right.
We have some friends from D.C., Clarisa from Fairfax, Virginia, LA, D.C., Vermont, Petworth just down the street for me. Alexandria, Virginia, Philadelphia, Valencia, California. I have Ava in Tennessee, Tracy in Maine. Wow. We are covering most of the United States, Boston, Davis, California, Oakland, Maryland. St. Mary's, I'm assuming that's in Maryland. Havertown, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico. Hello, San Diego. The Cayman Islands, lovely. Johnson City, Tennessee. All right.
I'm loving all of these people from all over. Oklahoma City, Cheyenne, Wyoming. Hi, Ben from Baltimore. Ben says, Hi, Christian. All right, Chantilly, Maine. Wow, this is so amazing. The Seattle area, Alabama, I love this. I see Itsy in Arlington, Virginia, hi. Hi, Karen from Maryland. New York, Hudson, New Hampshire. My gosh, we are so excited to have so many people.
I can't say hello to everyone, but we do have people on the back end that will be saying hello to you, my colleagues from the museum. Woo, this is so exciting. We are so excited about today's program. It's so great to see viewers from all over joining us today. To those of you who have just logged on to Zoom, hello and welcome to today's program, "Camp Croods at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History."
During this program, production designer, Nate Wragg, will be showing us clips and images from the movie, "The Croods: A New Age." These clips highlight the creativity and innovation in the world of the Croods. Along with Nate, archaeologist Briana Pobiner, who's from our museum, will be taking us on an exploration of the Hall of Human Origins and will show us artifacts that help us understand what we know about the lives of ancient humans, especially around communication, expression, and art. We have some really interesting art-science connections to share with you. So let's go ahead and meet our experts. Hey, Briana.
Briana Pobiner:
Hi Gale, how are you?
Gale Robertson:
Hi, Nate.
Nate Wragg:
Hi, how are you?
Gale Robertson:
Great. I'm so happy to have you guys on the program today.
Nate Wragg:
Yes, thank you for having me here.
Briana Pobiner:
We're very excited.
Gale Robertson:
So first of all, we do like to talk about people's jobs because I did say a lot of long titles before your names. So let's talk about what you do. Briana, you're a scientist at the museum. Can you tell us more about what you do there?
Briana Pobiner:
Sure. So I'm a scientist called an archaeologist. An archaeologist studies human prehistory. We excavate prehistoric sites and we analyze artifacts and fossils found there. I'm particularly interested in the kinds of food that ancient humans ate. So I study the fossil bones of animals found at ancient human sites. So I do excavations mainly in Africa, but I also study fossils from excavations all over the world.
Gale Robertson:
Very cool. So you are studying a certain aspect of ancient human life, which is about eating.
Briana Pobiner:
Exactly.
Gale Robertson:
All right. And then Nate, you are an extra-special guest because you are coming to us from Dreamworks Animation. And I introduced you as a production designer, can you tell us more about your job?
Nate Wragg:
Yeah, so my job is whatever movie I'm on, and in this case it was "Croods: A New Age," I oversee the visual look and style of the movie. So everything from color to characters. In the Croods, there's a wide range of all these crazy animals and new landscapes and worlds that we get to discover. So it's my job to oversee and make sure all that stuff looks as cool as possible.
Gale Robertson:
Cool. And I love your background. It looks like you're giving us a sneak peek into that world of the Croods.
Nate Wragg:
Yeah. I'm actually recording here from the Betterman Farm, if you guys have seen the movie.
Gale Robertson:
Awesome. We actually got a really good question. Chase wants to know, why is the movie called "The Croods"?
Nate Wragg:
I think it came from a long time ago with the first film, "The Croods," and I think it was just sort of a play on words with sort of a caveman family. I didn't work on that project that early on. I sort of helped out a little bit on the very tail end of it. So I wasn't around for the name, but I believe it stuck and it kind of fits the entire family perfectly.
Gale Robertson:
Awesome. And we're going to be talking about a little bit more words that play off of that word, Croods, so you guys will be learning some new words. All right. Thank you so much for those introductions. We're going to get a chance to delve a little bit deeper into your areas of expertise throughout this program. So now, this Camp Croods program was inspired by scenes and characters from "The Croods: A New Age" movie. So let's warm up by watching a clip of the movie. So I am going to cue the movie up right now. Thank you for your patience as I pull up this movie. I promise it will be worth it. All right, here we go.
Guy:
That was hands down the best night's sleep I've gotten.
Mr. Betterman:
Morning, Guy.
Guy:
Hi, Mr. Betterman.
Mr. Betterman:
Fresh bitter bean juice?
Guy:
Thank you.
Mrs. Betterman:
Hi, Guy.
Guy:
Mrs Betterman.
Mrs. Betterman:
These are for you. I made them last night.
Guy:
I should wake Eep up. It's been like seven hours since I said hey.
Mrs. Betterman:
That's adorable. Let's let that poor Eep sleep. She must be exhausted.
Guy:
Nah. I'm sure she's not.
Mrs. Betterman:
Look, here's Dawn. What a coincidence.
Mr. Betterman:
Why Dawn, whatever are you doing on this particular rope bridge at this particular moment in time?
Dawn:
My morning chores.
Mr. Betterman:
Morning chores.
Mrs. Betterman:
Morning chores.
Guy:
Genius. Genius.
Mr. Betterman:
Genius.
Mrs. Betterman:
Genius.
Guy:
Genius.
Gale Robertson:
I love that scene. Okay. So some of you might be wondering what "The Croods: A New Age" has to do with the National Museum of Natural History. Well, the obvious connection is a focus on ancient humans. "The Croods: A New Age" movie has created an imaginary, prehistoric world that you just saw snippet of, with unique characters, fantastic animal mashups, and an extraordinary landscape in order to tell a story.
Well, at the National Museum of Natural History, we have scientists like Briana who excavate and study evidence of prehistoric humans, animals, and plants. And this helps us reconstruct what ancient environments and landscapes looked like. So today we are going to be talking about those connections we found between what scientists like Briana have discovered about ancient humans through artifacts and scientific evidence, and the imaginary prehistoric world of "The Croods: A New Age." So before we dive into that, I've been saying the word ancient human, and so Briana, I wanted to help our viewers understand, how long ago was that?
Briana Pobiner:
Yeah, that's a great question. So when we say ancient human, usually I mean anything that's prehistoric. And prehistoric is before writing or other recorded human history, and that starts a little more than five or 6,000 years ago. But human evolutionary history goes back much farther than that, all the way to about six or seven million years ago when we shared a common ancestor with living chimpanzees. So we didn't evolve from living apes or monkeys, but we share common ancestors that are now extinct with other apes and monkeys that are collectively known as primates. This is kind of like a great, great times a few million great grandparent.
Gale Robertson:
Great, thank you for that. And Nate, we were just talking about the world of Croods. And one word that I learned from you was Crood delicious, Croodaceous. Crood delicious, I made that one up. Croodaceous Period. Can you tell us when that's supposed to be?
Nate Wragg:
Yeah. So the Croodaceous Period is sort of a time between times that we like to think existed, even though we don't have any exact examples that it did. Other than we've got all of these sort of wonderful creature mashups that exist in the Croods world that feel a little bit like animals that we know today. Take Douglas for example, half crocodile, half dog. He's a crocodog in the Croodaceous time period, but now we've sort of separated those two animals because they had to kind of become their own things eventually. But yeah.
Gale Robertson:
I like that, a time between times. Awesome. Actually, Abby Henderson has a really great question that relates to what we were just talking about. Did you base the movie and landscape on real history and places?
Nate Wragg:
Yeah, that's a great question. One of our big goals, and again for my job as a production designer and overseeing the visual look of it, was to make sure that the world felt recognizable; it didn't feel alien. And in this sort of Croodaceous time period, it's not dinosaurs, it's after dinosaurs, but it's before sort of modern times as we know it. But we used a lot of things that we've seen photographs of over the last 100 years that we know have existed on Earth.
Say for example, the sequence in the movie if you've seen it, where Eep and Dawn go on the joy ride through the open plains up to the butterfly forest. Well, we referenced a lot of imagery from Yellowstone National Park and the color of the water that is found there around those Old Faithful, the geysers and everything. And so we created landscapes that mimic those colors and feelings, but felt completely inventive in new ways, so that it did feel that you were here on Earth just in the Croodaceous time period.
Gale Robertson:
That's really cool. Thank you. And thank you, Abby, for that great question. So Briana, we are going to start off with you giving us a quick walkthrough of the Hall of Human Origins, and then we're going to spend most of our time in the section of the exhibition that's about expression and creativity through symbols. And then during our tour, Nate, we're going to ask you to share some of the connections that you found to the world of Croods. So let me get our PowerPoint started so you could start the tour.
Briana Pobiner:
All right, fantastic. So welcome to the Hall of Human Origins. I wish I could take you all on an in-person tour, but for now we're going to take a virtual walk through our exhibit. So we're going to walk through our time tunnel entrance and kind of go back in time. So let's go.
Let's take a look down this view of the first part of our exhibit. On the right you might see walking upright. And this is the first of six human characteristics that make us unique, and that's how we've organized a lot of the evidence that we've put on display. If we were able to look closer up, you'd see replicas of early human skeletons, you'd see archaeological artifacts and even bronze sculptures like you can see in the bottom left of this picture, depicting early humans doing activities that are very typical for that species or type of human that is being reconstructed. And these were created by paleo artist John Gurche.
So we can walk a little further down to see some more characteristics, and another bronze sculpture. This one is squatting by a fire and handing you a piece of roasted meat. Of course, it's the one that I picked because I'm interested in early diets. So now we can keep going. We'll turn the corner to one of my favorite parts of the exhibit. This is a curved wall of 76 replicas of early human skulls. And it's pretty amazing being surrounded by all this evidence for how just skulls, as well as the rest of our skeletons, have evolved over the last six or seven million years.
Gale Robertson:
And from my work at Natural History, skulls tell you so much about an animal or a human. And so I love this wall because it shows all of the different characteristics that early humans had. Can you talk a little bit more about that, Briana?
Briana Pobiner:
Sure. So some of the main skull features that have changed over time are things like the size and shape of teeth, but also the brow ridges, those sort of bony under parts of our eyebrows, how sloped the face was. Does it look like the face is sticking out or is it more flat? Is the forehead tall and high, or is it more sloped back? And just even the size and shape of the brain case. So all those things kind of help us reconstruct what early humans would've looked like.
Gale Robertson:
That is so cool. And Nate, well this is one thing that we noticed about the characters too, in "The Croods: A New Age," is that these families look different.
Nate Wragg:
And when you look at Phil and Grug next to each other, you can see those choices that we made in the design that kind of echo what Briana was mentioning. Grug to the right, his brain maybe isn't as farly as evolved as say, Phil's, who's got a little bit of a larger brain case, as you mentioned, up there in his skull. But even when you look at Phil, even though he's got a little bit of style to his stance. He's more of an upright walker than say, Grug, was. And that was one of the fun things that the animators took advantage of along with our design of the characters. Is you'll see the Croods will a lot of times explore and walk around almost on all fours, dragging their arms a little bit more prehistorically than say, the Bettermans would, as they're sort of casually strolling around the Betterman farm.
Gale Robertson:
Great. All right, moving on.
Briana Pobiner:
All right. So opposite that skull wall in our exhibit is the only original fossil that we have on display. And so yes, we have lots of fossil replicas, but it's very exciting for us and we can maybe take a closer look at this. So this skeleton is actually a real Neanderthal fossil. It's the only Neanderthal fossil on display anywhere in North America and actually in the entire western hemisphere. And it's a really special opportunity to get to see an original human fossil. This one is between about 45,000 and 35,000 years old, and it's one of 10 Neanderthal skeletons found alongside hundreds of stone tools at a place called Shanidar Cave in Iraq.
Gale Robertson:
Very cool.
Briana Pobiner:
Thank you. Yes. It's a special opportunity even for a scientist to get to be kind of in the same room with an early human fossil. So we'll turn the corner again and we'll look down at the corridor at the second half of the exhibit. You can see a bronze sculpture here of a mother Neanderthal, who's crouched down, scraping an animal hide to make it into clothing, while her toddler son watches her and kind of even imitates her with his own little scrap of animal hide. And so we have evidence for this behavior.
We have the kinds of tools that Neanderthals made to actually scrape hide. Their teeth are often worn in a slanted way that makes us infer that they probably used their teeth as tools. I'm not sure that we know about imitation, but we certainly see this even beyond humans. That the young of lots of different kinds of animals like to watch and imitate and learn from their parents.
All right. So we'll keep going and look closer at the display on the right hand side. So this part of the exhibit is all about creating a world of symbols, and that means things like language, art, paintings, sculpture, music, basically everything creative. So in a few minutes, we're going to take a closer look at a few things on display, which you can see here. And then as we keep moving on, we're also going to take a look at some of the artifacts here, right outside our display of cave art from around the world.
Gale Robertson:
Great. So we did have an interesting question that came up in the Q&A, is the movie fact or fiction? So that's a great question, especially because we are talking about some real scientific evidence that we find that lets us know about ancient humans. But yeah, Nate, can you talk more about.
Nate Wragg:
Well, the movie is not fact, it is fiction, of course. It's animated. But that's not to say that we didn't reference a lot of things that actually exist in nature, existed through prehistoric humans and how they lived and evolved. And so as Briana will sort of lead us through this next section, and we'll get to see some of the real things that actually existed, we'll be able to talk about our cartoon logic spins on what we did to bring it to real life on the big screen, but really sort have a little bit of fun with it along the way. So that it did feel familiar, but unfortunately the Croods world didn't exactly happen.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah. And actually this is a really interesting point. There is a lot of creativity that happens in science. You have to be creative in the questions that you ask, but there's also art that is informed by science. And this is one thing that I love hearing Nate talk about, is that they were inspired to create these landscapes. They didn't want it to be too crazy so that it's unbelievable, but it is this imaginary world that is like an aside to ours, but it has some familiar aspects of it. And so it's a really cool juxtaposition of art informed by science, and science that could be informed by art.
And so what we're going to be talking about and focusing a little bit more in the next section of this program, is how human creativity, we have evidence of it in ancient humans from thousands and thousands of years ago, and Briana's going to talk about that, and a lot of that is related to what we see in the movie. And so we thought that was a really cool thing to share with you. So we'll move forward on that. But great questions, people. I'm so happy to hear you guys thinking about what we're talking about. So Nate, in "The Croods: A New Age" movie, there were several props and scenes that show how humans in the Croods movie express themselves. So what are we going to look at first?
Nate Wragg:
I think we're going to look at a little bit of art here. Here you can see art that Guy sort of put on this rock in his promise stone that he gave to Eep. And so we sort took an opportunity to think back about, what would somebody really early on in prehistoric times actually have had the tools to use? And so we thought maybe some kind of stone or primitive crayon of some sort that he could have scratched onto a rock, that sort of felt like a nice little illustration of him and Eep. And so that's what we used for the movie to be able to tell that part of the story. But from what I understand from Briana, a lot of that is actually true in the way that ancient people used those tools. Correct?
Briana Pobiner:
That's right.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah. So we'll move on to the next slide, which shows some of this evidence.
Briana Pobiner:
So we actually have evidence in the museum that connects to that promise stone, in a sense. So these are pictures of the world's oldest crayons. And these lumps of pigment or color are made of red ochre and black hematite, and were found at a site called Twin Rivers in Zambia. Okay. So now we have a poll question for you, friends. How old do you think these ancient crayons are? Are they 250 years old, are they 25,000 years old or are they 250,000 years old?
I see votes coming in. It looks like people are in the thousands range. A lot of people are saying 25,000, 250,000. We'll give it maybe about five more seconds so people can vote. It looks like it's getting tied between 25,000 and 250,000. Excellent. All right. So we'll do 3, 2, 1, and we will close the poll.
All right. So 250,000 won out. And you are right. So these ancient crayons are 250,000 years old; that's a quarter of a million years old. You can see the flattened areas on these pigments. They're signs of grinding or rubbing, telling us that they were held and used basically like kind of a big chunky crayon. So ancient humans used pigments, particularly red and black, to mark objects like the promise stone, where Guy drew in red on that stone to give to Eep. They drew on cave walls and they might have even drawn on their own skin.
Gale Robertson:
That's so cool. And we also have another reference to this type of expression where you're drawing with crayon. In this next clip, we have Guy and Eep who are upset at each other, and they're expressing this anger through drawing.
Nate Wragg:
Yeah. And we used Guy's stone around his neck, which we'll talk a little bit later, to kick this off in the movie. And again, I think it speaks to what Briana was talking about with these primitive stones used for early art.
Gale Robertson:
All right. Oops, that's not the right one. We already saw that one. Sorry, everyone. Let me get to the, right, here it is.
Guy:
Guess it's just me, with my thoughts. Travelogue, literally I'm traveling in a log. So it's been a while, a little update. Remember that tomorrow, the one I spent my whole life looking for, well, turns out the girl I love wants nothing to do with it or me. Girls, very, very complicated.
Eep:
Dear diary, hey, it's me. Remember what I said about fate? Well, fate's dumb and a liar. Fate thinks it's better than you. Fate wants to stay with.
Guy:
The Bettermans. They're amazing. Have you seen their tree house?
Eep:
What's so great about living in a tree?
Guy:
Showers, instant fire, so much food and.
Eep:
Privacy. Well, one thing's clear, it's over.
Guy:
Over.
Eep:
Fine.
Guy:
Fine.
Eep:
Who cares?
Guy:
Not me.
Gale Robertson:
All right. So I thought it was interesting because in that clip we didn't just see the red pigment, what else did we see being used?
Nate Wragg:
Well, from an art standpoint, we tried to be a little creative with our color planning. So we used the Betterman sort of bluestone, which we'll get into for all of Guy's diary entries. And we took a little bit more creative liberty with natural colors and tones that may have been found more commonly in the Croodaceous for Eep's portion of the diary. But that was our direction for the movie.
Gale Robertson:
Great. Well, let me get back to the PowerPoint because I believe Briana has another artifact to show us.
Briana Pobiner:
I do. And so we saw more than just red pigment being used to draw in that clip. So evidence backs this up. So here's an example of how other materials were used to draw with. Ancient humans used charcoal or basically burnt wood to create this painting on a stone plaque from a cave called Apollo 11 in Namibia. This is some of the oldest representational art, which is art that represents something real like a tree in a landscape, or an animal in the world. It's dated somewhere between 60 (thousand) and 40,000 years old. So this charcoal figure represents some kind of animal, I think, although some people think that the hind legs might be human.
Gale Robertson:
Cool. Well, it's so interesting to see that drawing and charcoal was a way for ancient humans to communicate. So we're going to transition to another way of expressing yourselves, and this is through what someone wears. So we're going to start this section off with a clip from the movie. And I want you guys to notice, is there something different about Guy?
Eep:
Hi, I'm Eep. In my defense.
Gale Robertson:
I am sorry. I am not getting my videos right. Okay, here we go.
Eep:
Dad, relax. It's been one night and a little change can be ... Guy?
Guy:
Hey.
Grug:
Guy?
Eep:
Wow. You're you, but you don't look like you.
Gale Robertson:
What'd guys notice? Nate, talk to us about what we saw in that.
Nate Wragg:
Well, what we saw was sort of the first sort of introduction to the Betterman blue stone, which we assume the family would have collected or gathered somewhere around their property. And so with that image and with that design choice, we used as an opportunity to kind of unify the family. And for a story perspective, help Guy feel like he was starting to maybe assimilate and join the Betterman family, and sort of detach a little bit away from the Croods.
Gale Robertson:
And we have another image of the family wearing this color. Briana, what did you have to show us that relates to this?
Briana Pobiner:
So let's see what we have in our PowerPoint. All right. So do you want to show the image of the Bettermans wearing the blue stone? There we go. Yeah.
Nate Wragg:
Yeah. So here you can see they all have the same sort of material stone, but they've sort of carved it and shaped it into different types of jewelry, whether it's a necklace or Hope has the earrings and Dawn has the smallest sort of pendant.
Gale Robertson:
Great. And then we have an artifact from our museum.
Briana Pobiner:
We do. So I have a question for our friends at home. Tell us in the Q&A, what do you notice about these shells? What do you observe on them that might be a little bit different than shells that you might have found before?
Gale Robertson:
All right. Tell us in the Q&A, what do you notice about these shells? Okay, we have a lot of great observations about holes.
Briana Pobiner:
Okay.
Gale Robertson:
Holes, holes, holes. Holes for a string, question mark?
Briana Pobiner:
So let's talk about that. Great observations. And so this is a reconstruction of a shell-bead necklace. So those are absolutely holes for a string. This is a 30,000-year-old shell-bead necklace, the image in the middle. So those 10 shells on the bottom are from a site called Cro-Magnon in France. And we know that the shells were used as a necklace not only because of those holes that you noticed that we know were not made naturally, but because some of the holes even have wear marks from string probably made out of some kind of natural material. You could see those wear marks under a microscope. That lets us know that these shells were strung into a necklace.
And so while the necklace string didn't preserve, it left an impression on many of the shell beads. And then the two shell beads that you see on the left are the world's oldest known shell beads from a site called Skhul in Israel, dated to sometime between 135,000 and 100,000 years ago. So wearing jewelry to express yourself about maybe what group you belong to, or some kind of artistic tradition, is something that goes pretty far back in our prehistoric traditions.
Gale Robertson:
That is amazing. What an amazing discovery. So going back to the world of Croods, one thing that we noticed about the first movie clip that we watched, and that viewers might have noticed at home and this and we're switching gears here, was the really interesting imaginary creatures that lived in the Croodaceous period. Nate, tell us about those animals.
Nate Wragg:
Yeah. So that was a fun concept that came out of the development of the first Crood movie. And we wanted to expand on those sort of very playful ideas. Here we see a Narwalrus in the front left center of the frame, which is a narwhal and a walrus combined. Which if you've seen the movie, they live around the farm in these sort of Betterman blue lagoons. Phil oftentimes will sort of ride them almost like a little bit of a boat that sort of cruises around the property on their lazy river.
But basically what we tried to do was sort of imagine, from a creative standpoint, what would be some fun sort of animal mashups or creatures that could have existed, that could have either been really cute or really playful? But generally a lot of them felt sort of born out of those prehistoric times. So I believe we have a collection of some of our Croodaceous creatures, and here you can see our sort of playful timeline that shows where the Croodaceous period sits in time.
But if we take a closer look, you can see some of the characters and creatures that you may have seen in the film. We've got the moomoth up to the far right, which is a prehistoric cow-mammoth. We've got the wolf spiders, we've got the punch monkeys, a land shark, which doesn't sound like a good idea at all from a safety standpoint. But there's just a lot of really fun playful opportunities for us when we're designing a movie like this, to bring these types of creatures to life.
Gale Robertson:
And one thing I liked about the movie is that they surprise you. They're peppered all about. And the pig gators, I don't know why, but I really like the pig gators too. All right. And so these Croodaceous animals, we've actually seen some evidence of this type of creativity in the past, right, Briana?
Briana Pobiner:
Exactly. So let's look at the next slide and see, okay, we want to ask you again in the Q&A. So friends at home, what kind of animal do you think was carved in this figurine? Does this look like more than one kind of animal like we just saw in some of the Croodaceous creatures? Maybe half one thing or half something else? So tell us what you think in the Q&A.
Gale Robertson:
All right. Nate, someone said, where is Wigasus?
Nate Wragg:
Wigasus is probably on Gran's head still, rather than in the lineup, or flying around somewhere. I don't know, she's crazy.
Gale Robertson:
All right. Well, we also have some people commenting. They think it looks like a bear and a human. Let's see. Bear and a lion, bear and a wolf.
Briana Pobiner:
All right.
Gale Robertson:
Very interesting. Yeah.
Briana Pobiner:
Good observations. So a lot of sort of predator-type observations. So this figurine is from a place called Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in Germany. And it was carved from mammoth ivory or mammoth tusk. It's 35,000 years old and it's the world oldest known zoomorphic, or animal shaped, sculpture. And it combines human traits with the features of an animal, probably a cat. So it's actually nicknamed the Lion Man figurine, although some researchers actually think it represents a female.
And so the various sizes, shapes, and styles of animal, human and other figurines that were created by ancient humans beginning at least 35,000 years ago, really showed that different groups made them. And the act of just creating the figurines and the beliefs behind them may have united these groups. This particular design is found on other objects from this part of Europe, and it may have had special meaning for the ancient humans living there.
This individual figurine was found in a cave chamber alongside bone tools, carved antlers and jewelry, including beads and even animal teeth made into pendants. And when archaeologists actually replicated the Lion Man figurine, making it with the kinds of stone tools available at the time it was made, it took them more than 370 hours. If you're working 10 hours a day, that's more than a month to actually just carve this figurine. So someone worked really hard to make this sculpture. It must have been important to the group that made it.
Gale Robertson:
That is so fascinating, because you said that it was made from mammoth ivory.
Briana Pobiner:
That's right.
Gale Robertson:
That is so cool. So archaeologists now went through the process of trying to figure out how long it took, that is such a cool thing. And to understand that, to spend that much time on this made this even more meaningful. Very, very cool. So to finish out our tour, we have an image of a cave that is in the Hall of Human Origins that has different kinds of cave art. Briana, can you tell us about this?
Briana Pobiner:
Yeah, I would love to. So let's take a look at that cave. So this is an amalgamation of cave and rock art from around the world, but I particularly want to talk about these images or this drawing right here. And maybe we can take a closer look. That's great. So these are cave lion paintings. The originals were found in Chauvet Cave in France, and are dated to somewhere between 32- and 30,000 years old. And there were some of the hundreds of animal paintings found in this cave that date back to more than 36,000 years ago.
When they were first discovered, people found them by looking at them in a strong, steady light like shining a flashlight. And so they look like multi-headed lions. But when the people who discovered them wanted to show them to local government officials, they brought actual torches with flickering firelight into the cave. And guess what? If you hold flickering firelight up in front of those lions, they look like they move.
30,000 years ago people were using flickering firelight to create the world's earliest animations. The entire 32-foot-long painted scene that these lions come from, includes the lions as stalking predators and they're stalking bison and other prey animals. And later on in the scene the lions look like they're lunging at their prey. So they use multiple superimposed heads, legs and tails on the natural shape of the stone to make them look like they're running. It's fantastic.
Gale Robertson:
That is fantastic. And can you remind me again, what does that cave art date back to?
Briana Pobiner:
So this particular drawing dates back to between 32- and 30,000 years ago, but cave art in general in the world dates back to, now a little more than 40,000 years ago.
Gale Robertson:
Wow. So this is amazing. So this is an early, early representation of animation. And it's such a cool tie because we're here enjoying and kind of learning more about animation now. But this is such a great way to end the tour, of showing this early type of animation. And Nate, we have one last clip because I know that one theme that was running through the Croods movie was this expression with art and drawing. And so while I cue this clip up, can you talk about what this opening scene is about?
Nate Wragg:
Yeah. So this opening scene is how we start "Croods: A New Age" off. We don't realize it, but we're in Eep's diary. And so it's all in sort of a cave-painted style of animation and we're getting to just sort of check in with her, see what her life's all about. She's in the middle of a teenage romance while trying to balance that with living with her parents. So there's challenges whether you're in the Croodaceous time period or modern time period, that that presents, But it was sort of, again, it was a playful way to call back to an ancient style of art, but with a modern sort of animated spin on it.
Gale Robertson:
Awesome. Well, let's watch that clip.
Eep:
Hi, I'm Eep. In my defense, I had been living in a cave my whole life and I didn't really come across other people very often, let alone a boy. And to think the only two teenagers in the world and we found each other. It's like fate brought us together. My whole family loved him, except for dad. But eventually Guy won him over.
Guy:
Fire.
Grug:
Fire.
Eep:
And now we're traveling the world searching for a perfect place to call home, a place Guy calls Tomorrow.
Gale Robertson:
Awesome. I love those drawings. So this has been such an amazing tour of both the Hall of Human Origins and the world of "The Croods: A New Age." And I'm sure there are a ton of questions from our viewers. And we've already started to talk about some of the questions that they've had that related to what we were talking about right then and there. But let's go into the Q&A section and answer some questions. I know there was one question that came up, and I don't see it. So this is related to you, Briana, how does looking at bones help archaeologists figure out what people used to eat?
Briana Pobiner:
That's an awesome question, and it's a core part of my research. So when I look at fossil bones, what I'm really looking for on those animal bones are butchery marks left by early humans. So ancient humans used stone to make sort of basic knives in a sense, make sharp edges. And using those sharp edges to cut meat or to scrape meat off, or even to sometimes bash open bones to get at the marrow inside, that leaves marks or traces on bones. And so those are really the key that let me know that animals were eaten at a prehistoric site as opposed to just having died there naturally. That's a great question.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah, that is great. We have another question that is actually also related to the core part of Nate's job. How long did it take for you to make a movie like this?
Nate Wragg:
We spent about two and a half years making "Croods: A New Age" from start to finish. It's not all crazy busy the whole time. It's usually a slow build. We're coming up with ideas and characters and creature brainstorm and then it gets into all the different departments and animation, and that's when it really gets pretty busy. But about two and a half years was how long we worked on this movie.
Briana Pobiner:
That's actually a great coincidence because it took us two and a half years to put together the Hall of Human Origins actually.
Nate Wragg:
Wow.
Briana Pobiner:
Yep.
Gale Robertson:
That's cool. And there's a lot of moving pieces in putting an exhibition together too, so very cool.
Briana Pobiner:
Absolutely.
Gale Robertson:
This is a question for Nate, what was your favorite part to illustrate?
Nate Wragg:
I would have to say, the creatures are just a blast to draw. I think every artist on our show took a turn drawing some different creatures and wild ones. I myself was lucky enough to design Wigasus, he was on my to-do list. So if you like Wigasus, then you liked one of the drawings I did. But yeah, I would say working on the creatures, it's just such a fun expression of imagination. And then when you get to pass it off to all the other departments and get to see animation, bring them to life, it's quite a treat.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah, that's really cool. So this is actually an interesting question, and this actually came up as we were designing this program together with Briana and Nate. How do we feel about watching a movie where things aren't true? And this is for you, Briana. I'm considering that this is something that you study and we study at the museum.
Briana Pobiner:
Sure. No, that's a great question. So I really appreciated what Nate said in the beginning, he's not trying to make a documentary, in a sense, about prehistory with this movie. It's really meant to be creative and fantastical and have some grounding in evidence. But I enjoy it because it is so much fun. So I'm not looking for, well, I think this was wrong and I think this didn't exist. I enjoy watching these kinds of movies. My family had a great time watching this movie in particular.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah, I do have to say that I know that Toby's been trying to get you to make Croods 3, Nate.
Briana Pobiner:
Yes, my nine-year-old is going to start a petition I think for Croods 3.
Gale Robertson:
[inaudible 00:46:40] in the chat.
Nate Wragg:
Sounds like fun.
Gale Robertson:
And Nate, actually, when we were talking before, I loved how you were talking about how you guys weren't just going all over the place. You guys had set some rules so that it wouldn't be so unusual or just extra, extra-ordinary. And I thought that was an interesting way to make sure that there were some parameters in it.
Nate Wragg:
Yeah. We found that when the environments or the characters became too either monster-like or alien-like, we no longer felt that it was possible they could have existed on Earth. And so that was one of our big touchstones, was to always make sure, does this feel sourced and referenced enough from things we're familiar with or we knew existed or even possibly still exist? And then we can play with maybe the shape of it changed or it sort of lensed differently.
Here we have the wolf spiders, where we know wolf spiders to be very tiny and they climb around on walls. But in this case, they're basically running through alpine forests and climbing cliffs more in the way that we know a traditional wolf just with eight legs. So we always tried to find that balance that it was playful and fantastical, but not alien.
Gale Robertson:
And the wolf spider in the movie is terrifying, but ends up being cute and cuddly.
Nate Wragg:
Yes.
Gale Robertson:
Okay. This is actually an interesting question too from Helen, how often did different evolutions of humans exist at the same time? So we saw that in the movies, there were two types.
Briana Pobiner:
Actually, it's a really unusual time in our evolutionary history to just have one kind of human. So modern humans, our species evolved about 300,000 years ago. There were a few other kinds of early humans of different now extinct species that were around at the same time. Throughout most of human evolutionary history, there was more than one species of human on the planet. So that was more common than it was uncommon.
Gale Robertson:
Wow, that's really interesting. Wow. All right, let's see. Here's a question about the crayon: how did you know that the crayon was 250,000 years old?
Briana Pobiner:
Yeah, that's a great question. So there's a variety of different dating techniques that are used to figure out how old artifacts or fossils are. Actually, most of the time what's dated is not the object itself like the artifact or the fossil, but what is often dated is the sediment or the layer that the artifact is found in. And so there's probably about a dozen different dating techniques that we can use to figure out how old these different objects are. I don't know exactly for those crayons in particular how they were dated. Carbon dating, which is a type of dating that a lot of people have heard of only goes back maybe 40 or 50,000 years. And so a different dating technique would've been used for the crayons.
Gale Robertson:
Okay. Yeah. And someone else, Audrey, had another question along the same lines, but she also wanted to know about the cave art, how that was dated.
Briana Pobiner:
Yeah. So there's a couple different ways that cave art is dated. Sometimes you can actually, so there are structures called stalactites or stalagmites in caves. And sometimes those can grow on top of art and you can figure out how old those are. Sometimes you can, if cave art is made using charcoal, you can actually date the charcoal and figure out how old that is. So again, there's a couple of different kinds of techniques to use to date cave art.
Gale Robertson:
Great. This one is for Nate. This is actually, this person knows their Croods movie. Guy looks more like the new humans in "Croods: The New Age." Was this planned when the first movie came out for his character design?
Nate Wragg:
So I think there was always the design, in the first film, that Guy was a little more evolved than the Croods. He was sort of a bigger thinker, a little bit of an inventor, always had a good idea. And I think we even see Grug get a little uncomfortable with that in the first movie. So we kind of used that to our advantage with the second film, in terms of what that would be like for Guy and the Croods themselves to come across a family that maybe resembled more sort of Guy's evolution.
But he basically, he looks the same as he does in Croods 1 as he does in "Croods: A New Age." Other than just modifications, slight modifications and updates to the design that we did with all the characters to make them as appealing, and as based in our sort of wide range of modern tools that we're able to use in an animated movie now, than we were, say, eight years ago.
Gale Robertson:
Cool. Yeah. Great. Another question: how did the creators of Croods think about and address skin color? How did that thinking relate to what is known about ancient skin color?
Nate Wragg:
Yeah. So from our perspective, when we were making the film, we actually have all of the characters are within a three or four degree value of skin tone. And we sort of thought of it more as an early skin tone, maybe one that was sort of not cave dwelling, but more out in the open. And so that was really how we approached that. We were trying to find a balance where, and you'll even notice if you look at their wardrobes, we weren't trying to speak to any specific culture or ethnicity, we just wanted to speak to a comedic take on what early people may have looked like.
So with the Croods, they're wearing pelts, which sounds like, from what Briana mentioned, was quite often the case that was seen with early people, and what they would wear. And then with the Bettermans, we had a little bit more fun. They're dressed a little bit like they're living on vacation. But again, still not based out of any specific region of the world other than more just, life is easy for them and so it's a little bit more relaxed than just killing something that maybe was trying to kill you and wearing it's pelt.
Gale Robertson:
Right. Yeah. We didn't see any kill circles by them. Actually, there was another question about, let me look at it. Thank you so much for answering that skin color question. I wanted to ask Briana, what do we know about skin color?
Briana Pobiner:
Yeah, that's a great question. So the only way we can know about skin color in the past is through DNA or genetics. And we only have ancient DNA from modern humans, from Neanderthals, and species called Denisovans. And so we know that modern humans, our species evolved in Africa. And given that people who live in Africa today have dark skin, we assume that that was the case for the early humans and modern humans that evolved in Africa.
We know based on ancient DNA that Neanderthals probably had lighter skin. They also lived in Europe and Western Asia during very cold kind of ice-age times. And so just like modern people, when modern humans migrated into more northern latitudes, skin color is just an adaptation to basically UV light. And it's kind of a balance between needing to synthesize vitamin D, and also needing to protect our skin from UV rays. And so there's a really beautiful gradation of skin color from darker near the equator, to kind of lighter near more northern or southern latitudes.
Gale Robertson:
Cool. Great. We did have a couple of times this question come up, Nate, what is Wigasus?
Nate Wragg:
What type of creature or just in general?
Gale Robertson:
I'm assuming these are possibly people that have not watched the movie, so we should explain.
Nate Wragg:
Sure. So spoiler alert ...
Gale Robertson:
... Yeah, I was going to say spoiler alert ...
Nate Wragg:
Spoiler alert, plug your ears if you don't want to know what Wigasus is. But Wigasus is actually a creature that everybody, the Croods included, discovers is Gran's hair. It's a creature living on Gran's head, that at a certain point in the movie when all these different secrets are coming out, Gran basically lifts it off her head and it starts chasing Sandy around the table. And so we sort of mashed up what would be a wig and a flying squirrel and a weasel, something that could look both cute and scary depending on how the animators wanted to pose and give the character an expression.
Gale Robertson:
And this shows you the personality of my youngest daughter; she loves Wigasus. All right. So we have time for one more question, and this is for both of you, what was your favorite scene from the movie?
Briana Pobiner:
I'm going to let Nate go first.
Nate Wragg:
Sure. Well, I think one of my favorite scenes in the film, there's a moment where Dawn and Eep are on a bit of a joy ride, I mentioned it a little bit in terms of referencing Yellowstone, and we get to see them just explore the landscape as they're becoming new friends. And one of the great things about, I feel like, in the Croods world that we get to do every day when we're working on the movie, is we're designing and creating new creatures and landscapes from our imagination.
And so this is an opportunity where the characters and the audience get to discover this forest that looks like a forest, but actually is these giant butterfly trees that end up flying away. So it's a nice opportunity for everybody to kind of be in the same boat, or on Chunky "the death cat," at the same time and kind of experiencing the world in that same moment.
Briana Pobiner:
Yeah. It's a good question. I guess my answer, there's a scene or kind of a sequence in the movie that has real kind of feminist undertones, where the women in the movie are kind of leading the charge to save the day. And so I won't really give any spoilers, but I will say that that is probably my favorite scene.
Gale Robertson:
That's a pretty awesome scene too. Yeah. Well, I enjoyed watching that movie too. It was so fun. And to go on this journey with both of you to delve a little bit more deeper into it is just so amazing. So we are ending our Q&A there, but we have a couple more minutes of things to talk about. One thing that I did want to know is that someone in the Q&A was saying that they wanted to be an animator when they grew up.
Nate Wragg:
There's plenty of animation schools in-person and online for any of you artists out there that want to be in animation. And if you think about it, the world always needs more animated films, family animated films. So there's a lot of work out there If you want to be an animator.
Gale Robertson:
That's great to know. My 10-year-old would love to hear that.
Nate Wragg:
And it's a fun job too.
Gale Robertson:
Awesome. So I hope all of this talk about creativity and expression and getting to see all of these amazing artifacts and artwork, has gotten you, viewers at home, interested in creating some of your own art, because now it's your turn. We have activities on our website. We actually have four that are related to this program right now.
We have created an imaginary animal, so we've talked a lot about that, about the different mashups you could do, thinking about characteristics that you want to represent. We also have an activity about creating natural jewelry. You saw the beads both in the Croods movie and in our exhibition that were made by natural materials. Go on a nature walk in your neighborhood or in the park and see what you can make into a necklace or some type of wearable art. We also have activities about creating your own cave dwelling, and you can draw your own art in your cave.
And then here is a picture of an example of some hand prints for your families to make. And so the instructions are of for these are all on our website. And so let me show that. This is a website, it's a landing page that has a lot more activities. So it has the four that we talked about, but it also has videos if you want to explore the world of ancient humans a little bit more. And we have other activities.
And for added incentive, because one thing that we love to do is we love to see your artwork, and so when you do any of the activities on our website, please snap a photo and send us your creations to our family programs email. It's NMNH-FamilyPrograms@si.edu. And yeah, please send those along. And for added incentive and to celebrate the release of "The Croods: A New Age" on digital and Blu-ray today, the first 100 families to send us a photo of either your hand print or your imaginary animal, whichever activity you would decide to do, you will receive a free digital download for the movie, "The Croods: A New Age."
All right, so my friends, our time is up for today's program. Thank you so much for joining us at home. We hope you enjoyed learning about the evidence and artifacts that we have in our collections and in the Hall of Human Origins exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History, that help us understand what life was like for ancient humans. I also hope that you enjoy learning about the art and creativity behind the movie, "The Croods: A New Age," which is available now on digital and Blu-Ray.
And judging from the questions that we got from our viewers, it sounds like we got some people thinking about these connections, and so I'm super excited to hear that. I hope whenever you guys watch a movie, you think about, what are some of the thoughts go that go into creating this? And hopefully one day you'll be able to visit our museum and visit the Hall of Human Origins and really think about, how do we know what we know about things that aren't existing anymore? Well, we have evidence and things to look at.
So thanks again to Universal Pictures Home Entertainment and Dreamworks Animation for their support for this free public educational program. And an extra huge thank you to our special guests for bringing such a fun and truly unique program. Thank you so much Briana, and thank you so much, Nate. This was amazing.
Briana Pobiner:
You're welcome. Thanks for having us.
Nate Wragg:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Gale Robertson:
Okay. So grownups, there will be a short survey for you to fill out off the program. So once you leave the meeting or the program, you will be getting that popping up. We love to hear your feedback about our programs because we want to build our online programming, and so please give us as much feedback as you can. Thank you so much for joining us again, and we look forward to seeing you at one of our online programs again. Bye.
Briana Pobiner:
Bye.
