Spotlight on Students: Analysis of the Anthropological Subject Matter of "Encino Man"

The following is a student post provided by Murdoc Brickel, a student in the Spring 2015 Introduction to Physical Anthropology course:

            In this cultural study I chose to look at Encino Man, the 1992 movie with Pauly Shore, and Brendan Fraser.  This movie had several things that were slightly less than accurate according to the points of early human evolution that we learned in class.  Aside for the overdose of the nineties, the main character Link who is played by Brendan Fraser is a caveman who is found inside of ice in the backyard of an Encino California home.  He is thawed out in a shed by the two high school students that found him Dave played by Sean Astin and Stoney played by Pauly Shore.  After which the two high school students enroll Link into high school and acclimate him to become a modern man. 

            One of the first things I would like to address is that they find him perfectly preserved in ice within the ground.  Considering that the environmental situations of the ice not melting in southern California seems improvable at best.  Given the average temperature of around sixty degrees  for Encino, California (Encino, CA) I doubt that a block of ice would perfectly preserve a human specimen to the point to which he could just be thawed out in a shed.  Despite the fact that unless he was instantly frozen at all points of his body when ice fell upon him in his ice cave, perfect reanimation would not be possible.  He would have more than likely suffered necrotic frost bite in several if not all of his limbs and large portions of his body.  Also it is pointed out that “he is a caveman” because while digging the pool in which they found him they discovered cave paintings on the wall of the pool pit (Encino Man).  They just chose to ignore these things until they found a lump of ice within the pit.

            There is also the factor of the amount of contagions and diseases that we have grown immune to.  Having just thawed out from a millennia ago Link would not have any natural immunities to these diseases or pollutants in the air.  It would have more than likely been extremely difficult for him to breath, or for his body to be able to properly process the air which we have grown accustomed to.  If he did manage to breath and not get poisoned, he would likely contract one of the millions of diseases that we carry with us on our bodies that we have grown immune to (Saey, 2008, pg 174).  We have seen evidence of this when the colonialists came to the Americas, and subsequently killed many people by just interacting with them.  The indigenous peoples of the Americas still had thousands of years of acclimation to disease in general.  So someone from prehistoric times would not have these immunities within their systems.  This possibly could mean that Link would have contracted several diseases at once and died a very painful and confusing death.  Perhaps he would not contract diseases from Dave and Stoney, but surely he would have become infected whence they took him into the high school and to an amusement park. 

            If for some reason he were still alive long enough to interact with the students and society in general, he may not have been able to pick up English as quickly as two to three days.  Besides the horrible illogical structuring that is English, he may have not physically been able to speak it.  Modern people have changed physically in the 43,000 years since the early years of the Homo sapiens sapiens (Cro-Magnon, 2015).  Not only have our bodies become more acclimated to our environments according to Allen's, Bergman's, and Gloger's rules (Dr. Boston, Lectures, spring 2015).  Along with these physical changes our vocal chords and several other smaller changes along time have helped us to better communicate with each other.  These adaptations were brought about through the express use of these regions of our bodies including our brains and tongues.  So if Link could understand English within hours, he may not have been able to speak it.  It is highly doubtful that within months he would have been able to deliver a speech with the ease and grasp of a native English speaker to a student body.

            Another glaring contradiction with the movie would be that Link would more than likely not be white, especially not nearly as pasty white as Brendan Fraser is in this movie.  He may have been slightly hairier as well.  We can observe this within people of the world today, in that people who generationally live in colder climates have thicker and more fuller body hair.  Providing that he survived the ice, the bacteria, and the language barriers he would not be a hairless guy with pasty white skin.  He would have more than likely been the 'ideal' man though in that he was tall, dark, and hair-some. 

            In conclusion this movie is a work of fiction.  It is not meant to be scientifically accurate, or historically correct.  Although one positive point of this movie is that it is entertaining, and comical.  This movie while it glosses over several semi-important points, it does illuminate that people were around a long time ago and that we are actually fairly close to the model that was running around then.  The overdose on the message of humanity and decentness that exists within the human species throughout time is not a negative message though.

References

Photo Credit – cover page -http://www.sporcle.com/games/ipitydafoo/brendan-fraser-movies-slideshow

Cro-Magnon. (n.d.). Retrieved May, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cro-Magnon

Encino Man [Motion picture]. (1992). United States of America: Encino Man Productions.

Boston, Christine Dr. ; Lectures ; Truckee Meadows Community College; Spring 2015

Encino, CA (91436) Weather History for November 22nd, 1992. (n.d). Retrieved May, 2015, from http://farmersalmanac.com/weather-history/91436/1992/11/22/

Saey, T. H. (2008). It's a jungle on there: Skin samples contain rich diversity of bacteria. Science News, 174(12), 11.