Movie of the Week: Quest for Fire (1981)

This film is based on a 1911 novel, La Guerre de Feu  by J.-H. Rosney aine.  It does makes quite a lot of imaginative leaps in terms of evolutionary development and the co-existence of different human-ish species.

It is the Ice Age, and there are several groups, homo erectus and homo neanderthalis.  After an attack on the homo neanderthalis tribe, where they lose their fire, this group go on a quest to find fire (something that they do not know how to make.  They meet a woman from a homo sapiens sapiens group.  From this woman, one of the men in the group learns comedy and laughter, love and companionship, and, how to make fire. 

 This film then, imagines “what if” three early human groups could have existed at the same time, and shared culture and genetic material.   Given recent discoveries about the possibility of interbreeding between homo neanderthalis and homo sapiens sapiens, it may be worth a look.