Goofs for
10,000 BC (2008) More at IMDb Pro »

• Factual errors: Hard to say how accurate the makers of a film like this might be trying to be, at least in a historical sense. Since this is obviously not a documentary, many "liberties" are taken with historical truth. For example, eighteen foot long sabre tooth tigers didn't exist in this era -- nor did mastodons -- at least not in the areas depicted (Mesopotamia, northeast Africa.) Also, early in the picture we see extraordinary changes in environment(s) after relatively short travel: from snowy, mountainous areas, where no one ever shows any evidence of steam emanating from mouths or noses; suddenly to tropical areas, and then, just as suddenly to desert lands, which later in the film, characters refer to as places which would take a very, very long time to traverse; but in fact the tribe which has just done this appears quite fit, and with not much wear and tear to their clothing.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The terror birds that attacked in the forest lived in South America not Europe, Asia, or Africa.
  
  
• Factual errors: References are made to the "lead bull" of the mammoth herds. Modern day elephants as well as ancient mammoths and mastodons are and were headed by a matriarchal female leader. Bulls never lead the herd.
  
  

• Anachronisms: Not since Raquel Welch was battling the dinosaurs in One Million Years B.C. (1966) were so many anachronistic errors squeezed into one prehistoric-era film: (a) Metalworking - first copper, then bronze, then iron - was not mastered before 5500 BC; (b) Exploitation of horses for human transportation started approximately 4000 BC; (c) The earliest pyramid was erected in Egypt circa 2630 BC; and (d) Mammoths had never been domesticated as pack animals.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The earliest known ships were papyrus reed boats built by the Egyptians about 4000 B.C. The Greeks and Phoenicians didn't begin trading by ship until around 1200 B.C.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Chilli Peppers. Originally from Central and South America. It's diffusion through the world was made by the Portuguese colonists and traders, throughout the Portuguese empire, during the 16th and 17th centuries AD.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Corn. The seeds that one of the African tribesman gives at the end to the hero of the movie are mainly composed of corn seeds... Corn is from America, and wasn't brought to the old world until the 16th century AD.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Men riding on horses. Horses did not become domesticated by man until about 4000 years after the setting of this movie.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The ships with the triangular sails did not appear until the 17th Century AD. Ships of this time were just crude log rafts or dug-out canoes.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The lake in the background during the final scene is completely stationary, despite the prominent appearance of waves which, by their nature, cannot be still.
  
  
• Factual errors: The plants that D'Leh is looking over in one of the later scenes of the movie can neither be beans (which have circular leaves) nor corn (which grows in a more uniformly vertical way), which are the two types of seeds given to him by the North African people in an earlier scene.
  
  
• Factual errors: The tropical forest is too close to the snowed mountains, without any transition between them.
  
  
• Factual errors: The tribes are seen sleeping barely clothed in the desert during night-time. The temperature differences between day and night are known to be enormous in the desert, because the heat cannot be held in, as it is in more temperate climates, due to cloud formations and humidity for instance.
  
  
• Errors in geography: To sail southward on the Nile, sails have to be up to catch the prevailing winds, unlike in the movie where the sails are up and they are going northward. To truly go northward, sails would have to be down to avoid the wind and to let the current move the boats northward.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the leader of the African tribe is telling D'Leh about how his family was taken away, he calls out to his tribesman and you can clearly see a metal molar in his mouth.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Toward the end of the movie inside the Almighty's palace, a scene showed maps printed on paper sitting on top of the table. Obviously paper wasn't invented until much later.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the Last Hunt, the hunters drive the mammoths toward a net trap, and in that drive and D'Leh's fight with the lone mammoth at the end of the drive, the mammoths move in a gait that is most similar to a gallop. Galloping is a unique four-beat, rear-to-front leg gait, like that of horses. But mammoths didn't gallop. They had a knee/leg structure similar to elephants, and like elephants, they would have charged in a stiff-legged run.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the opening scene, where the tribe sees the blue-eyed boy and the tribe leader is thrown back, one of the shocked tribal members can be heard whispering the name "Jesus" in surprise. Yet the events in the movie are supposed to take place 10,000 years before the biblical character by that name was even born.
  
  

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