Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Stone Ages / Stone Age Iceberg (Part 5: 8-10)

Gjantija Temples in Gozo, Malta, 3600-2500 BC, by Bone A and used as the feature image for Wikipedia “Stone Age” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

 

(8) ICE STONE AGE

 

We hunted the mammoth!

As I stated in my top entry for the Paleolithic, the Ice Age is the Stone Age – or rather, the most recent period of glaciation or Pleistocene Epoch, the Ice Age of popular imagination and culture, almost entirely overlaps with the Paleolithic Stone Age.

I have only the most superficial knowledge of human evolution, so I sometimes wonder how much the evolution of hominins depended on the impact of Pleistocene climate changes on Africa – or the evolution of our hominin species, homo sapiens, which occurred entirely within the Pleistocene, or its migration from Africa, similarly depended on that impact.

For that matter, the Stone Age of popular imagination and culture seems predominated by that of Paleolithic homo sapiens – and Neanderthals – in glacial or sub-glacial Europe, perhaps due to the striking imagery of Pleistocene megafauna and the cave art in Europe depicting it.

 

 

(9) FIRE STONE AGE

 

It’s always struck me that no matter how much stone technology was instrumental for or definitive of this period, the Stone Age is something of a misnomer because the truly impactful and game-changing technology was not stone but fire.

Claims for the control of fire by hominins extends almost as far back as that for stone tools or the Stone Age – potentially as early as 1.7 to 2 million years ago.

I’m tempted to substitute the term Cooked Stone Age as opposed to the preceding Raw Stone Age. Certainly, French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss might have agreed with me on that one, given his book The Raw and the Cooked.

But seriously, although the use of fire was not limited to cooking, its use in cooking dramatically changed human food habits – allowing for a much wider range of food, particularly allowing a significant increase in meat consumption, to the extent of biological changes such as smaller teeth and digestive traits.

 

 

(10) MARITIME STONE AGE

 

There’s the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis or Theory, proposing that the ancestors of modern humans diverged from the other great apes by adapting to an aquatic lifestyle.

That hypothesis or theory is highly contested, such that it is generally dismissed by anthropologists or other scholars of human evolution. The true aquatic watershed (heh) of human history might be described as the Maritime Stone Age – for the development of watercraft to allow humans or hominins to conquer the seas and other bodies of water. Indeed, that might date back before homo sapiens to homo erectus, with claims the latter used rafts or similar watercraft to cross straits between landmasses or to islands as early as a million years ago.

The Maritime Stone Age might also be characterized by the migration of humans beyond the African and Eurasian continents to the Americas and Oceania, whether following coastlines of land bridges or island-hopping. For the latter, the maritime achievements of Austronesian expansion and Polynesian navigation used functionally Stone Age technology.

For this concept of the Maritime Stone Age, I was tempted to substitute the Exolithic or Xenolithic – to describe those societies with functionally Stone Age technology, usually tribal hunter-gatherers, that persisted elsewhere as other societies developed into the Bronze Age or beyond, even into the modern period.

Top Tens – Film: Top 10 Animated Films (9) Zootopia

Poster art of the film’s extensive character cast

 

 

(9) ZOOTOPIA

(ZOOTOPIA 1-2 2016-2025 – yes, I’m anticipating the sequel)

 

Who doesn’t love anthropomorphic animals? Of course, Zootopia is a whole world exclusively of anthropomorphic animals (and it won’t be the only such world in my top ten animated films), a world very much like ours but with every other mammal in our place.

Although…when you take it too seriously (and I take my fictional worlds way too seriously), Zootopia is not quite the utopia its name suggests. As Cracked has pointed out, for the sake of a few rabbit sex jokes, Zootopia is about to go post-apocalyptic from total ecological collapse – in about a week or so. “Zootopia is a movie about the brief halcyon days of an imperious city as it remains wilfully blind to its inevitable doom”.

Alternatively, as I have mused before, is The Island of Doctor Moreau the grim backstory of Zootopia? You know, after he unleashed his army of beast-men and women on an unsuspecting humanity…

But enough of that – Zootopia is a film that is equally cute, funny and heartwarming, a “3D computer animated buddy cop comedy mystery adventure film” as cute protagonist rabbit police officer Judy Hopps, pairs up with slick fox con artist Nick Wilde.

The animation is lush and visually spectacular – they developed fur-controlling software (iGroom) – with thoughtful themes for the contemporary society the animal world reflects.

I’m looking forward to the sequel film coming out in 2025.

 

FANTASY OR SF

 

Well perhaps SF with some extensive genetic engineering but I’m going to rank this as fantasy – classic beast fable mode!

 

COMEDY

 

Definitely a comedy – from the odd couple protagonists to gags on animal characteristics as adapted to what would otherwise be an human urban environment.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP-TIER)

Top Tens – History (WW2): Top 10 Nazi-Soviet Wars / Nazi-Soviet War Iceberg (Part 4: 9-10)

German advances during the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa from 22 June 1941 to 25 August 1941 – public domain image map by the History Department of the US Military Academy

 

 

(9) SOVIET-BULGARIAN WAR

 

And now we have the first of two wars that were effectively separate from the Nazi-Soviet war but connected to it.

Bulgaria was an Axis ally of Germany but was careful not to declare war against the Soviet Union and to remain as neutral as possible in Germany’s war with it, although Bulgaria was very much involved as a Germany ally against Greece and Yugoslavia.

I say as neutral as possible because the Bulgarian navy did participate in Axis convoys in the Black Sea as well as skirmishes with the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. Bulgaria also sent delegations of high-ranking officers, including the Chief of General of the Bulgarian Army, to German-occupied territory in the Soviet Union, as demonstration of its commitment to the alliance.

However, Bulgaria’s stance of official neutrality towards the Soviets did not save them from Soviet occupation or installation of a communist government, despite Bulgaria scrambling at the last moment to declare war against Germany. The Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria, such that on 8 September 1944 Bulgaria “was simultaneously at war with four major belligerents of the war: Germany, Britain, the USA, and the USSR”.

Of course, of those four belligerents, only one counted – the Soviet Union, which invaded Bulgaria the following day without resistance by Bulgaria.

 

(10) HUNGARIAN-ROMANIAN WAR

 

The second of two wars effectively separate from the Nazi-Soviet war but connected to it – although the term war is overstating the hostility between them, which did not break out into actual war, at least while both were allies of Germany. Cold war might be a better term.

There was a Hungarian-Romanian war but it was in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, from 13 November 1918 to 3 August 1919. Not surprisingly, Romania won, given that Hungary was one part of the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that had gone down to catastrophic defeat by the Allies.

During the First World War however, it had been Romania that had gone down to catastrophic defeat on the Allied side, although it had a reversal of fortune from the final Allied victory.

That saw Romania gain the longstanding source of hostility between it and Hungary – Transylvania, which had a majority Romanian population but which had been controlled by Hungary, either as a kingdom of itself or as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Another Hungarian-Romanian war loomed as Hungary sought to reclaim Transylvania, but Germany “arbitrated” the cession by Romania to Hungary of Northern Transylvania in August 1940 – obviously favoring Hungary as an ally as opposed to a Romania that was still nominally a British ally by Britain’s military guarantee to Romania (in much the same terms as its guarantee to Poland).

Romania became a German Axis ally under the new fascist government of Antonescu on 23 November 1940 but remained hostile to Hungary, such that Romanian troops in the Soviet Union could not be stationed alongside their Hungarian counterparts for fear of them fighting each other.

Romania under Antonescu apparently considered a war with Hungary over Transylvania an inevitability after German victory over the Soviet Union. As it was, Romania got its war with Hungary as well as Northern Transylvania back – not under Antonescu or as a German ally but on the Allied side fighting alongside the Soviets against the Germans and Hungarians from September 1944.

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Stone Ages / Stone Age Iceberg (Part 4: 6-7)

Gjantija Temples in Gozo, Malta, 3600-2500 BC, by Bone A and used as the feature image for Wikipedia “Stone Age” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

 

(6) GOLDEN STONE AGE

 

Paleo paradise!

Or Neolithic mommy utopia?

“Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains!”

It’s the Golden Stone Age – that recurring rosy-eyed view of the Stone Age or at least our primal past as Garden of Eden, from which it’s all been downhill for humanity afterwards.

No, seriously – I may be caricaturing it somewhat but there has indeed been recurring claims or theories of the Stone Age as ideal or idealized state of humanity, although they differ widely in detail and intellectual rigor (or elements of truth).

There’s probably enough for their own top ten but perhaps the most famous is the French philosopher Rousseau’s state of nature, itself preceded by the longstanding European concept of the noble savage.

Throw in notions of a peaceful prehistory, environmental harmony, Neolithic matriarchy, Marxist primitive communism, Marshall Sahlin’s Stone Age Economics or Original Affluent Society, anarcho-primitivism or so on and you’ve got yourself a heady if eclectic brew.

However, one thing such claims of the Golden Stone Age have in common, consistent with the Stone Age as Garden of Eden, is a fall – although where that fall, well, falls differs on the details where they place the Garden.

A commonly argued one is the horizon between the Paleolithic and Neolithic – with the advent of agriculture, and even more so the state as it moved into the Bronze Age. Personally, I like to see the fall argued in the other direction, with the fall of homo sapiens from Neanderthal paradise or a hominin Garden of Eden. Or to borrow from the words of Grant Morrison writing for the Animal Man comic – “We should never have come down from the trees. We’ve fallen so far and there’s still no bottom”.

 

(7) DARK STONE AGE

 

“The life of man…solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

Bellum omnium contra omnes – “the war of all against all” or Hobbesian state of nature.

It’s the Dark Stone Age, the competing contention to the Golden Stone Age – although I am inclined to believe that the real Stone Age had elements of both.

Claims or theories of the Dark Stone Age are perhaps not quite as varied as those of the Golden Stone Age, with a focus on violence. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously proposed that the original “state of nature” of humanity was inherently violent – the war of all against all in which “the life of man” is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

That proposal of violent prehistory continues – it essentially boils down to those who argue for prehistoric war and violence, potentially at even higher rates than those in recorded history (at least as supported by evidence of violent deaths), against those who argue for more peaceful prehistory. I tend towards the former, influenced by books such as Azar Gat’s War and Human Civilization.

Top Tens – Films: Top 10 Comics Films (10) Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Cinematic poster art

 

 

(10) DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

(2016-2024: DEADPOOL 1-3)

 

Yes – Deadpool and Wolverine wins my wildcard tenth place for best comics film of 2024 but this entry is broader than that, representing the Deadpool film series as a whole, much like my tenth place entry for Dune Part 2 did for the two Dune films in my Top 10 Fantasy & SF Films.

Deadpool was a shot of R-rated adrenaline into the world of comic book films, one of the more wildcard entries for 2016 – and again with its sequel in 2018. The character himself is a wildcard, above all because he knows that he is a fictional character in a comic, or in this case, comic book movie, and engages the audience as such.

The title character, Marvel Comics’ Wade Wilson or Deadpool, is known at the Merc with a Mouth, for his constant wisecracking and breaking the fourth wall, which the scripts of all three films used to good effect. His superhuman ability is his healing factor, although that’s nothing compared to his cinematic resurrection from the mess that was Wolverine: Origins – a mess both generally and also particularly with respect to his character. It’s not easy coming back from a film that notoriously made his character unrecognizable, while being the cinematic equivalent of punching its audience in the head – amongst other things by sewing his trademark mouth shut. Of course, pairing him up with another character with similar superhuman healing factor made for that ability also to be used to good effect in the third film – you know the scene.

And there must be something about the character, or Ryan Reynold’s enthusiasm for playing him, or the writers keeping true to the character, or the direction and production even as the character’s original home Fox was taken over by Disney, but it is one of the few comic film series that remains of consistently good quality.

Yes – the first film will perhaps remain my favorite as is generally the case for me with the freshest cinematic incarnation of the character, but the 2018 sequel held up the quality well – and this third film in 2024 tied up the series nicely, although it wouldn’t surprise me if there were further sequels.

 

FANTASY OR SF

 

Like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Marvel Comics in general, it’s borderline between SF and fantasy but mostly leans into SF

 

COMEDY

 

And how! It’s pretty much the defining trait of the series and its wisecracking, fourth wall-breaking protagonist.

 

RATING:

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention: Revised Entry) (11) Camilla Townsend – The Aztec Myths

 

 

(11) CAMILLA TOWNSEND:

THE AZTEC MYTHS: A GUIDE TO THE ANCIENT STORIES & LEGENDS (2024)

 

I still default to the usual superficial knowledge of Aztec mythology characteristic of its lurid image in popular culture – that is to say, the closest mythology comes to a horror film or the Cthulhu Mythos, both of itself and of its ritual practice of human sacrifice.

However, it is hard to resist seeing Aztec mythology as horror film mythology or to not get lost amongst its deities with their tongue-twisting Scrabble-winning names.

That’s where this book comes in – “the essential guide to the world of Aztec mythology, based on Nahuatl-language sources”.

“Camilla Townsend returns to the original tales, told at the fireside by generations of Indigenous Nahuatl-speakers. Through their voices we learn the contested histories of the Mexica and their neighbours in the Valley of Mexico – the foundations of great cities, the making and breaking of political alliances, the meddling of sometimes bloodthirsty gods…the divine principle of Ipalnemoani connected humans with all of nature and spiritual beliefs were woven through the fabric of Aztec life, from the sacred ministrations of the ticitl, midwives whose rituals saw women through childbirth, to the inevitable passage to Mictlan, ‘our place of disappearing together’ – the land of the dead.”

 

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History (WW2): Top 10 Nazi-Soviet Wars / Nazi-Soviet War Iceberg (Part 3: 6-8)

German advances during the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa from 22 June 1941 to 25 August 1941 – public domain image map by the History Department of the US Military Academy

 

 

 

(6) ROMANIAN-SOVIET WAR

 

Now we come to the first of three active Axis combatants allied with Germany against the Soviet Union that, unlike the limited exceptions of Finland in the Winter War or Japan, were obviously subordinate to the German war effort and otherwise could not or did not fight the Soviets separately.

At first glance, it is somewhat surprising that Romania was first and foremost of these Axis combatants, given that Italy was Germany’s major ally in Europe. However, the primary theater of combat for Italy was always the Mediterranean, where Romania shared a border with the Soviet Union.

Indeed, the Romanian-Soviet border was a border across which Germany had ceded territorial concessions from Romania to the Soviet Union in the Nazi-Soviet Pact – the Romanian territory of Bessarabia, to which the Soviets also added Northern Bukovina and some islands in the Danube.

It was also a border across which Germany launched a major part of Operation Barbarossa, with Romania as allied combatant against the Soviets – both on land and in naval warfare on the Black Sea. And as combatant, Romania committed more troops to the Eastern Front than all of other Germany’s allies combined – with Romania apparently having the third largest Axis army in Europe (after Germany and Italy) and fourth largest in the world (after Japan as well).

Notably, like Italy and Japan, Romania switched sides from being on the Allied side in the First World War. Indeed, Britain had extended the same guarantee it made to Poland to Romania (and Greece) on 13 April 1939, prompted by the Italian invasion of Albania – such that Romania was effectively a potential ally to Britain until joining the Axis on 23 November 1940.

Romania’s significance in the Nazi-Soviet war and indeed to Germany in the Second World War was not just its military contribution, but also (and probably even more so) its economic contribution – primarily its oil, which saw Romania bombed by the Allies in their strategic bombing offensive against Germany.

Ultimately, as the tide of war turned against Germany, the war came to Romania itself in what has been dubbed the Battle of Romania – where the Soviets defeated German and Romanian forces before Romania surrendered and defected to the Allies, declaring war against Germany after a Romanian royal coup d’etat against the fascist government of Antonescu.

As historian H.P. Willmott observed, the German Sixth Army, reconstituted after the destruction of its predecessor at Stalingrad, eerily found itself replaying that destruction – as it was encircled and destroyed for a second time by Soviet forces when Romanian resistance crumbled (as before on its flanks at Stalingrad).

Romania then committed a substantial number of troops – which suffered substantial casualties – as combatants allied with the Soviets against Germany, not that either prevented the Soviet occupation of and installation of a subordinate communist state in Romania.

 

(7) ITALIAN-SOVIET WAR

 

Not surprisingly, as Germany’s major ally and only other Axis claimant to great power status in Europe, however inflated, Italy was also an active combatant allied with Germany against the Soviet Union.

Italy initially committed an expeditionary army corps, subsequently expanded into an army, to Germany’s campaign against the Soviet Union. Both saw action in the southern part of the Eastern Front – most notoriously in the fighting around Stalingrad, where Italian forces covering the German flank at the Don River bore the full brunt of the Soviet offensive to encircle Stalingrad.

Historian H.P. Willmott observed that the Germans considered the Italians the best of their allied combatants on the Eastern Front, although the competition for that accolade was not particularly fierce.

Almost all Italian forces were withdrawn from the Nazi-Soviet war as Italy’s primary theater of operations in the Mediterranean loomed larger with the Allied threat to Italy itself. Ultimately, that saw Italy as the first of Germany’s Axis allied combatants to surrender and defect to the Allies in 1943, although even then some residual Italian forces remained in the Eastern Front (serving on behalf of Germany’s puppet government installed in Italy).

 

(8) HUNGARIAN-SOVIET WAR

 

Hungary is the last of what I identify as the substantial Axis combatants allied to and participating in the German war against the Soviet Union – the others being Finland, Romania and Italy. Bulgaria was an Axis ally of Germany, but it was a special case as it did not declare war against the Soviet Union and remained neutral in that part of the Second World War. There were other Axis combatants that fought alongside German forces against the Soviets, but they were either small – at a divisional level or so – or consisted of volunteer forces rather than official participation, or both.

Hungary is also notable enough for its own entry, as it was also the last of Germany’s Axis allies to remain allied with Germany – albeit not so much by its own choice but because it was the subject of Germany’s last successful military occupation of the war in Operation Margerethe.

As such, Hungary itself became one of the last battlefields of the Second World War in Europe, with German and Hungarian forces fighting against the Soviets there into 1945, most notably in the Siege of Budapest. While the Ardennes Offensive or Battle of the Bulge was famously the last substantial German counter-offensive of the war, Germany did launch counter-offensives after that – with the last one that could be described as major in Hungary, the Lake Balaton Offensive in an attempt to secure Germany’s last source of oil and to prevent the Soviets from advancing towards Vienna.

Top Tens – Film: Top 10 Animated Films (10) The Wild Robot

 

 

(10) THE WILD ROBOT

(DREAMWORKS: 2024)

 

The Wild Robot is my wildcard tenth place entry for top animated film of 2024.

I mean, it’s essentially Robinson Crusoe with a robot as protagonist, isn’t it? Or is that Tarzan with a robot protagonist, given that Robinson Crusoe doesn’t interact with the animals of his island as peers (and is more Puritan)?

There’s something about the premise of shipwreck or similar circumstances returning us to a state of nature. The Wild Robot goes one step further returning our technological doppelganger to that state of nature, although I have questions with respect to what seems to be a significant problem with robot supply chains in the film.

It also has the added charm of a machine effectively becoming one of the animals on her new island home – which to me has the surprising philosophical depth of combining the two main counterpoints to humanism of comparing (or contrasting) humans to animals and to our machines. (I’ve got the body of an animal and the mind of a machine).

Anyway, robot Robinson Crusoe is essentially the premise of the film in a nutshell – service robot Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) is shipwrecked or washed up on an island and learns to survive in the wilderness among the local wildlife.

It was commercially and critically successful – “praised for its story, themes, animation, score, emotional depth, and voice acting” while apparently Dreamworks’ most nominated film at the Academy Awards.

I was surprised when looking up the film to learn that it was based on a book (for children and teenagers) – indeed a book trilogy, so it was not surprising to also learn that a sequel film is in development.

 

FANTASY OR SF

 

Well, the robot in the title gives it away as SF, although it has elements of animal fable.

 

COMEDY

 

Mostly of the fish out of water variety – or robot on the island.

 

RATING:

X-TIER (WILD TIER) – BEST OF 2024

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention: Revised Entry) (10) Joyce Tydlesley – Penguin Book of Myths & Legends of Ancient Egypt

 

 

(10) JOYCE TYDLESLEY –

PENGUIN BOOK OF MYTHS & LEGENDS OF ANCIENT EGYPT (2010)

 

“I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra…
‘Who was that
dog-faced man? ‘they asked, the day I rode from town…
Go get my eyelids of red paint.
Hand me my shadow,
I’m going into town after Set”

I’ll never tire of quoting Ishmael Reed’s poem when it comes to Egyptian mythology – or of Egyptian mythology itself.

What’s not to love about those funky animal-headed gods and those slinky goddesses? Especially the goddesses – lithe and svelte in their form-fitting dresses, with their golden skin and painted eyes, they would not look out of place as supermodels on a modern catwalk.

“Here acclaimed Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley guides us through 3000 years of changing stories and, in retelling them, shows us what they mean. Gathered from pyramid friezes, archaeological finds and contemporary documents…Lavishly illustrated with colour pictures, maps and family trees, helpful glossaries explaining all the major gods and timelines of the Pharaohs and most importantly packed with unforgettable stories”.

The table of contents effectively encapsulates Tyldesley’s guide to Egyptian mythology, starting with introductory sections on Egypt’s gods, the Egyptian world, and dating dynastic Egypt. It then opens, aptly enough, with Egypt’s competing creation myths, and everyone’s favorite Ennead, the nine gods of Heliopolis – whom we all prefer to the inferior Ogdoad or eight gods of Hermopolis. Lost yet? Hang on – Egyptian mythology is a wild ride of shifting sands, gods (or creations) that keep swapping out with each other as they rose and fell within the pantheon.

After creation comes destruction – a section on the death of Osiris, the most famous death in Egyptian mythology (and up there with the most famous deaths of mythology), “the contendings of Horus and Seth”, and the afterlife.

My favorite section is of course on the great goddesses, foremost among them Isis, “great of magic”, but also warriors, wise women and cobra goddesses

 

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP-TIER)

Top Tens – Tropes & Other: Top 10 Stone Ages / Stone Age Iceberg (Part 3: 4-5)

Close-up of Stonehenge (public domain image)

 

 

(4) MEGALITHIC STONE AGE

 

Yes, I’ve coined the term Megalithic Stone Age because I love megaliths – “a megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones”, such as a standing stone or stone circle respectively as at everyone’s favorite megalithic site, Stonehenge.

Of course, the Megalithic Stone Age is mostly synonymous with the Neolithic – corresponding to settled agricultural communities having the necessary resources for moving large stones around the place – although “earlier Mesolithic examples are known” and they continued to be erected in the Bronze Age (including as I understand it, some of the phases of construction at Stonehenge).

“There are over 35,000 structures in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean”.

 

 

(5) MICROLITHIC STONE AGE

 

From one end of the scale to the other – from megaliths to microliths, I bring you the Microlithic Stone Age!

And no – sadly, that doesn’t mean there’s a tiny Stonehenge out there. “A microlith is a small stone tool, usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide…were used in spear points and arrowheads”.

Microliths point to a greater sophistication of stone tools characteristic of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic or even Neolithic, although they generally declined with the introduction of agriculture (as their predominant use was for hunting weapons).