Sunday, November 27, 2016

'The Dawn of Man' from 2001: A Space Odyssey fully explained!

This scene is called 'The Dawn of Man' from the film '2001: A Space Odyssey'.


Millions of years ago on Earth on an African desert characterized by rugged natural features and vast stretches of parched desert, a tribe of apemen struggle with other wild beasts for food. This tribe is chased away from a watering hole by another tribe of bigger, stronger apes. A strange blue light and a deep humming sound awakens the weaker apes as they are sleeping in their cave. Outside, they find a huge black monolith, rectangular in shape and geometrically perfect among its rocky natural surroundings. The apes approach the humming object hesitantly, touching it carefully. The smooth polished surface of the monolith is alien to the apes. 

The following day an ape picks over the bones of a carcass left by another predator. The ape looks disappointed as the bones are picked clean. He studies the shape of a big bone in the pile, then an image of the black monolith flashes across the ape’s mind. It picks up the big bone and waves it back and forth, breaking the smaller bones. A spark goes off in the ape’s head as it draws back it’s arm and swings the big bone over smashing the bones in front of it. Exultantly, the ape uses the big bone to smash the bones of the animal carcass into smaller bones, then hurls the big bone over its head. 


The following day, the stronger apes attack the smaller apes drinking from the watering hole. But this time, the smaller apes are ready and all of them have a big bone. The bigger apes are confused; the smaller apes aren’t running away. One of the bigger apes launches itself at the smaller apes, one of which swings its big bone and strikes the large ape on the head. The big ape goes down and all of the smaller apes, one-by-one, attack the fallen ape, striking it with their bones. The other big apes leave. Triumphantly, one of the small apes hurls its bone in the air and the bone transforms into a satellite 4 million years into the future. 

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