Over our many weeks on this program, we have spent a large amount of time discussing prehistory and the development of early humans. As a fan of prehistory, I have been enjoying learning about how humanity developed in the fertile Aegean. Yet this past week made me realize how much I really had learned this term so far. This all revolves around an unlikely catalyst, the viewing of the new movie The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. This movie is the latest addition to the world-renowned franchise Planet of the Apes, which was first released in 1968 going on to release 5 movies. The franchise was further rebooted in 2001 and the 2010s. This new movie is a further attempt at a second reboot which progresses the franchise into a new era, I would describe this new era as being palatial with extensive parallels to the Mycenean world.
Before I go into why I believe this is a Mycenean monkey movie, let me briefly recap what has occurred in the franchise for context as the analysis is impossible without a brief background. I will try my best to not include any spoilers for those who plan to watch the movies (I think you should they are pretty interesting). So, the original franchise is set far in a post-apocalyptic earth where humanity has been enslaved by intelligent apes who live in a highly advanced society. The recent 2010 reboot is set hundreds of years earlier in the modern day where a monkey named Caesar lives in captivity. Caesar’s mother was an animal used for pharmaceutical research specifically in Alzheimer’s research. Caesar’s Mother is exposed to a new drug which unintentionally increases her intelligence to a degree rivaling early humans. Very shortly after Caesar is born due to an unforeseen pregnancy and a technician in the lab takes Caesar in. Caesar grows up around humans and shows incredibly high intelligence. After an incident later in life, Caesar is forced to go live in a primate reserve as he is unsafe to live around humans. Due to his high intelligence, he is able to unify the other apes in the enclosure and organize an escape. He then reacquires the drug that made him intelligent to expose his fellow escapees creating a population of intelligent apes. They then go off into the forest as they will forever be hunted by humanity (I may have left out some mild murder on the part of the apes). The following two movies follow Caesar as he tries to free the apes and further ape society.
Now this sets the stage for the newest movie which occurs 200 years after the events of the 2010 reboots. The drug that has made Apes intelligent has had an adverse effect on humanity and has made them unintelligent. The planet has succumbed to ape rule and human infrastructure has fallen back into its natural form. As Caesar marks the start of sentient apes this 200-year jump has proven to be a drastic evolutionary change. I attribute the drastic 200-year jump, which covers all of the Stone Age for apes, to the benefit of learning from humans before the fall of humanity and the proliferation of advanced human technologies at their disposal.
The new movie follows the journey of a young chimpanzee named Noa who lives in a small jungle village. We can see the first parallel to the Bronze Age with the introduction of a formal religion in his village. This is shown through a religion based on the praising of Eagles which can be seen in the iconography in the village and through practice shown at the beginning of the film. The village then is sacked by a competing tribe of apes which burn the village taking its surviving villagers as slaves. Noa is the only surviving member remaining in the village and sets on a journey to rescue his fellow clan members.
We then meet another ape, a Bornean orangutan named Raka, which can be seen conducting funeral rites for a fallen tribe member who was also killed by the apes that burned Noa village. The introduction of funeral practices similar to those in the movie can be seen in the early bronze age Mycenae as well. Noa learns from Raka that this tribe of apes follows a religion where it views Caesar as a God for freeing the apes from humanity and giving them intelligence. Raka also follows a sect of this religion claiming that these apes have been misconstruing the word of Caesar and have been using him for a holy crusade.
Later in the movie, we get to the PALACE of Proximus Caesar the elder that rules the kingdom that sacked Noa’s tribe. This palace is unknown to Noa and shows how this is a new idea for the Apes which directly aligns with the introduction of Palaces in bronze age Aegean. Proximus Caesar rules a kingdom that consists of tribes that he has taken from the region and surrounding regions. This practice of moving all local tribes into one cohesive area is also one that emerged during the Mycenean period. Throughout the movie, we also see slight nods to the advancement of apes through evolutionary history with the appearance of domestication of animals and agriculture which further shows that the Apes are living in a Mycenean period society.
It was interesting to see this side of the movie while I was watching and how it compares to what we have been learning for the past eight weeks. As this movie was only released in the past week I have limited media to show associated with the film, but I have attempted to include relevant media above.
