Wyoming Professor Provides Expert Commentary on Discovery Channel

When the show, "I, Caveman" airs on the Discovery Channel this Sunday, Oct. 2nd, some University of Wyoming students will see a familiar face. Todd Surovell, associate professor in the UW Department of Anthropology, will appear as one of four experts on the program.

The premise of the show has ten "everyday" people living as Paleolithis hunter-gatherers from 20,000 years ago to see if people today could live as well as prehistoric ancestors did. The people on the show did volunteer to take on this challenge. They were rewarded by being stripped of all modern comforts and being given minimal training, Upper Paleolithic clothing and raw materials.

Surovell says his role on the program was to comment on the authenticity of the experiment and offer his thoughts on various aspects of their lives from the point of view of an archaeologist with expertise on recent and ancient foraging peoples.

While I cannot reveal details about the show until it has aired, I will say that the participants gained a healthy respect for the people who actually lived the life they were trying to emulate. While Paleolithic life may be technologically simple, to successfully live this kind of lifestyle requires an incredible amount of technical skill and natural history knowledge that most people today do not have.
-Todd Surovell

In 2007, Surovell appeared in "Mythbusters" when it tested the technological advantage of arrowheads in prehistoric cultures. He also appeared in the History Channel's 2008 feature, "Journey to 10,000 B.C." He is the author of "Toward a Behavioral Ecology of Lithic Technology: A Case Study from Paleoindian Archaeology."  Surovell explores Paleoindian ways of life, including mobility, colonization, prey choice and technological organization within the framework of behavioral ecology.