Alpha: The Return of the Wolf: Take You Back to the Ice Age 20,000 Years Ago Alpha: The Return of the Wolf: Take You Back to the Age of the Great Beasts on the Last Ice Age Ice Sheet of the Ice Age 20,000 Years Ago Alpha is a dog? Alpha: The Return of the Wolf is by no means a simple adventure film in my opinion, it contains a lot of knowledge of paleontology, paleogeology, and paleoanthropology, which is very interesting. So what are you waiting for, go to the cinema on September 7 for a prehistoric adventure in the snow and ice of 20,000 years ago!

<h1>Alpha: The Wolf's Return: Take you back to the Ice Age 20,000 years ago</h1>

Have you ever wondered what the Earth would have been like 20,000 years ago? How did humans survive at that time, and what ancient creatures once roamed on the earth we live on today? Paleontologists have solved the answers for us by discovering and studying sporadic fossils, but the upcoming film Alpha: The Return of wolves, which will be released on September 7, shows us a very different Earth from 20,000 years ago in a more macroscopic screen perspective!

<h1>The last ice age</h1>

Picture note: This summer is so hot that it needs to cool down, the picture comes from the network

Picture note: You should find an ice cave to cool down, the picture comes from the network

This summer is really extremely hot, and the global heat continues to be continuous, even in the Arctic Circle has exceeded 30 °C. However, there is heat and cold, and if the earth has another "ice age", it will be good! You know, the average annual temperature during the ice age was more than 10 degrees lower than today. Many people know that just 12,000 years ago, the Earth was still in an ice age, which is called the Quaternary Ice Age in academic circles, which began 2.58 million years ago and ended 12,000 years ago.

Thick glaciers once covered most of the land in the Northern Hemisphere, image from the Internet

Since it is called the Ice Age, there must be spectacular glaciers everywhere, right? This is not the case. Glaciers during the glacial period were mainly in the northern hemisphere, and the glacier area once reached 52 million square kilometers, equivalent to one-third of the land area. Take, for example, europe, where the film takes place, where glaciers run from the North Pole to the south, covering all of Northern Europe, most of Britain and Ireland, the Baltic States and northern Russia, as well as the entire Baltic Sea and part of the North Sea. In addition to the large area of glaciers extending from the poles, the high-altitude Alps have also formed alpine glaciers, and glacial movement has changed the landform, and the famous Matterhorn is left by the glacier movement.

Image note: Ice age europe, white is the area covered by glaciers, the picture comes from the network

Note: The steep Matterhorn in the Alps is the result of glaciation, image from the Internet

The glaciers covering the northern hemisphere are more than 1,000 meters thick, where does so much ice come from? The answer is the ocean. Because the sea was frozen as a glacier, the sea level at that time was more than 100 meters lower than today, the land area expanded, many straits became land, you can walk north from Normandy in France across the English Channel to London, you can also hike east from Beijing through the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea and the Tsushima Strait to Tokyo, as long as you have good foot strength, you can even walk to New York.

Image Note: The land area of the Ice Age Earth is much larger than it is today, and the picture comes from the Internet

With so much knowledge about the ice age, everyone must be curious about why the ice age occurs. There are many explanations for the causes of the ice age, but they are all related to the amount of sun exposure and the reduction in heat received. Whether it is the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit, the change of equatorial and ecliptic angles, or the obstruction of cosmic matter and volcanic ash, in short, the cause of the ice age is that the earth receives less heat from the sun.

<h1>The Age of the Behemoths on the Ice Fields</h1>

Caption: Ice age Spain, and today is completely different, the picture comes from the network

Northwestern Europe during the ice age was much colder than it is today, with thick layers of ice that could only grow moss and grass in the summer, and dense forests would not have. Such an environment should theoretically be harsh for animals, but it has made the last giant beast era on earth!

What are the famous beasts in the Age of Behemoths? The first is the mammoth, also known as the "mammoth" because of its long hair. Mammoths are proboscis animals that are fully adapted to living in cold areas, roaming in groups in vast areas from the Spanish coast to the interior of Siberia, feeding on grass; with mammoths, there are also woolly rhinoceros, which is the standard for ice age cold. The woolly rhinoceros is as big as the largest rhino today, but the horns on the head are longer, and it is not easy to mess with at first glance. There are big guys who eat grass, there must be big guys who eat meat, such as cave bears and cave lions: cave bears and brown bears are about the same size, because they like to live in caves and get their name, these guys stand up 3 meters tall, and have long competed with humans for caves; although there is also a "hole" in the name of cave lions, they rarely live in caves, just because fossils were first found in caves. Like today's Siberian tiger, the cave lion was able to survive in a cold environment, but it was larger than lions and tigers, and it was one of the largest cats ever seen on Earth.

Image note: Mammoth swarms in an ice field, image from the Internet

Illustration note: A model of the woolly rhinoceros, picture from the network

Picture note: Cave bear, picture from the network

Caption: Cave lions preying on reindeer in cold regions, image from the web

The mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, cave bears, and cave lions introduced above are all paleontology that appear in the movie trailer, in fact, there are many huge paleontology living in glacial Europe, including bighorn deer, spotted hyenas, primitive cattle and so on. Imagine europe 20,000 years ago, herds of mammoths and primitive cattle roaming the grasslands, with several woolly rhinos grazing on the grass, and a majestic cave lion not far away planning to attack! Although the spectacular glacial fauna can no longer be seen today, the movie can be recreated, and everyone expects that more magical glacial monsters will appear in the movie "Alpha: The Wolf Returns".

Picture note: The huge skull that appears in the movie, do you know what animal it belongs to? Image from Alpha: The Wolf's Return

<h1>Lived during the Ice Age</h1>

Photo note: Ice age primitive people appeared, the picture comes from the network

During the Ice Age, not only the giant beasts that have disappeared, but also humans. 20,000 years ago, Europe was inhabited by Crocopians, named after the Crocopian caverns first discovered in France. The Cro-Romanon belonged to the late Homo sapiens and is likely the ancestor of today's Europeans.

Illustration: The protagonist Koda wears clothes made of animal skins and holds a spear in his hand, pictured from Alpha: The Wolf's Way Home

Illustration: Stone tools created by primitive humans, pictured from the Internet

If you think that the Cro-Romanons are a bunch of primitive people with animal skins around their waists, who can't speak, and who can only drink blood, you are very wrong. Dressed in clothes sewn from animal skins to protect them from the cold and hunting with tools made of stone in their hands, the Cro-Romanons were excellent hunters who were able to work together to kill large animals like mammoths and woolly rhinos. Meat was the majority of the Cro-Roman peasants' recipes, but they did not eat raw meat, but roasted the meat over fire before eating it. It is because of the large intake of meat protein, Croma farmers are tall, adult men generally reach 1.8 meters, to know that the average height of adult men in Europe was less than 1.7 meters before the Industrial Revolution.

Photo note: Primitive tribes hunting in groups, image from Alpha: The Wolf Companion Returns

Image note: Humans hunting mammoths, image from the web

Despite living during the cold glacial period, the Cro-Romano lived a "high quality" life, living in sheltered caves, heating and handling food by making fires, and sleeping with thick animal skins under their bodies. The Cro-Roman peasants, who were full of food and warmth, began to bloom with hearts full of art, and the art they created was called the art of the hunter.

Photo note: Koda, who sleeps with wolves, has a soft, moisture-proof animal skin under his body, picture from "Alpha: The Wolf's Companion Returns"

Hunter art includes music, dance, sculpture, painting, etc., the most powerful of which is the Lascaux cave paintings. Discovered in caves in the south of France, the Lascaux cave paintings left more than 2,000 animals and figures on the cave rock walls by humans living 17,000 years ago, some of which were large animals up to 5 meters long. The animal figure in the Lascaux cave paintings is outlined with smooth lines, and the body is directly painted with color, which is very vivid. The Lascaux cave paintings are the temple and peak of prehistoric art, so they are called the "Prehistoric Louvre".

Illustration: Spectacular bull hall in the Lascaux cave paintings, picture from the web

For human beings, although the life of the ice age is difficult, it can also achieve both material and spiritual harvests.

<h1>Is Alpha a dog? </h1>

Photo note: The other protagonist of the film, Alpha, picture from "Alpha: The Return of the Wolf Companion"

Introducing the people of Ice Age Europe, let's introduce the dogs of the Ice Age. There are no dogs in the world, and wolves become dogs after being domesticated by humans. So when was the first dog born? If archaeological excavations are the standard, the earliest dog fossils were found in a human tomb in Germany 14,000 years ago; if DNA research were the standard, the earliest dogs may have appeared 30,000 years ago or even earlier.

Illustration: A sketch of a man domesticating a wolf into a dog, picture from the Internet

Dogs are the earliest domesticated animals by humans, much earlier than cattle, horses, sheep, etc. So how did a wolf become a dog? Maybe it's different from what you think. There is always some discarded food near the human colony, and wolves often come to pick up scraps to cool the cold. Over time, humans and wolves became familiar, and wolves' non-aggressive approach began to be accepted. It can be said that the birth of the dog was first based on the trust between man and the wolf, and then man and dog began to cooperate, humans provided food for dogs, and dogs helped humans track prey and vigilance.

Caption: Koda and Alpha, from Alpha: The Wolf's Way Home

Caption: Alpha is able to provide early warning to Koda, image from Alpha: The Wolf's Way Home

After a long period of coexistence and cooperation, the first dog was born, and in the time that followed, dogs became our most loyal and reliable partners, and they also became the most numerous medium-sized mammals on earth today besides humans, with more than 600 million. The alpha in the movie is a wolf, but it represents the starting point of mutual trust and cooperation between humans and wolves, and it also represents the beginning of the transformation from a wolf to a dog.

The ancestors of all dogs are wolves, and they are gray wolves, and the picture comes from the Internet

<h1>Alpha: The Return of the Wolf is by no means a simple adventure film in my opinion, it contains a lot of knowledge of paleontology, paleogeology, and paleoanthropology, which is very interesting. So what are you waiting for, go to the cinema on September 7 for a prehistoric adventure in the snow and ice of 20,000 years ago! </h1>

Picture note: One man and one wolf break into the end of the world, picture from "Alpha: The Wolf Companion Returns"