Anthropology professor Michael Bisson offers beastly advice to the BBC

Tap-tap-smash! A flint chip spins under Michael Bisson's chair, but he dismisses it: "Too small." Again he takes his makeshift hammer -- a small round piece of quartzite -- and drives it against the flint. The second result is more satisfactory.

Bisson, head of McGill's Department of Anthropology, is demonstrating one of the earliest of human technological accomplishments: making tools. Meeting Bisson on his home turf, one cannot help but be struck by the unusual implements in his office. Certainly the hefty spruce spears behind the door, the chunks of flint on the floor, the hand-made stone-and-wood axe, bound with artificial sinews ("you can get sinew-substitute at craft stores now," he claims), are not the average accoutrements of academe. Stone, bone and wood are a far cry from satellites and software programs, but they constitute the juvenilia of homo technologis.

	Digitally animated sea creatures from Walking With Prehistoric Beasts PHOTO: Courtesy BBC

"A Neanderthal would use this tool to remove the fat layer from hides, or as a planing tool on wood to make spears," he explains, chipping further at the piece of flint until he is happy with the result: a small, sharp scraper.

Stone-age and digital technology come together in the 2001 BBC television production Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, on which Bisson served as the paleolithic expert. He's not new to the screen, having appeared in the syndicated show, Archeology, in interviews on CBC and CTV, and in the French independent film, Odyssey, but this project is by far the highest profile gig on his mass media CV.

Shown on the BBC and the American Discovery channel in the fall, and the Canadian Discovery channel in January, Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, directed by Jasper James, is, at £4.2 million, the most expensive documentary film ever, and was two years in the making. Much of that money went into 3-D computer imaging and the creation of realistic animatronic models of extinct mammals. Bisson's own technological contributions are ingeniously low-tech, like the flint scrapers he makes when teaching paleolithic technology to his undergraduate classes. The tools and weapons wielded by actor Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons were Bisson originals, and he also taught the actors how to toss their spears like real stone-agers.

And of course, Bisson gets some screen time of his own. "They shipped me up to northern Saskatchewan twice," he recalls, "where I was filmed standing in snow talking about ecology, the extinction of mammoths, Neanderthals, prehistoric technology, and so forth." His favourite shooting story is typically down to earth. At one point, the actors, in full stone-age gear, were returning from their lunch break and crossing the road to run off into the field and chase imaginary giant deer (later added by computer). "A couple of old fellows drove by in a pickup and screeched on their brakes," he laughs. "'What's going on here?' they asked. I said, 'We're filming a documentary on the stone age.' They look at me, and with absolutely straight faces, say 'Stone age, eh? How come they're not naked?'"