For example in 5000 BC there was a large sea in Sahara, now it's gone. So you can't be sure what Europe looked like back then. Also they never really say it's Europe.
That's a contradiction isn't it? we do have a good idea of Europe's climate 80,000 years ago.

It was a bit jarring, however the film is set 80000 years back so a little artistic license is ok. There were a bunch of ice ages back then and climate is often change the way landscape look. For example in 5000 BC there was a large sea in Sahara, now it's gone. So you can't be sure what Europe looked like back then. Also they never really say it's Europe.

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like an old primal memory of us hominids going up against a stronger and more monkey-like ancestor/neighbour.
This is a modern invention, our furry, more apelike ancestors were smaller than us and definitely physically weaker than later Homo.

Amen.
People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs

Jeez guys, every now and then a piece of evidence still shows up that requires re-evaluating previously held beliefs about the timelines of the various species. The story is still being assembled, so people howling in outrage that some timeline of populations depicted in 'Quest For Fire' is unrealistic, is not only presumptive and premature, but petty in the extreme. Watch it. Have fun and enjoy it.
Insisting that you know better than the film makers just serves to help you spoil the show for yourself.

The film got a lot of things wrong but because it was clever and fairly mysterious, it can be interpreted in a much more accurate way.
I considered the main tribe to be Neanderthals and the blue/grey tribe to be homo sapians.
The killer apes near the start are like some form of intelligent gorilla/australopithecine.
Ok, so it's unlikely such things existed only 80,000 years ago. But c'mon, they were pretty scary weren't they? Something in that scene clicked with me, like an old primal memory of us hominids going up against a stronger and more monkey-like ancestor/neighbour.

Those apes at the start were supposed to be Neanderthals? Jesus, what balls. My respect for this film's accuracy just plummeted.

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This doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the movie surely?

This movie is quite inaccurate, but anatomically modern humans (homo sapiens) and neanderthals, which were quite different physiologically, coexisted just miles apart in the south of Spain, and most likely throughout Europe and parts of Africa. The fossil record is but a small record of what actually transpired. Don't get me wrong, the way they are portrayed in this movie is incorrect, but the morphological differences were easily as disparate as portrayed in this movie.

Ya, that and many other things bothered me, especially after watching the "making of" feature, where the "painstaking attention to accuracy" was repeatedly touted. Also, according to the making-of, the tribe were homo sapiens, and the attacking ape-like creatures were supposed to be the Neanderthals. I guess 25 years ago they thought there was a wide variation in the physiology of different homo sapien groups 80,000 years ago?