I think it’s reasonably clear that The Flintstones doesn’t take place in the past, it’s actually far-future bio-engineering science fiction. They’ve got resurrected dinosaurs with lots of genetic tinkering to make them useful as cars and garbage disposals, engineered to understand commands (and, inadvertently, to make smart-alec remarks). Thanks to advanced climate engineering, they can walk around barefoot all the time, indeed be barely clothed. They’ve eschewed plastic and electronics technologies, and proudly ushered in a new simple Stone Age, a kind of ultra-Mennonism.

Or maybe it’s a dystopian future, a warning about the horrible lengths we’ll have to go to once there’s no more petroleum, and we’ve used up all the trace metals needed for modern electronics?

When I brought this up on Twitter, the subject came up too about where The Jetsons takes place with respect to The Flintstones. Might they take place on the same planet at the same time? Hmmm…