The Clan of the Cave Bear

First review of the year! Very interesting and entertaining, not sure how accurate but i feel like a learned alot. Who really knows what neanderthal were like? but I'm sure it's well researched and included all the knowledge available in the 1980's. The Clan of the cave bear main flaw is predictability.

Ayla is a modern human left orphaned by an earthquake. She is on the verge of death when she is adopted by a neanderthal clan (the clan of the cave bear.) She is really lucky because the woman who adopts her is the head medicine woman of the top clan in the area. this is like being adopted by royalty. Even if the clan has no royalty, it is VERY status oriented. Iza is sister of the clan leader and the clan magician, and they believe her lucky from the beginning. Just because Ayla got a good shake doesn't mean she has an easy time. Afterall, she is so ugly tall, blonde, and light eyed. Yeah, ugly is relative! Worse of all she gains an enemy the leader's son and one day leader Broud. Who is a real small minded male. There's a feminist undercurrent to this i enjoyed and thought aged well after 40 years. Ayla grow up and learns to be a medicine woman herself. performing a ceremony at the clan gathering that happens every 7 years. which was my favorite part of the book. she even has a baby half modern human half Neanderthal. Her son Dirk maybe the future of the human race. i have seen a nova special proposing interbreeding as the answer to what happened to the Neanderthals. Still not sure about that but the theory reflects modern sensibilities. Unfortunately, Broud becomes leader and casts Ayla out of the clan at the end setting up the next book!

Overall, i found the writing entertaining but not compelling. i want to read all 6 in the series but I'm not in a hurry. so, i think I'll make it last and read one a year based on season.

Circa 30,000 years ago in the lands surrounding the broad Black Sea , in future Europe, a cataclysmic event occurred, not very unusual there, but still to the superstitious Ice Age people , a devastating occurrence. A family of Cro -Magnons, the first modern humans, our direct ancestors, were wiped out, near a small river, all except a little girl named Ayla , just five, she liked to sneak away and jump joyously into the stream, at dawn, a swimmer before the child could walk. The shaking soil and rumbling sounds frightened the girl, all her relatives, inside a lean-to hut, disappeared beneath the earth, as if a giant beast swallowed them, never to be seen again. Alone, not knowing how to survive, or where to go, she wanders for days drinking the clear waters of the river, that Ayla follows, eating anything edible nearby, growing hungrier, at last, her weakened body collapses on the ground. But a small band of twenty Neanderthals, whose cave was destroyed in the earthquake too, and losing six of their members, are looking to discover another, find the child, but she is an "Other", a strange species they avoid, easily done, the few scattered groups of men, rarely encounter anyone else in the vast world. Iza, the wise medicine woman, feels sorry for the little girl, all alone , that nobody cares about and lifts her up, carrying the orphan away, she is saved. Brun, the bold leader of the clan, her brother, is not happy , but lets Ayla stay, her other sibling Creb, the powerful spiritual chief of the band, that the rest of the tribe is afraid of, not just because he was born deformed, he radiates menace, half his body is effected, a cripple, only a lone leg works properly, and one piercing eye, on his hideous face, these three rule the Neanderthals, and Broud, the son of Brun, the heir apparent... Maybe because the helpless girl is from a strange, mysterious, new people, Broud, takes an instant, quite insane hatred towards her, they don't resembles them, he thinks , a threat somehow, but for generations haven't been seen, until now, the Others, could compete later, for the scarce food supply, the wild animal herds that constantly roam the lonely steppes, by the cold glaciers from the north, they are always a danger too, and someday will start down again... killing everything in their path. Life is very precarious in the primitive, prehistorical times, the hunter- gatherers humans , do not survive for long, a continuous struggle, to keep warm, get an adequate amount of food and shelter, escape unknown illnesses, with no cures, safety doesn't exist, there is little compassion for strangers, especially from the "Others". Ayla must adopt to her new clan, The Clan of the Cave Bear, learn a different language, unfamiliar customs, pray to unseen spirits, fit in, to endure, she has no choice, but her blonde hair and tall stature, weird, unattractive face, to the rest of the band, will always remind the Neanderthals , ( less brutish and more intelligent than commonly believed ) she can never be like them...An interesting tale of an ancient, long gone era, but will we ever known how accurate this depiction is...

-Propuesta entretenida con querencia hacia el costumbrismo paleolítico.-

Género. Novela (que no se puede denominar “histórica” por razones obvias).

Lo que nos cuenta. En un momento indeterminado del Paleolítico Superior una niña cromañón se queda sola en el mundo tras un violento terremoto. Un grupo de neardentales, que también han sido afectados por el seísmo, encuentran a la niña al borde de la muerte y la curandera del clan decide hacerse cargo de la criatura, a la que acabarán conociendo como Ayla. Primera entrega de la serie Los hijos de la Tierra.

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Sometimes I wanted to throw this book out the window. Or at someone. It's a hefty little paperback, and my copy is old enough that it the pages no longer lie quite next to each other on the spine, so it looks even bigger than it is. I have no doubt that if it were to hit someone in the head, it could seriously annoy that person and even cause a headache. That's often the feeling I experienced while reading The Clan of the Cave Bear. But I wouldn't turn this book into a projectile out of mere spite or desire to cause headaches. No, the temptation was purely an urge to remove the book from my vicinity as quickly as possible.

I apologize for the somewhat lengthy and uncharacteristic paragraph of plot summary that follows. I promise it has a point.

In a world of long, harsh winters and short summers, the Clan of the Cave Bear is a humanoid civilization that worships Ursus for bringing them culture and traditions. There are many clans within the Clan, each of which live in their own caves, have their own leaders and medicine women and mog-urs (shamans). One such clan, led by the fair-minded Brun, is searching for a new cave after theirs was destroyed in an earthquake. They stumble across an injured five-year-old child—but she is not Clan. She is a member of the Others, a strange species that looks humanoid but is not Clan. Brun reluctantly allows his medicine woman to care for the child, whose name is Ayla. For the most part this brings his clan great luck, but Ayla has a lot of trouble fitting in. She fails to conform to the Clan standards for women, preferring instead to hunt and assert herself in ways permitted only to men. And she earns the ire of the future leader of the clan, the impetuous Broud. Through the eyes of Ayla and members of Brun's clan, Jean Auel tells a story about family, acceptance, loyalty, honour, tradition, and yes, race.

There is just one problem.

This book is actually set 30,000 years ago in prehistoric Europe. The Clan are the Neanderthals, while the Others are Cro-Magnons, anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens. While this might not sound problematic—and I admit that I'm probably weird seeing it as a problem—it is the one element of this book that I cannot overlook.

I know this book is insanely popular (especially given its subject matter). I might even have read it at some point in the distant past (14? 16? I don't recall). To be honest, I probably wouldn't have ever picked up this book again were it not for the fact that I inherited it from a friend who moved away. I like historical fiction, but prehistorical fiction is another matter.

Historical fiction is based, in addition to archaeological evidence, primary source material like written records, artwork, and if it's more recent, photography and audio or video recordings. The farther back in time one goes, the sparser the record and the more difficult it is to portray a society "realistically". Often this isn't a problem; it's fiction, after all, and we expect some licence.

Prehistory is different. By definition there are not written records; there are pressure few remnants of artwork, and much to our chagrin, the Neanderthals recorded everything on Betamax or, much later, in whatever format the Zune uses. (And who has one of those these days?) So their voices are probably lost to us forever. We can speculate, but it is very difficult to determine what Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon culture was like from the archaeological record. This gives archaeologists and anthropologists plenty to do when they are not actually in ur fields, diggin' up ur ancestors. It lets them form (perhaps untestable) hypotheses about homonin societies based on what evidence we do have. That's really cool, and I love reading non-fiction books about such theories. The dearth of solid information, however, makes the job of a writer of prehistorical fiction that much more difficult. I'm not going to rule out all prehistorical fiction from this one experience, but Auel has not convinced me The Clan of the Cave Bear is a shining example of the genre.

I actually reached a point where I had to break out the sticky notes and mark a few pages for later reference. This happens on occasion with a book, usually if it's really bad or really good. In this case, the quotations highlight my issue with the way Auel portrays the evolutionary competition between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. In The Clan of the Cave Bear, Neanderthals possess a genetic memory that is nearing its maximum storage capacity:

But as more memories built up, crowding and enlarging the storage capacity of their brain, changes came harder. There was no more room for new ideas that would be added to their memory bank, their heads were already too large. Women had difficulty giving birth; they couldn't afford new knowledge that would enlarge their heads even more.

Suffice it to say, there is no record of Neanderthals, or any hominins, possessing a genetic memory. It's true that The Clan of the Cave Bear is steeped in scientific accuracy; Auel did her research. This is not one of those accuracies. This appears to be something of her own invention (or an idea she borrowed from another theorist), and quite frankly, it breaks the book for me. Despite trite allusions to evolution and nature, Auel's proposed reason for the demise of the Neanderthals runs contrary to very idea of Darwinian evolution:

Her brain followed different paths, her full, high forehead that housed forward-thinking frontal lobes gave her an understanding from a different view. She could accept the new, shape it to her will, forge it into ideas undreamed of by the Clan, and, in nature's way, her kind was destined to supplant the ancient, dying race.

At a deep, unconscious level, Broud sensed the opposing destinies of the two. Ayla was more than a threat to his masculinity, she was a threat to his existence. His hatred of her was the hatred of the old for the new, of the traditional for the innovative, of the dying for the living. Broud's race was too static, too unchanging. They had reached the peak of their development; there was no more room to grow. Ayla was part of nature's new experiment, and though she tried to model herself after the women of the clan, it was only an overlay, a façade only culture-deep, assumed for the sake of survival.

Evolution does not work that way. Species do not reach "peaks" of development and find "no more room to grow". The extinction of the Neanderthals was not destiny.

Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that Auel is saying that Cro-Magnons were "destined" to supplant Neanderthals or that the Neanderthals were necessarily doomed as a result of their genetic memory. She could be saying that. If so, I find it very problematic. I cannot countenance calling this book "historical fiction" and lauding its scientific accuracy if Auel rejects something so fundamental as the theory of evolution.

It's also possible to interpret all of this as an attempt to be poetic—hence, the references to "destiny" and such are the twentieth-century narrator's hindsight being applied to the story at hand. This does not absolve Auel entirely, for it is still an example of sloppy writing, but at least it is, in my mind, a lesser crime. And this is consistent with the narration in The Clan of the Cave Bear in general, which is itself rather inconsistent. The book switches between following one particular character's thoughts from a limited third-person perspective to an omniscient twentieth-century perspective. This is accompanied by a corresponding change in vocabulary. Consequently, all complaints about the science aside, I had a hard time even reading this book. I felt almost like I was reading some kind of children's story. Here's an example:

The women breathed easier. They knew Ayla was inexperienced, and though they had little choice but to allow the girl to treat Brac, they were concerned. A hunter needed two good strong arms. If Brac lost the use of one, he would never become a leader as he was destined. If he was unable to hunt, he would not even become a man, but would live out his life in the ambiguous limbo in which older boys, who had reached physical maturity but had not made their first kill, existed.

I picked that by opening the book at random. The entire book is littered with phrases like, "They knew", "Ayla knew", "Creb knew", etc., which preface exposition by Auel that shows off her extensive research into various prehistorical methods of life. I love that she did all that research, and in some ways it does improve the book. Unfortunately, Auel often chooses to divulge her knowledge in the least engaging way possible.

No, this book works much better when viewed as a fantasy or science-fiction novel about a world far, far away. As I set it up in my plot summary at the beginning of this review, one can easily ignore the references to our Earth of the past and treat the Clan and the Others as two alien species, one with genetic memory that is proving a liability. In this way, the problematic parts of the story's narration become more forgivable, and The Clan of the Cave Bear becomes a fascinating thought experiment. Now, I might be a literary snob, but I'm no literary tyrant, and you are free to regard this book as historical fiction if you like. I wish I could have enjoyed this book more, because it had a lot of potential, and there are some genuinely great things about it—alas, certain aspects of Auel's style and writing were enough to sour the experience for me.

n  n

It was long and maybe just a little too descriptive at times... but incredibly creative. I couldn't put it down. Also, I listened to the audiobook. Narrator was okay, but read a bit fast and with without enough inflection at times... this got better as the story progressed. All in all a fabulous read. Looking forward to book two.

EL MEJOR DE LA SAGA. Sufrí gran consternación cuando supe que no era real realmente verídico. Fue de mis primeras lecturas, hace varios años, y entonces decían que los Cromagnon y los Neantherdal no se habían mezclado, aunque con gran alborozo hace algún tiempo las revistas científicas dijeron que sí.

De todos modos, es un libro PRECIOSO, MARAVILLOSO, ABSOLUTAMENTE DESGARRADOR Y A LA VEZ ESPERANZADOR. Lo recuerdo aún como si fuera ayer. En especial, Iza, la señora que la acoge... me acuerdo de su nombre hasta el día de hoy y lloro.

Este libro es TAN BUENO que luego me leí TODOS LOS OTROS aunque fueron siendo progresivamente peores. Incluso leí los que salieron años después. Siempre eché de menos a Iza e incluso a Thonolan (libro 2) (también me acuerdo de su nombre, jaja). La misma Ayla nunca me gusta tanto más adelante como en esta primera entrega.

This book was written in the eighties, and boy, can you tell. I would be surprised if this would sell many if released in the 2020s.

Now that said, I bloody love this style of writing, and it absolutely worked for me.

The author approaches everything methodically and fully investigates human nature.

Every character is fleshed out. I felt part of the clan. I felt like I had witnessed the events.

Then the author got me with the emotional damage. This book sucks you in and then rips your heart out. And quite frankly, that's my favourite thing in a story.

I'm looking forward to continuing the series

This is an amazing story and series. I didn't think the topic would be interesting but I'm thankful I was wrong.

Jean Auel is masterful in her ability to create a story that has you transported in time and live vicariously in Ayla's world. I found myself gripping the steering wheel in my car as I listened to her struggle for survival.

You will not be disappointed. This is truly a 5-star rated experience.