Kalbant apie šią knygą reikėtų pradėti visų pirma nuo to, kad pati pasakojimo idėja yra tikrai labai nebloga: Cro-Magnon (arba kitaip ankstyvasis anatomiškai šiuolaikinis žmogus) susidūrimas su neandertaliečiais, o jei tiksliau, vienos iš kro-magnonų mergaitės istorija, atsidūrus neandertaliečių gentyje.

Aš šiaip nesu didelis istorijos mėgėjas, bet bent jau iš laifstailo ir kultūros prizmių žiūrint man įdomūs beveik visi istoriniai periodai, neišskiriant ir ankstyvojo akmens amžiaus, kurio metu ir vystosi siužetas. O neandertalietis VS žmogus siužetinė linija yra labai, labai palanki, norint rašyti romaną. Šiuo metu yra net penkios teorijos, kodėl neandertaliečiai išnyko:

a) asimiliavosi su žmonėmis (nes, pasirodo, maišymasis tarp rūsių buvo įmanomas ir didžioji dauguma iš mūsų savo genome nešiojamės apytikriai nuo 1,8 iki 2,6 % iš neandertaliečių kilusių genų);
b) mes juos sunaikinome fiziškai;
c) ilgą laiką sugyvenome greta ir taikiai, o jie paprasčiausiai išmirė dėl demografinių problemų (konkurencija su protingesniais mumis irgi, aišku, nepadėjo, bet shit happens, čia ne mūsų kaltė);
d) dėl kitoniško imuniteto neatlaikė mūsų atneštų bakterijų ir parazitų;
e) klimato pokyčiai, dėl kurių neandertaliečiai nesugebėjo prisitiakyti prie laikmečio ir pasikeitusių taisyklių;

įdomiausia dalis yra ta, kad faktiškai nėra jokios informacijos, kuri daugiau ar įtikinamiau paremtų kurią nors iš teorijų, tad galima teigti, jog visos jos vienodai tikėtinos, kas rašytojams palieka labai, labai plačią veiksmų ir teorijų laisvę.

Pati Jean Auel pasiruošė šios knygos rašymui labiau, nei vadinami "method actors" ruošiasi vaidmeniui - ji mėnesių mėnesiais nenulipdavo nuo sprando paleologams, įstojusi į survaivalistų būrelį išmoko, kaip įsirengti olą, išdirbti odas, įkurti ugnį, tašyti akmenį, praleido daug laiko mokydamasi ir tyrinėdama vaistažoles. Visa tai yra labai įspūdinga, bet tai turi ir savo kainą: knyga kartais labiau primena ne romaną, o rankdarbių vadovėlį, o didžiausias minusas yra tas, kad visi šiti pasakojimai apie kasdienius darbus ir vaistažolių rinkimą ir įrankių gamybą tiesiog niekada nesibaigia. Tai nėra blogai, tiesą sakant, nemažą dalį informacijos skaičiau visai susidomėjęs, o ir vertėjos darbą reiktų atskirai paminėti. Man didžiausią problemą anglų kalboje kelia tikriniai daiktavardžiai, ypač paukščių ir augalų pavadinimai. Čia gi pavadinimų buvo tiek, ir dar negana to, tokių, kad aš jų ir lietuviškai nelabai esu girdėjęs, o čia juos dar reikėjo ir išverst iš kitos kalbos.

Bet kuriuo atveju, tai yra ganėtinai neblogas coming-of-age romanas, tiesa, labai jau neįprastomis aplinkybėmis. Bet jis man visai patiko jau vien dėl savo originalumo ir netradicinio siužeto. Žinoma, yra nemaža dalis "ar tikrai" faktoriaus, bet čia jau nieko nepadarysi - jei jau kalbam apie tai, kas buvo prieš 40000 metų, yra tam tikri momentai, kurie galų gale sueis į take it or leave it. Tai aš prie tų, kurie took it. 4*, nors ir kiek su avansu - bet trys, manau, būtų per mažai, nes tikrai su dideliu susidomėjimu ir malonumu prarijau šią knygą.

Ugh. Throughout my childhood this book sat off-limits on my parents' bookshelf. As the kid who read White Fang 9 times in one year, I really wanted to jump on its primitive-wilderness-and-spunky-heroine train, but I was not allowed to do so - apparently some of its scenes were deemed 'too graphic' by my parents (Now I know why). I finally bought it this fall at a discount paperback book store and have been unable to finish it in a year. The prose, ugh. The nature-porn cheesiness, double ugh. The heavy-handed foreshadowing, triple ugh. Book of my childhood dreams, you have let me down.

This book is in my stack of all time favorite stories. An impressive blend of fiction and anthropology, especially considering it was written in 1980, long before the convenience of the internet. The depth of research Auel conducted, using only public libraries, is evident in the immersive world she created.

Historical fiction
Rich world-building
Strong, resilient FMC
Neanderthals
Coming-of-age
So much love
Ends abruptly

This novel is a survival story, following Ayla, a young Homo sapiens girl orphaned and taken in by a Neanderthal clan. I first discovered this series on a shelf in my parent's library at the age of 12 and was instantly hooked. I found Ayla’s journey incredibly empowering, she was also 12, yet she accomplished so much. I’ve re-read this story a few times over the years, and find more to love each read.

Some of the language and terminology used in the book feels dated in 2025, but there’s no denying the parental love that flow from the pages.

n  As Creb looked at the peaceful, trusting face of the strange girl in his lap, he felt a deep love flowering in his soul for her. He couldn’t have loved her more if she were his own.n

While this book isn’t remotely in the same genre as 50 Shades, it had a similar cultural moment, EVERY older woman I knew at the time was reading this series.

Auel’s speculative take on the interaction between Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens holds up surprisingly well, even with what we now understand about their coexistence.

*Genetic evidence confirms that interbreeding occurred, as modern humans carry around 1–2% Neanderthal DNA.

TWs: Death (both human and animal) and rituals involving animal sacrifice. SA/violence, child abuse, neglect, injury and physical violence. The Neanderthal in this story are heavily patriarchal.

This was good! I wasn't expecting a book about cavemen clans to be so full of drama and politics! There were parts that broke my heart, made me angry and made sense even though it's hard situations to stomach. I will definitely continue with the series after the ending of this one. Really good!

Libro algo falto de ritmo al inicio, aunque va mejorando a medida que vamos avanzando en su lectura.

So, I read this book in high school, and it was SO GOOD. It's about this little girl (Ayla) who is left orphaned and alone during prehistoric times, then picked up and raised by Neanderthals. They think she's ugly and weird, but in reality she is a stunningly beautiful, tall blonde leggy woman. She just is living with a bunch of under-evolved people who don't see it. (I think I loved this book because I imagined it was the same way in my life. I am way hotter than people give me credit for, probably.)

So anyways, she grows up, leaves them, meets up with her own people, and falls in love with a hot tall blonde guy named Jondalar. They have adventures. There is a lot more to it in there, and I found the book fascinating. I would really like to read all the rest of the books in the series. I have no idea why I never found time over the years. I have read at least part of the second in the series, maybe all of it. Oh, if only the internet had existed in high school and I'd had this website, I would remember!

K, here is an embarassing story about this book: I went to Enrichment (a church women's meeting) about 3-4 years ago, and they were having a book sharing activity. Everyone brought good books, and we shared ideas about what to read. It was my turn to share a book I really liked, and I named this one. Another (totally nice) girl at the table then said, "That book actually has a lot of really passionate parts in it, I believe." (Read: that book has some really torrid love scenes.) I said, "Oh, really? Ummmm. well...I read it a long time ago, I guess I forgot about those." (Interpretation: "Crap, I shouldn't have mentioned a book with R rated parts at a church activity.") The girl said, "Well, you were a teenager when you read it. You probably didn't understand what they were talking about." Me: "Yep." (Actually, it would be darn near impossible not to have known what they were talking about.)

So anyways, I was totally embarassed. Then about a year ago it occurred to me: WAIT A MINUTE. If she knows there were "passionate parts" in it, then SHE READ THE BOOK TOO. And obviously she didn't stop at the first sign of a "passionate part", or she wouldn't have know that there were passionate parts (plural). Right? RIGHT!

So basically, she indicted herself right along with me. If she was smart, she would've just pretended never to have heard of the book.

As a(nother) side note, I believe I mentioned on here in a recent book review that I have never belonged to a real life book club, I just talk about books on here. Well, that's because the girl I mentioned in the paragraphs preceding has been in charge of the book club in my ward for years. I am afraid she'll ask for book suggestions and I will suggest one with swear words in it or something.

Where do I even start? In a tale that defies biology, geology, common sense and all belief, Jean M. Auel introduces us to a particularly disturbing self-insert in the form of Ayla, a Cro-Magnon girl who is raised by a tribe of doltish Neanderthals.

Not only is Ayla strong, beautiful (though she considers herself ugly and believes that nobody could ever love her) and talented, she's also a virtual genius. Over the course of the series she invents or discovers the spear thrower, basket-weaving, superior weapon-making, the sewing needle, surgical stitching, horseback riding, the bra, the domestication of animals, the travois, the use of flint and pyrite to start a fire, the concept of biological reproduction at a time when pregnancy is believed to be magic, and contraception. Give her a few more books and she'll probably be splitting the atom.

She's also possessed of a phenomenal memory, knows everything there is to know about medicinal herbs, learns an entire language in a single dream and is possibly psychic.

But if you enjoy this, you'll love the second book, where she finds her True Stu Love in Jondalar, a sexy angst-bucket of sexiness whose huge penis has always proved too intimidating for his sexual partners until Ayla comes along, at which point the series experiences a 1000% increase in bad caveman porn. I assume the two of them continue to travel the land, provoking wonder in all they meet (because anybody who doesn't adore Ayla on first sight is clearly a Bad Person).

Ayla may be one of the most annoying literary characters in existence.

She was one of the Others; a newer, younger breed, more vital, more dynamic, not controlled by hidebound traditions from a brain that was nearly all memory. Her brain followed different paths, her full, high forehead that housed forward-thinking frontal lobes gave her an understanding from a different point of 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.

This book has been on my TBR list for years, and I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it. I so enjoyed learning more about this period in time (somewhere between 28,000 to 25,000 years before present). I thought the author did a brilliant job showing us about their day to day lives. I was especially impressed with all the information on herbs and how Iza, the medicine woman, used them. When historical fiction starts going this far back in time I realize that there must be quite a bit of fiction/fantasy involved, but according to most sources the author's work is quite accurate and authentic, especially with regards to anthropology. It has, however, been found that Neanderthals had a hyoid bone and may thus have been capable of using vocal language and not as dependent on sign language as portrayed in the series. I never realized that the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals co-existed at some point in time, and found this part of the story very intriguing. I recommend this book to all lovers of historical fantasy.

The Story: Leave the modern world and go back to Ice Age Europe. Follow Ayla, a Cro-Magnon child who loses her parents in an earthquake and is adopted by a tribe of Neanderthal, the Clan. See how the Clan's wary suspicion is gradually transformed into acceptance of this girl, so different from them, under the guidance of its medicine woman Iza and its wise holy man Creb.

You know what...this has been on my 'to-read' list for years... years and years and years, and yet I only just got to it...
WELL
It was worth the wait!

This is the story of a young child called Ayla who is born over 35,000 years ago during Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon times. Ayla is a Cro-Magnon who is adopted by a group of Neanderthal people when they find her stranded and abandoned after heavy snowfall and a great Earthquake. Ayla has managed to get to a Cave where she was chased by (but evaded) a Cave Lion. Many of the Neanderthals in this story believe in the Gods and signs/omens from their Totems, one of these being the great Cave Lion who is mighty beyond nearly all others. As this young girl has been marked by a Cave Lion and survived, they deem it acceptable (even positive) to take her along with them.

Ayla is taken with the Clan (as they call themselves) to a new cave far from the place where the Quake happened and she lost her own people. At first, the others in the Clan are afraid of her blue eyes and the water she produces when she's sad, but as the time and later the years go by she becomes integrated into their small community. This is the story of her culture clashing and melding with theirs. It's what happens when two entirely different races and culture meet in the form of one young girl, and it's the story of how Ayla defied everything they could ever have anticipated for her.

What I truly loved about this story was the poise and clarity that Auel gives these characters. There's evidently a lot of reserach that went into these characters and they do feel like highly plausible beings who may once have walked our very same Earth.
At many points in the story Auel points out various problems with anatomy, struggles with ideas, and challenges of build that both the Clan and Ayla have respectively. It made me really start to think how things that seem so basic and simple and easy to us today are the products of years and ages of evolution and development from beings much like these.

Auel's writing reminds me of Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy, J.V. Jones (though maybe this is more interms of setting than prose) and even Robin Hobb to some extent. I think all of these authors share something about the quality and unique authenticity of their writings, and it just registers with me really well.

I loved the character of Ayla right from the start, probably becuase she is much more like me and has many of the traits that will no doubt develop into humanity as we know it today. Ayla is resourceful and filled with a desire to develop and learn and be excited by the world, something the Clan find hard to comprehend let alone to emanate.

Of course the magic described by Auel is certainly imagined more than researched, but there may well be grains of the truth scattered in. The idea of gods and Totem animals as guiding factors for life certainly seem plausible as belief systems for societies like this one, and even the rituals and strange occurrences could relate to magic.
I really enjoyed the creativity and ingenuity Auel bought to the Clan and their magic, and I feel like it worked really well as a vital part of the story and culture for this world.

Honestly, I could go on for quite some time with all the things I completely loved about this book but I think I'll finish by saying it's great and you should read it for yourself. I am so glad that there are quite a few more in the series as I have a feeling I am going to love the rest too, and I can't wait to read them. 5*s

Frankly, Auel gets points simply for tackling this period, as I have not found any other books set around this era. Very little is known about human culture in this period apart from a basic overview, let alone Neanderthal culture. Particularly aspirations, values, and spiritual belief systems are the hardest to deduce from the material archaeological record. Auel avoids the problem of getting into the complex details of culture by making the novel more about character relationships than an exotic cultural setting. It is also clear that Auel is no writer of thrilling action sequences, and the book could have done with some of those to break up the heavy relationship dramas. Still, perhaps if writing action is not her forte, Auel's decision to avoid it could have been a wise one.

The character dramas are very well done, and the lack of action does allow more time to appreciate the wondrous natural environment in which Ayla moves, although I still maintain that the best novels contain a little of everything. In any case, the hunter-gatherer environment was indeed richly created, and I loved the descriptions, especially Ayla's secret clearing.

However, Auel couldn't avoid creating a culture entirely. Whilst she does not have to create a culture for the Cro-Magnons in this first book, she does loosely construct a culture for Neanderthals. The method of communication through gestures seems a perfectly plausible supposition, and the lack of sophistication of the Clan's thought processes draws upon a logical conclusion, but no evidence exists for the idea that females assumed and inferior and strict submissive place in Neanderthal hierarchy, and it is a notion I would personally challenge, as I find it easy to imagine the hardy, thickset Neanderthal women assuming strong and equal places in their society. However, if an author is going to delve into the realms of pure fiction, I do appreciate, as Auel has done, the creation of something for which there is no specific evidence against, and may well have been an actual possibility, rather than authors deliberately and brutally twisting known facts. The idea of animal totems in clan belief was a very interesting and striking one, although it serves largely as a plot device. Creb's rituals occasionally veer over the line of reality towards the fantastical, but Auel just about gets away with it without introducing magic into proceedings and thus transforming the novel from an historical based fiction into a ludicrous fantasy.

Ayla is the Cro-Magnon girl whose eyes we see most of the story through, and she stands in stark contrast to all the Neanderthal around her. She is inventive, adaptive, and makes lightning quick connections in her mind. She flaunts the rules about submission in women to try and experience new things, a compulsion that never once occurs to the Neanderthal women. However, she is not perfect, and in addition she is so unfairly persecuted by Broud that she does earn your sympathy.

I would not call "Clan of the Cave Bear" amazing writing, but it's pretty decent, and an enjoyable story that's packed with detailed, fleshed out character relationships and it kept me turning the pages to the very end. By no means is the ending a happy one, but I would recommend this book.

This book and the series that follows is endearing, troublesome, and whole-heartedly compassionate. This is the book my grandmother read to me as a little girl during the middle of a tornado, while we waited out the storm by candlelight. This is the book that started me reading... really reading.
I learned that I can love my quiet time, and apparently I love stories on the ancient human race... our beginnings. The ways of survival, ways of development, natural medicine, culture and anthropology. The flavor of this book is 'tribal', but the sentiment and the moral is, "the totem that chooses you can present many hardships and challenges, but the gifts are worth it."

Orphaned Cro-Magnon child adopted by a clan of Neanderthals. Well researched and very descriptive, detailing what life might've been like 35,000 years ago. Not sure I'd have survived long!
First read at 13 (30+ years ago) when there was only 3 books (so far) in the series. Anyone who read them back then will remember the looooong wait between each subsequent book. Decades later, still a favourite.