2.5 ⭐⭐
This book is not for everyone. It certainly wasn't for me.

It is astonishingly brutal in the description of both human endurance and cruelty.

The story is compelling and once you started it, you'll want to follow it to the end just so you can see what happens to the little orphan girl. But you may feel the need at times to alternately roll your eyes, hurl the book across the room, or punch something.

If there is one thing this book does well, it is to bring out negative emotions in the readers. It is a heart-wrenching story of survival of the fittest in one of the most cruel societies I have encountered until now.

No this book is not perfect and perhaps it might seem a bit immature in places to some readers, but in the long run, this will turn out to be one of the books that you may end up thinking of as a classic.

There are 6 books in the series:

☛The Clan of the Cave Bear, 1980
☛The Valley of Horses, 1982
☛The Mammoth Hunters, 1985
☛The Plains of Passage, 1990
☛The Shelters of Stone, 2002
☛The Land of Painted Caves, 2011

While every book seems to go a bit downhill from this first one (at least the last 3 books seem to in my opinion) they actually provide a platform in which Ayla our main character grows.

This first book truly shows how the author had researched the Ice Age ( Europe during the Upper Paleolithic Age) to write this and you can tell that she did her own physical research too.

The story is an interesting one, beginning with an earthquake that finds our main character, a Cro-Magnon child lost at about 5 years old. After being mauled by a cave lion, she is found by a group of Neanderthals and her life is saved.

She now grows up in a very difficult situation which ends up sort of - modern man vs prehistoric man. If you read this book, towards the end you will see why I say it like that.

The growth of the character Ayla shows very dramatically in this first novel, especially if you consider she was only about 11 or so when she had her first child. Throughout the series, you will see her growing more and more as she goes off to find "her own people".

Most people felt that the last book was a cop out, I happened to find it a gentle conclusion after so many long years of waiting. I hadn't been happy with the last several books so the last one did not surprise me at all.

I am now off to re-read the entire series!

Happy Reading!

This is a great novel; it’s a real masterpiece. I love the whole series but I think this is by far the best book in it, and it stands on its own although I became completely hooked and I’ve eagerly awaited every new book in the series, and I really hope Auel finishes this series! I really admire these epic books. I appreciate stories that are historical fiction or fantasy where a complex society and intricate details about the lives of the inhabitants are described. I feel that I learned so much about the evolution of and differences between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon people, and could discern homo-sapien’s traits and personalities in both groups which made it a fun as well as emotionally involving read. I loved everything about Ayla and much about her new tribe as well. Loved learning about how herbs and foods and medicines were used and prepared, and was surprised and excited by the expertise shown. Know the “facts” here involve some conjecture, but Auel has done more than adequate research, in my opinion.

Alla fine della lettura di questo romanzo il maggior rammarico è stato pensare che l'ho incredibilmente lasciato nella mia libreria per 23 anni dall'acquisto senza mai decidermi a leggerlo! In compenso la consapevolezza di essere in possesso del successivo volume mi rallegra enormemente perché mi permette da subito di continuare la lettura di questa meravigliosa saga! Infatti questo primo romanzo della serie ambientata circa 30.000 anni fa, verso la fine dell'ultima glaciazione mi ha letteralmente avvinto alle sue pagine permettendomi di apprendere sia pur in forma romanzata com'era organizzata e come si svolgeva la vita quotidiana di un clan di umani nella preistoria nell'arco delle stagioni e di conoscere i tanti aspetti che regolavano la vita dei nostri antenati in assenza della tecnologia moderna. Ma anche l'intreccio della trama del romanzo si è dimostrata vincente grazie all'abilità della scrittrice che ha saputo raccontare nel microcosmo di una piccola comunità il concatenarsi dei sentimenti positivi e negativi propri dei singoli e dell'insieme di un enclave soprattutto grazie all'idea originalissima di inserire un personaggio di rottura, la giovanissima Ayla, nel contesto apparentemente "tranquillo" del clan regolato da rigide leggi tramandate oralmente. E sarà Ayla con la sua "novità", con la sua struttura mentale aperta e proiettata al futuro a scombussolare il clan e cercare di migliorarlo. La trama non mostra mai cedimenti nonostante il volumetto sfiori le 500 pagine, e scorre via piacevolissima per una lettura senza intoppi. Impossibile non dare il massimo delle stellette!

The thing that strikes me most about her work is that every time there's a new discovery about how paleolithic people lived, it goes along with her stories. Things they said were silly back when she wrote it (Neanderthals with instruments, Neanderthals living with homo sapiens sapiens, and the like) keep proving true.

She presents interesting ideas of cognition, culture and how societies develop. The first two books are her best I think. The rest remain interesting if you can deal with the constant repetition, soft core porn and the fact that Ayla discovers everything but cold fusion.

Clan of the Cave Bear is an incredible, courageous story. The author spent a lot of time hanging out with some of the world's most noted paleontologists doing her research- and she knows her stuff!

I really wanted to like this one. I thought I would. But after reading the first 50 pages/3 chapters I just can't go on. It's the 6th book I have abandoned in over 4 years. It is long-winded, way too descriptive (lots of telling, no showing), so much repetition, chunks of encyclopedic knowledge thrown in every other page, and when I read about the clan women having the memories from their ancestors and clan members not being able to learn new things because that will increase brain size and their brains won't fit in their skulls and heads increase even more in size and child birth will become impossible, my eyes roll backwards so much it hurts.

I have to admit I haven't been in much of a reading mood lately and when I read something I feel extra critical and more easily annoyed by anything I don't like. If I read this a couple of months ago or would read it a couple of months from now, perhaps I would have liked it. Or at least finished it.

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

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.

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

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 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!

Who knew that the story of a Cro Magnon girl (living with, then leaving her Neanderthal clan) could be so interesting? Read all six books for a thoroughly interesting look at Planet Earth 15,000 years ago.