Wow! That was a great adventure of a read! I truly loved and enjoyed everything about this book. It was unlike anything I have ever read before. I was completely drawn into the story right from the very beginning until the last three, heartbreaking words that end the book. I loved the main character Ayla; one of the bravest woman characters I've ever come across in a story. No love interest or triangle that usually comes along with every story where the main character is female. This story was about a woman who is trying to survive, and doesn't let anyone or anything stand in her way to learn about the world around her, to love and care for those she loves and to dare to be as brave and strong as any man.

A book I highly recommend!

Incredible.

Ayla is about 5 years old when a massive earthquake leaves her motherless and alone. She is found by a group of Neanderthals and adopted into their Clan. As a child born to the Others (a Cro Magnon group living in another area), Ayla's differences are always apparent to everyone else, but she grows to be a respected and integral part of the Clan.

What. A. Character.

Ayla's story isn't without struggle and difficulty, but it also contains strength and love and a ferocity that I absolutely adore. She's way up there in my new favorite characters list and I'm excited to watch her continue to grow in the subsequent installments in this series. From start to finish in this installment, Ayla ages only a few years, but during the course of that time, she becomes a woman in the eyes of the Clan. This means that she undergoes many things, changes, and events that we do much later in our lives in this day and age. I LOVE her.

And honestly, I can't remember ever reading anything from this prehistoric time period before so I was not sure what to expect when I began this book. With the earthquake event happening in the opening chapter, I was immediately hooked. The story never let up, even with the few instances of repetition scattered throughout. I was never bored. The descriptions of the culture and customs of these people and their ways of life fascinated me. It felt obvious to me that the author took great pains to research details and present them as accurately as possible. (After finishing the book, I sought out interviews with Mrs. Auel and found where she talked about her research-very cool.)

The part that I easily loved most about this story was its characterization. I was able to form easy connections with them even though there was ~30,000 years between their time and mine. Sure, they are wildly different from me in terms of customs, religion, ways of life, etc. - but these characters have emotions and behaviors that are very much on par with us today. This is something that I've never thought about before...until now, when I've actually taken the time to think about this time period, these people, and the challenges that they faced when compared with the comforts of living in this period of history. I had no trouble at all visualizing this book in my head as I read and found myself wanting to read it anytime that I couldn't be.

This book was a complete joy to read (and listen to, as I added the audiobook) and I know that I'll be rereading it in the future.

Audiobook Notes: The audiobook format of The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel is published by Brilliance Audio and is 19 hours, 36 minutes, Unabridged. It is narrated by Sandra Burr who was new to me. She was a fine narrator and I became very used to her reading for Ayla and the other characters. Not my very favorite, but certainly enjoyable. I'll read/listen again in the future, for sure.

*** 3.65 ***

This is another book that has been sitting on my shelf for years. I'm glad I finally picked it up, Is it historically accurate? Who cares, it's a story and a good one. I enjoyed reading this, I wish had read it years ago.

Geschafft! Bei diesem Buch bin ich nun wirklich froh, es beendet zu haben. Ich habe es 2010 schon einmal lesen wollen und dann bei 350 Seiten aufgegeben. Dabei ist die Geschichte nicht schlecht, im Gegenteil. Ich finde das Setting total spannend und faszinierend und es interessiert mich auch sehr, wie die Menschen damals gelebt haben (könnten). Aber manchmal war es mir dann zwischendurch immer mal wieder etwas zu langatmig.
Den zweiten Band möchte ich aber dennoch noch lesen, denn es interessiert mich schon, wie die Geschichte von Ayla weitergeht.

After 20 years I am reading this book again, but with different eyes. I still like the story, but found it violent at times. Still a great read and I want to read the other books again.

Human evolution is a matter of great interest to me, which is why a book that gives an insight into the lives of the first people and the Neanderthals is appealing to me, especially in the last few years when important discoveries have been made in this field. Of course my objection to this book was the fact that it is quite old, written at a time when there were different scientific perceptions about this issue. By reading as expected I have found that scientific theories that are considered outdated in our time are depicted but, surprising, there are also things that went against what the scientists considered fact then but today they have been proven right beyond any doubt.

The author tells the story of Ayla, a little girl who loses her mother and wandering ends up with a group of Neanderthals who reluctantly adopt her. The differences of her species, in terms of both appearance and intelligence, are becoming more and more obvious and make her acceptance a very difficult thing. That is why she makes every effort to adapt to their society, learning the complicated rules of conduct that were set thousands of years before. A very interesting story that takes us to such a distant past and tells a lot about things that still concern us today, such as the need for acceptance and the fear of many people against change. But what made me the strongest impression in this book and made me appreciate it is the fact that the author taking elements from many different real cultures and adding many of her own creates a very complex culture for Neanderthals, with their habits, their customs, their religious beliefs and, in general, the way they perceived the world through their less complex minds.

Η ανθρώπινη εξέλιξη είναι ένα θέμα που με ενδιαφέρει πολύ, για αυτό ένα βιβλίο που δίνει μία εικόνα της ζωής των πρώτων ανθρώπων και των Νεάντερταλ αναμενόμενα μου είναι ελκυστικό, ειδικά τα τελευταία χρόνια που σε αυτόν τον τομέα έχουν γίνει σημαντικές ανακαλύψεις. Βέβαια η ένστασή μου για αυτό το βιβλίο ήταν το γεγονός ότι είναι αρκετά παλιό, γραμμένο δηλαδή σε μία εποχή όπου υπήρχαν διαφορετικές επιστημονικές αντιλήψεις για αυτό το θέμα. Διαβάζοντας το αναμενόμενα διαπίστωσα ότι αποτυπώνονται σε αυτό επιστημονικές θεωρίες που στην εποχή μας θεωρούνται ξεπερασμένες, περιέργως, όμως, υπάρχουν και πράγματα που πήγαιναν κόντρα σε αυτά που τότε οι επιστήμονες θεωρούσαν δεδομένα αλλά σήμερα έχουν αποδειχθεί σωστά πέρα από κάθε αμφιβολία.

Η συγγραφέας μας αφηγείται την ιστορία της Ayla, ενός μικρού κοριτσιού που χάνει τη μητέρα της και περιπλανώμενη καταλήγει σε μία ομάδα Νεάντερταλ που διστακτικά την υιοθετεί. Οι διαφορές του είδους της, όσο στο θέμα της εμφάνισης, όσο και της νοημοσύνης, όμως, γίνονται όλο και περισσότερο εμφανείς και κάνουν την αποδοχή της μία πολύ δύσκολη υπόθεση. Για αυτό καταβάλλει κάθε δυνατή προσπάθεια να προσαρμοστεί στην κοινωνία τους, μαθαίνοντας τους περίπλοκους κανόνες συμπεριφοράς που την καθορίζουν χιλιάδες χρόνια. Μία πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα ιστορία που μας μεταφέρει τη ζωή σε ένα τόσο μακρινό παρελθόν και λέει πολλά για πράγματα που μας απασχολούν ακόμα και σήμερα όπως την ανάγκη για αποδοχή και το φόβο πολλών ανθρώπων απέναντι στην αλλαγή. Αυτό, όμως, που μου έκανε μεγαλύτερη εντύπωση σε αυτό το βιβλίο και με έκανε να το εκτιμήσω είναι το γεγονός ότι η συγγραφέας παίρνοντας στοιχεία από πολλές διαφορετικές πραγματικές κουλτούρες και προσθέτοντας πολλά δικά της δημιουργεί μία ιδιαίτερα περίπλοκη κουλτούρα για τους Νεάντερταλ, με τον τρόπο ζωής τους, τις συνήθειές τους, τα έθιμά τους, τις θρησκευτικές τους πεποιθήσεις και γενικότερα τον τρόπο που αντιλαμβάνονταν τον κόσμο μέσα από το λιγότερο περίπλοκο μυαλό τους.

Ms Auel, there are some things I’d like to talk to you about. Be warned I’m quite angry because I keep reading your books for some bizarre reason and I cringe and tear my hair out in despair. See, you had a good story there – a little Cro-Magnon orphan girl found and raised by Neanderthals. I didn’t even care she turned out to be the smartest, most beautiful, ingenious little thing and the villain in the story was almost grotesque and cartoonish in his evildoing. I knew no real harm would ever come Ayla’s way, she would survive it all and meanwhile invent an iPhone. It’s all ok, it’s comfort reading after all. It’s the writing I had many different problems with.

First of all – point of view.

"The plentiful supply of drinking water kept dehydration from making its dangerous contribution to hypothermia, the lowering of body temperature that brought death from exposure, but she was getting weak."

I’m sorry, what? It’s 35000 BC, I don’t want to hear things like ‘hypothermia’ or ‘diuretic’ or ‘evolution’. I didn’t need that foreshadowing of the 20th century. I wanted a story as seen through the eyes of prehistorical people and I’d seriously take anything the author threw my way, there would be no limits to my suspension of disbelief. But since I had that constant running commentary that sounded like something from a BBC documentary I was forced to get out the story and look at it from a dispassionate, modern point of view, which inevitably led me to the conclusion that half of it was unbelievable bollocks.

"All those primitive people, with almost no frontal lobes, and speech limited by undeveloped vocal organs, but with huge brains—larger than any race of man then living or future generations yet unborn—were unique. They were the culmination of a branch of mankind whose brain was developed in the back of their heads, in the occipital and the parietal regions that control vision and bodily sensation and store memory."

No! You can’t put paragraphs like that in a STORY! Did you copy it from an encyclopedia? You're confusing research with copy-pasting.

The narrative finally jumped the shark when it implied that Neanderthal women were scared of learning new things because with their hereditary memory (yeah, me neither) their children would keep having larger and larger heads which eventually would lead to more difficult births and higher infant and mother mortality rate, ergo decline of the race and evolutionary cul-de-sac. No, I’m serious.

And here is why Broud (the villain) hates Ayla:

"but the real problem was she was not Clan. […] Her brain followed different paths, her full, high forehead that housed forward-thinking frontal lobes gave her an understanding from a different view."

Yes. He hated her because of her forward-thinking frontal lobes.

But when Auel gives the voice to Ayla, her stream of conscience is even worse than the droning of the main narrator. It’s like listening to someone on amphetamines.

"I’ll dig some roots on the way back. Iza says the roots are good for Creb’s rheumatism, too. I hope the fresh cherry bark will help Iza’s cough. She’s getting better, I think, but she’s so skinny. Uba’s getting so big and heavy, Iza shouldn’t lift her at all. Maybe I’ll bring Uba with me next time, if I can. I’m so glad we didn’t have to give her to Oga. She’s really starting to talk now. It’ll be fun when she gets a little bigger and we can go out together. Look at those pussy willows. Funny how they feel like real fur when they’re small like that, but they grow out green. The sky is so blue today. I can smell the sea in the wind. I wonder when we’ll be going fishing. The water should be warm enough to swim in soon. I wonder why no one else likes to swim? The sea tastes salty, not like the stream, but I feel so light in it. I can hardly wait until we go fishing. I think I love sea fish best of all, but I like eggs, too."

Second – repetitions. For god’s sake. I know we homo sapiens sapiens don’t have as good memory as Neanderthals but I’m pretty sure your average human doesn’t need to have a piece of information repeated every five pages. This book could easily be 150 pages without losing anything. A perfect candidate for Reader’s Digest’s condesations.

Another problem – showing… and then telling. Because we all readers are completely dumb and we don’t get it.

"I see you and Dorv put your slings to good use. I could smell the meat cooking halfway up the hill,” Brun continued. “When we get settled in the new cave, we’ll have to find a place to practice. The clan would benefit if all the hunters had your skill with the sling, Zoug. And it won’t be long before Vorn will need to be trained.” The leader was aware of the contribution the older men still made to the sustenance of the clan and wanted them to know it.”

Why was that last sentence needed? This is exactly what the dialogue implied! Ms. Auel, are you disrespecting me?

We know that Ayla doesn’t remember ever seeing any humans that look like her, only Neanderthals, so it’s obvious she would have body image problems, feel ugly, big, deformed. It’s implied many times but just in case we don’t understand why a tall, slim, blue-eyed blond girl might feel ugly, Auel explains, repeatedly:

"For as long as she could remember, Ayla had never seen anyone except people of the clan. She had
no other standard of measure. They had grown accustomed to her, but to herself, she looked different from everyone around her, abnormally different."

On top of that all sort of other random nonsense.

"She simply hadn’t been able to grasp the concept of talking with movement. That it was even possible had never occurred to her; it was totally beyond her realm of experience."

Really? She invents pretty much anything and understand calculus but has never seen anyone gesticulate? That’s almost second nature to every human. If you meet someone who speaks a different language and you try to communicate with them, you almost automatically resort to gestures, so don’t even give me that bullshit.

Yet another problem was that Auel obviously confused description with enumerations. It’s not that there were too many descriptions in this book; it’s that they were all boring. She even managed to make those little Neanderthal Olympic Games sound boring. I’d love for someone to pay me to rewrite this whole thing.

And there were NO sexy scenes in this volume!

I am almost ashamed to admit that I also read book two, and it was only around page 30 of the book three that I managed to snap out of it and decided I just couldn’t do it any longer. It was like crack, it was ruining my life.

I read this through one sitting, as I'd read it about three times before. I first picked it up back as a fourteen year old teenage girl that was very impressionable. This blew my mind then, but the more critical adult version of me found the rape of a child distasteful even if historically accurate, in that this is how things have been for a very long time. I enjoyed the reread but it definitely reads different when you're an adult.

My favorite thing was the writing and descriptive scene. Reading this is the same vein as reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, in that both authors have long, detailed scenes of packing and gathering supplies and I love scenes like those. These are both a survival stories also, of strong, passionate women determined to make it through no matter what. The writing can be a bit slow at times, but the story itself is good and the characters memorable.

4.5 ⭐ rounded up for fond childhood memories of reading a favorite new book and that feeling still lingers with the book even now.

TW for rape of a child and child pregnancy, abandonment issues.

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

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.