The Clan of the Cave Bear

I loved these stories so much, that I wanted to name my only daughter, “Ayla”, after the central character. However my husband was not a fan, so we compromised on Maya. This is one of my all time favorite book series, and I am a prolific reader so that is saying something! I was an anthropology major in college, and I find the way that she wove human discoveries, inventions, and herbal medicine – into the story of complex hierarchy and cultural relationships present in societies (small and larger groups of people) fascinating. This book takes you on hunting trips and the experience of learning new languages, falling in love and having your heart broken. Having a child, losing a child. Learn about the good in people and the bad. It teaches about respecting women and how different societies have different expectations on that front. Wonderful wonderful books <3

Set in during the last Ice Age, Ayla, a primitive human girl of five, loses her family in an earthquake. Starving, dehydrated, and mauled by a cave lion, she is found wandering by Iza, a medicine woman of the Clan. Not Cro Magnum like Alya, but Neanderthal at the waning end of their races existence, the Clan takes in the girl of the Others.

Ayla has to adapt to the similar but different Clan. Their customs, their behavior, and their social relationships are different from humans, but their emotions are so familiar. Ayla has to learn, bending her personality to their rigid practices. But if she can’t adapt, the Clan will punish her.

And Broud, the clan leader’s son, is eager to see that she fails. Consumed by jealousy, the young Neanderthal will do anything to hurt or degrade Ayla.

Clan of the Cave Bear is a brilliant book. Set in the ice age, Auel’s meticulous research into survival tactics, primitive technology, and megalithic wildlife now extinct brings to life the distant past of the earliest humans. Through Ayla, we can get a glimpse of how our ancestors lived and how their cultures developed. The fact she also has a very human story in the character of Ayla’s early childhood and coming of age as an adult only makes the story even more gripping.

With great characters, a moving plot, and a fascinating setting, there’s a reason that Auel’s Earth Children series is so popular! If you’re a fan of historical fiction then you need to read this amazing series!

There are books which mark an entire era in your life, and this one (as well as the subsequent series) have definitely marked mine. As a parent and teacher, this is the kind of a book I would love young people to read, not only to fall in love with fantastic characters and historical fiction, but also to learn to imagine and visualize, in quite a life-like way, what it meant to live in a place and time with no electricity, no technology, no politics. Life stripped down to survival, emotions, learning and communication. Reading it, I went through a range of emotions from compassion, fear, awe, empathy, sadness, fury, frustration, admiration. It wasn’t a question of when I would finish it. The only thing that mattered was how fast I could read the second part, what would happen and how they would grow. An epic adventure and lesson on the power of spirit and mind!

I know I’m decades behind in picking up this title, but I’m so glad that I did. In the first of Jean Auel’s “Earth’s Children” series, we get a first-person perspective into what it would be like to live as a Neanderthal person more than 25,000 years ago, and I was fascinated at every turn. Auel has created such a believable and historically viable story, that the reader can’t help but fall into the lives of these people, who call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear.

What I think I loved most about this story was the gender dynamics of the Clan. We get a glimpse into a society radically different from those of modern times and yet one that can also be strikingly familiar at times. In the Clan, women are second-class citizens: they are submissive to the men, they depend on the men for leadership and guidance, and they are happy with their roles in life. In part, this dynamic is driven by the developmental limitations of the Neanderthal people — individuals are incapable of free thought and everything they “know” how to do is genetically pre-programmed into their brains. Men are genetically the hunters and leaders with their stronger bodies and dominant minds. Women are genetically the gatherers, caregivers and mothers. These societal roles are immutable, with change being beyond the capacity of their brains to even comprehend.

The starkness of this dynamic is very well illustrated when Ayla, a Cro-Magnon girl, comes to live with the Clan. Because her brain is wired differently from that of the Neanderthals who rescue and take her in, she constantly finds herself at odds with the Clan’s way of life. She questions. She challenges. She desires independence. She struggles with the gender restrictions that the Clan has placed on her to the point of causing her great hardship in the early years of her life.

This hardship, and Ayla’s perseverance through it, is also one of the spectacular aspects of this book. Ayla loses her birth parents at a very young age to a natural disaster. She is alone in an unfriendly wilderness as a toddler — without shelter from the elements or wild animals, without food, without guidance or care. When she is discovered by the Clan, she must learn a new language and fit into a mold in the Clan’s society for which she is not physically or mentally suited. She is constantly seen as ugly for her physical features that are unlike those of the Clan and she is constantly being chided for her boldness and independent way of thinking, despite her desperate attempts to fit in.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Ayla’s story, much like the future of the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, is not one with a happy ending. In spite of all of her struggle and hardship, she finds herself alone again at the end of the book, hardened and wizened, having lost her adoptive parents to death and having lost her son as well as the camaraderie of a people and culture due to her inability to completely submit to the Clan’s way of life.
This book was such a fascinating and heart-wrenching experience for me; I am anxious to continue reading the series and hope to see Ayla rise above her hardship and thrive.

Hooked – first time round and rereading the whole series again for the fourth or fifth time.

History, romance, drama, cooking, herbs and medicine, animals, nature, family dynamics, spirituality – and so much more.

I’m an avid reader – and was living in the Australian Bush 2000 with a bookcase full – and this was one of the last books I picked up – the title didn’t appeal – but I was desperate for something to read.

Once I picked up the first one I couldn’t put it down and had to read all 5. I remember putting down the fifth book and feeling disappointed as if the story was cut short and was devastated to hear there were no further books.

Imagine my surprise years later and back in the UK to see the final book – happy at last.

If you don’t read these books the you’re missing out on something really really special.

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