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Zoom image. Courtesy Bantam Books cover. Author Jean Auel. Courtesy famousauthors. Oregon Literature The joint appearance in of the controversial pamphlet Status Rerum…. University of Portland "Founded on a bluff and run on that principle," as historian Jim Covert….
Ursula K. Le Guin — Ursula K. Written by Eric A. Circa 30, 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 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 Author 4 books 5 followers.
I loved this book when I was a teen. Indirectly, it lead to my pursuit of a BA in Anthropology. Perhaps it is that Anthropology degree that has rendered the book unreadable for me 25 years later.
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. 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. 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 I learned that I can love my quiet time, and apparently I love stories on the ancient human race 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. Mario the lone bookwolf. I have hardly ever read a novel that was both so entertaining and so educational Schools could skip a longer part of history by just giving this novel to the pupils. Described by the view of a young girl, the progress of the development of culture is shown uniquely.
The average Stone Age fantasy novel may include war, monsters, an epic love story, etc. A disappointment. The concept is interesting, especially in light of recent archaeological evidence suggesting that Neandertals and Cro-Magnons anatomically modern humans may have interbred.
However, the execution is extremely poor. The pacing is uneven, the prose is so flowery it hurts, and the characters are flat. Some other things that bothered me: --The author has the tendency to "info-dump", frequently disrupting the flow of the story to deliver lengthy descriptions of plants, rocks, characters' appearances, etc.
I understand that setting is important here, as most readers aren't likely to be familiar with the flora and fauna of Ice Age Europe. In that regard, it's obvious that she did her research, but I felt the depiction could have been done better; maybe if the prose weren't so purple, or if she didn't describe the same caves, valleys, and plants over and over again, I wouldn't have minded so much. Oh lord, the repetition.
Constant reiterations of how different Ayla is, how special, how strange, how unique, blah blah blah. Somewhere near the beginning of the book, Auel makes some kind of reference to the size of the Clan members' Neandertals heads being related to how much knowledge they can hold. At first, this seems to make some sort of sense, as the size of the skull influences brain size although brain size and intelligence are not directly correlated--Neandertals' brains were actually larger than ours, though we have no way of knowing how smart they were.
But later on she states that this is the reason they cannot progress technologically--because their brains, and therefore their skulls, would have to get larger in order to learn new things, and if their heads get too large, childbirth will become impossible.
Honey, that is just not how it works. Does your brain get bigger every time you learn something new? Didn't think so. There are also numerous references to "the memories"--knowledge of ceremonies, traditions, skills and Clan history that Clan members are apparently born with.
They also have some kind of mystical abilities to access and share the memories of their ancestors stored in their own minds. Though it makes for an intriguing storytelling element, this notion is historically and scientifically ridiculous. It isn't possible for someone to be born with memories or cultural knowledge--culture is learned, and memories are gathered through personal experience.
If this were a fantasy book, the mystical story elements would make more sense. But Clan of the Cave Bear isn't a fantasy supposedly. I found it in the historical fiction section of the library, and I've seen it listed as historical fiction everywhere else I've looked.
Just as ludicrous were Auel's assertions that the Clan people are capable of speech but not laughter fossil evidence suggests that Neandertals did had the capacity for vocal communication, and if they can speak, there's no reason why they should be unable to laugh , and incapable of crying.
These were merely plot devices to make Ayla stand out, but the absolute lack of logic in these distinctions makes me wonder if Auel put any thought at all into why they should exist. I suppose I should give Auel a break on this one, since the book was written in the s, while technology that made it possible to sequence Neandertal DNA--which led to the discovery that some of them possessed the genes coding for fair skin and red or blond hair--wasn't available until a few years ago.
Still, I sensed a white supremacist agenda. Ayla, the "golden-haired goddess" is so much better at everything than the people of the Clan, she seems to bring them luck, everything is better with her around, and anyone who treats her badly receives divine retribution. Dirk Grobbelaar. Suddenly, with a magician's flourish, he produced a skull. He held it high over his head with his strong left arm and turned slowly around in a complete circle so each man could see the large, distinctive, high-domed shape.
The men stared at the cave bear's skull glowing whitely in the flickering light of the torches. We just don't know what it is.
Cro-Magnon girl is orphaned by earthquake and is adopted by Neanderthal clan: drama and intrigue follows. Grod, Droog, Groob, Crug and for obvious reasons, Durc. This book was pretty huge back in its day. It also seems to be provoking all kinds of debate. The reviews on goodreads alone make for interesting reading, and more than a little contradiction. Is the book racist? Is the book sexist?
Is the book factually correct? More to the point: is the book any good? He had a sudden understanding of the gulf between the mind of this girl and his own, and it shook him. The intimacies of clan interaction does have a terrifically epic backdrop in prehistoric paleolithic Europe and something that the author conveys quite well is the solitude; you really do get the idea that there are not many people around.
However, expect a bit of an infodump: there are pages and pages of depictions of plants and their medicinal properties. She 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 facade only culture-deep, assumed for the sake of survival. Season follows season; day to day depictions of paleolithic Neanderthal life serving as backdrop for the pissing contest between Ayla and Broud; wash, rinse, repeat.
Something that reviewers seem to be skirting around is the rape scene depicted in the story. I found it fairly brutal, given the context the victim is a year girl , even if it does serve to move the story along.
I would have expected the author to exhibit a modicum of sensitivity in the prose, but alas. Perhaps this is the idea, to set a more sinister tone for the rest of the novel.
We don't know why your totem has led you to follow that ancient path, but we cannot deny the Spirit of the Cave Lion; it must be allowed. You know what WELL It was worth the wait!
This is the story of a young child called Ayla who is born over 35, 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. 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. 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. Re-read July Still a 5 star read, this series will never get old. I read this for the first time years ago and although there's absolutely zero romance at all, not even a hero that comes in the next book Jondalar, be still my beating heart!
I adored this book, and still do after re-reads. A truly amazing, captivating and fascinating series that will stay at the very top of my all time favourites list. Not even 10 stars is enough for this book. Crystal Starr Light. Iza, the medicine woman of the Clan of the Cave Bear, stumbles upon her and takes her under her wing, but Broud, the proud son of the clan leader, Brun, takes an immediate disliking to the young non-Clan girl.
Ayla grows up among the clan and struggles to find her place. I've heard so much about this series of books, particularly with the most recent and apparently last of the series?? While I had read that that book wasn't so hot, I did read reviews that praised the first few books. So I went out and got my hands on an audiobook of the first in the Earth's Children series. First off, I have to give kudos to Auel for all the research and time she put into this novel.
This woman didn't go, "I'm going to write a pre-historic novel" and then just throw in some almost modern humans in a wallpaper world.
This book transports you back before cars and computers, before women's rights and civil rights, into a fantasy realm of what the world might have been like before the modern age.
It was vibrant and meticulously detailed. I loved how the Others could speak but the Clan could not; how the Clan could access memories but were bad at new innovations while the opposite was true of the Others. A lesser author, like I said, would have seen the work needed and given up; Auel pushed on and produced a damn fine novel. Besides the vibrant setting, the characters were detailed and intricate.
I liked how Iza embraced Ayla and was thoughtful enough to pass along the medicine woman trade, trying to think of Ayla's future. Iza was a warm, loving, kind-hearted, strong woman.
Creb was fantastic. I thought he was sweet and kind, a good father-figure for Ayla, and I loved the comparisons between him and Ayla and between him and Ayla's son, Dirk. Ayla was a great character; she grows so much throughout the book. She tries to find her place in the clan; she is constantly testing the boundaries, but not because she is always defiant.
Ayla is just not Clan; she is of the Others, and that breeding comes through. I liked the differences that she accented between Clan and Others: speech, crying, differences in body shape I really liked how the Clan had a different perception of beauty.
There were a few times when she or her son got really close to that Mary Sue line--the amount of times she breaks rules and is able to keep from being killed is pretty astonishing. However, I think Ayla did have enough faults, and was legitimately punished enough that I didn't focus on it too much. I wonder, though, how far it is into the series before her turn to Mary Sue-ism comes is complete.
Brun was a great strong leader; he listened to his people, but wasn't afraid of action, afraid of punishment.
And Ooba became such a sweet, loving sister to Ayla. I couldn't help but think of me and my sister when I read about the two. The story meanders along Ayla's life, her struggles to become Clan, and her tension with Broud.
I loved how she learned to hunt with a sling, and I liked how she became a good medicine woman, how she would drop everything to try to save someone's life. I got to learn so much in this book, my mind was bent to new depths--what would life be like living in a cave? What was the world like before? If anything about the story bugged me, it would be the sudden departures into talking about mixing medicines.
As I said above, I loved the research Auel put into this book; that said, inserting several passages ONLY to show what plants mixed with what roots would make a cure for this ailment got old. Fortunately, there were not TOO many of these scenes, but there were enough to be noteworthy.
Women are basically treated like property. Men can beat women and be completely justified--this happens to Ayla quite a few times in the book. Men also can force a woman to have sex whenever the desire hits them--even if the woman is not their wife. Again, this happens to Ayla quite a bit, in a rather uncomfortable rape montage nothing is too graphic, however.
While I am sure this is more realistic than having Clan women burning their bras or whatever they would have used for bras , it is not for everyone and was rather uncomfortable at times to listen to. Sometimes, I wanted to smack some sense into these Clan men--how dare you treat someone like that!
Being female does NOT mean being stupid and being unable to think for yourself! Ultimately, I appreciated how Auel did NOT resort to writing the Clan as if they were wise, with modern sensibilities about feminism
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