Clan of the Cave Bear, The Valley of Horses, The Mammoth Hunters, The Plains of Passage (Jean Auel)

The other night I dreamt I was asked to do a review of Clan of the Cave Bear, which I read a few years ago. Surprisingly, I managed a decent review and remembered it when I woke up. Having done it in my sleep, I'll do it for real.

The series as a whole is known as Earth's Children. If I have a criticism it's that the author shoehorns in so much that the main characters become little more than narrators of a textbook. Whatever the archaeologists have dug up and the anthropologists have speculated, our tour-guides Ayla and Jondalar have been there, seen it done it and painted the story on walls of the Lascaux caves. The multi-talented stoneage prodigy Ayla domesticates the horse and the wolf, rears a cave lion cub, and bears a hybrid Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon child. All of ancient history seems to be compressed into the exploits of these 2 characters. They meet a half-African/half-European man (to demonstrate the existence of different colour peoples) and half a dozen different (sometimes speculated) lifestyles ranging from hunter-gatherer to nomadic hunter to warrior women. Sometimes you feel the characters are merely trudging through a series of anthropology and archaeology textbooks and scenarios to provide practical demonstrations for the reader.

The Clan of the Cave Bear

5 year old Cro-Magnon child Ayla is orphaned and separated from her tribe and raised by a Neanderthal tribe. Auel uses archeological information to reconstruct (and extrapolate) the lifestyle and habits of her adopters. She is raised by their medicine woman, Iza. Being unable to speak fluently, Ayla's babble is unwelcome and she must learn their signing and grunting language. However, they have much better memories than she. Ayla learns to memorise the uses of plants and becomes a herbwoman. She learns clan customs and learns not to laugh, smile or cry. However, she also breaks customs and taboos by learning how to make and use weapons, something women are not allowed to do.

Being physically different she awaits the time a man wants to mate with her (this being portrayed as a very animal act of crouch, rut and get on with whatever you were doing, much like baboons). She does eventually bear a child due to an act of rape, Durc, but its cro-magnon features and behaviour (unable to support its own head, slow to develop) are seen as deformed, abnormal and unlikely to survive by her Neanderthal adopters. Ayla runs off so he is not put to death as being burden on the clan. When taboo-breaker Ayla is banished by the clan, Durc (who survived and was accepted by the clan) remains behind and the reader learns of a Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon hybrid daughter who will be a logical mate for Durc. Ayla sets off in search of people like her, having learnt of their existence from Iza.

The Valley of Horses

Ayla now lives alone in a cave near a lake. She is self sufficient, making tools, baskets etc and hunting and gathering food. Horses are merely another food source, but she adopts and raises a foal she names Whinney (after the noise it makes), and finds it can be used for riding and for carrying. Later the domesticated Whinney will leave to find a mate, before returning to Ayla. She also raises and releases an injured cave lion cub she names Baby.

In parallel to Ayla's story, the book follows that of Cro-Magnon half-brothers Jondalar and Thonolan of the Zelandonii people; they are exploring the length of the Great Mother River (River Danube). Jondalar is escaping from his nagging mate-to-be. Thonolan is killed in an encounter with a cave lioness, but Ayla rescues Jondalar as the lioness turns out to be Baby who still remembers Ayla as a mother figure.

At first there is misunderstanding. Ayla is now in a similar situation to her Neanderthal adopters - faced with verbal babble she can't understand. She feels the stirring of desire for the young man, but he gives off the wrong signals and never taps her on the shoulder to make her assume the mating position (the habit she has grown up with in Neanderthal society). Eventually they learn to communicate. Jondalar is faced with a woman who does not smile, laugh or cry.

The Mammoth Hunters

Leaving behind Ayla's cave, Ayla and Jondalar journey to colder climes and meet a tribe of mammoth hunters (Mamutoi) and stay with them for a while in what is now the Ukraine. These people rely entirely on the mammoth for food, building materials, clothing etc. Ayla adopts and raises a wolf cub. The mamutoi find Ayla has an almost magical affinity with her horse and her pet wolf. It turns out some of the Mamutoi have met her Neanderthal adopters (one was saved by Neanderthal healer) and there is mixed opinion over whether the Clan are human or animal.

In the Mamutoi camp there is a half Neanderthal boy,Rydag, who has inherited the speech inability and the prodigious hereditary memory of his Neanderthal side; but also a heart defect (perhaps due to his mixed heritage). Ayla teaches him Clan sign language. Jondalar, previously prejudiced against Neanderthals, learns from Rydag's abilities that the Clan are also humans, albeit different from Cro-Magnon.

Due to her upbringing, Ayla has difficulty understanding the complexities of Cro-Magnon behaviour and emotions. The more emotional ondalar finds himself making mistakes and risks losing her to a brown-skinned Mamutoi man called Ranec. Ranec is a different sort of half-breed - his father was mamutoi, but his mother was a black-skinned woman from the far south whom his father met while journeying. Due to the comedy of manners, Ayla almost chooses to mate with Ranec rather than with Jondalar.

The Plains of Passage

Now mated to Jondalar, but not yet wanting a child, Ayla knows which magical herbs to take to prevent conception (or perhaps to cause miscarriage) indicating some control over her fertility. The pair leave the Mamutoi and set off on a year-long journey to Jondalar's people, the Zelandonii, along the Great Mother River to the region now in the Dordogne, France. They meet various people along the way and encounter different attitudes and beliefs. In part this is due to their travelling companions - horses (Whinney and her domesticated son, Racer) and a wolf.

They encounter people Jondalar and his deceased brother Thonolan had met in their journey. There is also a tribe of man-hating warrior women and a Clan (Neanderthal) couple under attack (Ayla and Jondalar intervene and Ayla communicates with the Neanderthals in their own gestural language.

This book is the least memorable because there is less of the human story (after the soap opera love triangle in The Mammoth Hunters) and more of a catalogue of prehistoric floara, fauna and landscape. Many of the various people they encounter seem to be there as examples of possible lifestyles that may have existed at the time.

Shelters of Stone

So far I haven't read this one. I'll probably wait till the series is complete and read them from end to end. When I began reading these, 6 books were planned, but Auel appears to be planning a 7th book. Evidently Ayla's journeys and abilities are too prodigious to fit into a mere 6 volumes (some of which exceed 600 pages). I am half-expecting a series of spin-offs: Ayla Goes to North America; Learn to Paint the Lascaux With Ayla; Ayla's African Adventure; Make The Most Of Mammoth With Ayla .....