I recently revisited Jean M. Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear, first published in 1980. It is an epic novel and the first of the authors Earth’s Children six part series exploring the possibility of interactions between Neanderthal and modern Cro-Magnon humans.

You must learn to understand with your heart and mind, not your eyes and ears, then you will know.

Five year old Cro-Magnon child Ayla is left an orphan after an earthquake and after wandering alone for days and being attacked by a cave lion is rescued by the medicine woman of a Clan of Neanderthals. Despite the two groups having a history of suspicion and antagonism toward one another, medicine woman Iza adopts Ayla with the permission of her brother, Creb and the three form a kind of family group. Creb believes the girl is protected by her spirit animal, the cave lion, a very powerful totem.

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.

Ayla is raised by Neanderthals and trained into their conservative, non-verbal, cultural ways that keep women in their place and limit the things they are allowed to do. Iza teaches Alya the ways of the medicine woman, but Alya is a rule breaker and innovator and teaches herself to hunt in secret. She also excels as a medicine woman due to her high level thinking and analytic observation skills. 

No one told her it was impossible to rapid-fire two stones from a sling, because it had never been done before, and since no one told her she couldn’t, she taught herself to do it.

Alya’s difference means she is never fully one of the clan and when her secret hunting skills are discovered she is subject to a death curse. Even after surviving the curse when the clan must accept her as ‘the woman to you hunts’, there are those in the clan who remain opposed to Alya’s presence amongst them, so her position remains precarious. 

Ayla loved these moments of solitude. Basking in the sun, feeling relaxed and content, she thought about nothing in particular, except the beautiful day and how happy she was.

The Clan of the Cave Bear is a long but well researched anthropological prehistoric work of fiction. While the novel’s narrative is not crafted particularly lyrically, it is an original idea and an epic saga about difference, cross cultural relationships, misogyny, and love. An ambitious book that has stood the test of time remarkable well.