User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
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.
Rating: really liked it
The thing that strikes me most about her work is that every time there's a new discovery about how paleolithic people lived, it goes along with her stories. Things they said were silly back when she wrote it (Neanderthals with instruments, Neanderthals living with homo sapiens sapiens, and the like) keep proving true.
She presents interesting ideas of cognition, culture and how societies develop. The first two books are her best I think. The rest remain interesting if you can deal with the constant repetition, soft core porn and the fact that Ayla discovers everything but cold fusion.
Clan of the Cave Bear is an incredible, courageous story. The author spent a lot of time hanging out with some of the world's most noted paleontologists doing her research- and she knows her stuff!
Rating: really liked it
3 stars
It’s official, my tastes are slowly changing in books. I didn’t love this book as much as I did. And I find at times I love a particular book in a series and I’ll just keep that physical book and trade in the rest. What’s the point of keeping things you just don’t love any more.
I have the beautiful mass market paperbacks of these books. I loved the second book at the time but we shall see and I want to finish them out. I have this first book on kindle and audible as well. I might just get the other ones if I like them in those formats. I just don’t know.
I love Ayla and her animals dearly, but I just don’t like reading certain things any more.
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
***Old review*****
Omg!! This book was awesome!! Yes, there were some parts but there always seem to have those in books I read! I still loved it!
Happy Reading!
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
Rating: really liked it
The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth's Children #1), Jean M. Auel The Clan of the Cave Bear is an epic work of prehistoric fiction by Jean M. Auel about prehistoric times. A five-year-old girl, Ayla, whom readers come to understand is Cro-Magnon, is orphaned and left homeless by an earthquake that destroys her family's camp. She wanders aimlessly, naked and unable to feed herself, for several days. Having been attacked and nearly killed by a cave lion and suffering from starvation, exhaustion, and infection of her wounds, she collapses, on the verge of death.
The narrative switches to a group of people who call themselves "The Clan" and whom we come to understand are Neanderthal, whose cave was destroyed in the earthquake and who are searching for a new home. The medicine woman of the group, Iza, discovers the girl and asks permission from Brun, the head of the Clan, to help the ailing child, despite the child being clearly a member of "the Others," the distrusted antagonists of the Clan. The child is adopted by Iza and her brother Creb. Creb is this group's "Mog-ur" or shaman, despite being deformed as a result of the difficult birth resulting from his abnormally large head and the later loss of an arm and eye after being attacked by a cave bear.
The Clan worship spiritual representations of Earthly animals called "totems", whom they believe can influence their lives by way of good or bad luck and for whom Mog-ur acts as an intermediary. Brun agrees to allow Iza to treat the dying child and to adopt her only if Creb can discover her personal totem spirit. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نوزدهم ماه فوریه سال2003میلادی
عنوان: قبیله خرس غار؛ نویسنده: جین ام. آول؛ مترجم: شهیندخت لطف اللهی (محبوب)؛ تهران، چشمه، سال1381؛ در585ص؛ چاپ سوم سال1389؛ شابک9789643620417؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
داستان در پایان دوران انسانهای بدوی، یا همان «نئاندرتالها»، و آغاز دوران انسانهای اندیشه ورز، روایت میشود، و ماجرایی پر کشش دارد؛ شخصیت اصلی داستان دختری به نام «آیلا» است؛ «آیلای» پنج ساله، پس از زلزله ای بیخانمان میشود، و گروهی از «نئاندرتال»ها تصمیم میگیرند، از او نگهداری کنند؛ خوانشگر در این داستان؛ شاهد رویارویی انسانهای اندیشه ورز، با نسل انسانهای غارنشین، در دوران از بین رفتن آنهاست
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 03/12/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 24/10/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
I could easily sit between a red-faced evolutionist and a screaming creationist, both arguing around me, and quite contentedly finish any book I was reading.
I'm no Louis Leakey, people.
I'm no Tammy Faye Baker, either.
I am, in fact, an anthropological
airhead, and arguing with me about creationism or evolution is like trying to convince me to become interested in my car's
transmission. Whatever the hell that is.
Ain't going to happen, folks.
I figure. . . if I don't personally have the ability to prove or disprove a theory (or identify a transmission), I'm just going to sit back, relax and focus on the stories.
I love stories.
And, since it turned out that my end-of-summer fantasy of having sex with Viggo Mortensen in a cave off of the Mediterranean Sea wasn't going to happen, I started searching for a story that would have an adventurous feel to it. And, you know. . . maybe some cave sex.
Neanderthal cave sex.
Now, if you're a creationist and you're getting worried about my language here, why don't we just replace the word
Neanderthal for
ex-boyfriends or
my high school baseball team?
And if you're an anthropologist and you're getting worried that I know no concrete facts about the evolution of man, I apologize for my inability to truly understand that a
Neanderthal is something different from an
ex-boyfriend or
my high school baseball team.
Everybody feeling good now? Sort of? More confused than ever?
So, back to the question. . . that you never asked. . . and possibly would never even wonder . . .
did I find excellent cave sex in this book of
Neanderthals (or primitive man, or whatever in hell these little sloped forehead, hairy pygmies are supposed to be)?
Well, does this answer your question?
In this primitive society, sex was as natural and unrestrained as sleeping or eating. Children learned
as they learned other skills and customs, by observing adults, and they played at intercourse as they mimicked other activities from a young age. Often a boy who reached puberty, but had not yet made his first kill and existed in a limbo between child and adult, penetrated a girl child even before she reached menarche. Hymens were pierced young, though males were a little fearful if blood was spilled and quickly ignored the girl if it happenedAin't nothing sexy about that paragraph.
Ms. Auel. . .
do you understand that I've been home with my children all summer? No sleepaway camp, no evenings out on the town?
Nada, lady.
It's been a long, hot summer. And I don't mean
sexy hot. I mean. . . damn, it's been in the 90s forever.
I wanted to read about
cave sex, not these little freaks.
And what's with their dialogue reading like Shakespearean soliloquies, when you clearly point out that these people can't do more than grunt and move their hands in rudimentary gestures?
How now, Ms. Auel?
Why do the Neanderthals talk with such sophistication?
And why did you need to take 10 pages to describe a green leaf (that wasn't quite green, but gray, and transparent and fluttering in the breeze, with spots on it)? Just write the word “leaf” and let's move on.
Ack! I can't wait to return my copy.
I'm using some hand signals right now, Ms. Auel. Can you see them?
I don't like Neanderthals. They're awful. So's this book.
I think I
do prefer the Adam and Eve theory; they're like the Barbie and Ken of the ancient world, and I bet they had sex in a proper hotel.
And, just for the record, I hope the glorious angel Gabriel flies down from Heaven on a pterodactyl some day, and lands right on a street in New York City.
I feel like we'd all shut up at the same time and hum in peaceful wonder at our awesome existence.
Plus, his stories would be amazing.
Rating: really liked it
I once read an article from National Geographic in which the author had spent some time living with a Stone Age tribe in Africa. The people were a studied anachronism, living in modern times, but within a carefully maintained atavistic society of hunting and gathering. Most endearing of this study was the author’s observations about the interactive dialogue amongst the members of the tribe. One wife would say to her husband, “another woman has three beads, I only have two, I wish I had a husband who could work hard and provide.” Another would say to his young son, “is that how you skin a kill? Here let me show you how it is done.” Human nature does not change.
And so we come to Jean Auel’s magnificent anthropological narrative of a young Cro-Magnon girl orphaned by her family and raised by a group of Neanderthals. This read like a study of the group, similar to Jared Diamond or Thor Heyerdahl, where she is an omnipresent and omniscient narrator of the life and times of Ayla as she grows up with the clan of Neanderthals, close relatives of humans, but distinct and different. Auel masterfully creates a glimpse onto their complex social structures and group dynamics and describes Neanderthals with an instinctive, racial memory.
Apart from the clearly well researched and thoughtful scientific examination of Neanderthal society, with a fairly complicated social structure and theological underpinnings, Auel also tells a fascinating story. My only criticism would be the ending, which is somewhat predictable but also truncated with a deus ex machina that wraps things up just too neatly.
All in all, an excellent book that makes me want to read the other books in her Earth Children series.
Rating: really liked it
This was a great pick! I thoroughly enjoyed this read!
Set during prehistoric times, Ayla’s Home and her family are lost to a devastating earthquake. Homeless and alone she wanders the land, barely surviving, until she is found by Iza - a member of The Clan.
Ayla struggles to fit in and to be accepted by The Clan, its customs foreign to her. Their treatment of women being the main hurdle - all women are below men in status, expected to cook for the men, never to ignore a direct order from a man and certainly never allowed to hunt!
As time progresses The Clan become accustomed to the different girl, and she integrates. But not everyone is so understanding- Broud, the son of the Clan leader hates Ayla fiercely and will do whatever necessary to bring her down! With some scenes slightly shocking, I couldn’t stop turning the pages!
This novel was full of vivid descriptions, including the way cave people lived - their local sources of food, clothing and intricate belief system. A wonderful selection of characters, I was reminded of the Disney film ‘Brother Bear’ where each Clan member has a spirit totem, in the form of an animal - I was fully engrossed in this world, and look forward to continuing it.
Rating: really liked it
Note, March 25, 2014: I edited this review slightly just now, to delete one accidental dittography. Hmmm, I thought I'd proofread this.... :-)
Auel's Earth's Children series (this opening volume was followed by, so far, four sequels) garners mixed --and mostly negative-- reviews here on Goodreads. Though none of them have reviewed it, a dozen of my Goodreads friends have given it ratings, ranging from one star to five. Obviously, my own reaction falls at the favorable end of the spectrum.
Ayla, of course, is a Cro-Magnon (i.e., an anatomically modern human; you and I are "Cro-Magnons" too, in that anthropological sense) orphaned by a natural disaster and raised by a clan of Neanderthals. For a writer of historical fiction, a prehistoric setting poses a challenge; technically, the genre embraces any fiction set in the past, but its authors usually depend heavily on written records for events and background material, and for the Ice Age, no such records exist. To her credit, Auel was the first writer in the genre to attempt it on a large scale (though Jack London and William Golding each wrote single novels set in prehistory), and to popularize it sufficiently to create a market niche and a subgenre tradition that other writers have begun to develop. In place of written records, she immersed herself in the exhaustive study of every known aspect of the physical evidence from the period, and all of the various scholarly interpretations of it. Her reconstruction of both Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal natural history, society and culture is of course speculative; but it is based meticulously on this research. Even the more controversial features of her Neanderthals --their "Memories," a genetically-transmitted racial memory of past experiences, and their difficulty with verbal speech (and consequent preference for sign language)-- have grounds in known Neanderthal physiology, such as their hyper-developed back brains, which control memory. (Although Auel is an evolutionist, she recognizes Neanderthals as "a branch of humanity" and depicts them as fully human, not as the "ape-men" who figure in London's
Before Adam or Conan Doyle's
The Lost World --a point in her favor.)
A weakness of Auel's writing is the converse of her strong research: she has a tendency to want to divulge every iota of erudition she has on the Ice Age world, and doesn't always seamlessly integrate it into the narrative. She also has a penchant for explicitly detailed sex, which in my estimation is not a plus. Here, however, neither of these flaws are as marked as they are in the later books (the latter because the plot here affords little occasion for it --Ayla doesn't yet have a love interest, though that gets remedied later on. :-)) IMO, her strong points outweigh these. First and foremost, she has a capacity to create fully alive, three-dimensional characters whom the reader can relate to (positively or negatively) just like real people --Iza, Creb, Brun, Broud, even several of the minor characters; and above all Ayla herself, as we watch her grow from a scared, traumatized child into a strong, highly competent and intelligent woman. Indeed, she's much too strong, competent and intelligent for some of the Clan to accept in a woman (and judging from critical and reader reactions, some moderns aren't very cool with it either! :-))
That brings up another strong point of the book --Auel's intelligent engaging of serious issues that are still relevant to our lives today. Gender roles are the most obvious; against the backdrop of the male- dominated Clan, Ayla makes a lived-out case for a genuine feminism (of the equalitarian rather than male-bashing sort) that argues for social roles based on demonstrated ability and interests, not gender. But the book also addresses issues of interracial and cross-cultural relations, and the conflict between inflexible tradition and cultural inertia, represented by the change-resistant Clan ("It's never been done before!" is leader Brun's characteristic refrain, which became a byword in our household :-)), vs. needed adaptation to changing conditions. Also, Ayla's fight to save the life of her infant son (conceived in a rape) provides a powerful pro-life message --though that may well have been unintended on Auel's part. (But as D. H. Lawrence said, "Trust the tale and not the teller." :-))
All in all, I consider this one of the better contemporary American novels in any genre, and regard Ayla as one of the greatest fictional characters --and best female role models-- in modern literature. (The series was one that I read out loud to my wife; it also became one of her all-time favorites, and she re-reads it periodically on her own!)
Rating: really liked it
I *really* wanted to dig this book. I have a burgeoning obsession with prehistory, evolution, and the antecedents of man, and a tale of Cro Magnons and Neanderthals is exactly what I'd love to read.
Sadly, this book does not contain that tale.
Instead, it's a goopy mess of inane metaphysics, prurience for prurience's sake, and a none-too-subtle dollop of racism, as the blonde-haired and light-skinned heroine shows the more primitive (and darker-skinned) Neanderthals how to do--well, just about everything.
This is a white man's burden fantasy writ large, and not writ very well.
Rating: really liked it
Circa 30,000 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... killing everything in their path. 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...
Rating: really liked it
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.
Rating: really liked it
[the spear thrower, bask
Rating: really liked it
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... really reading.
I learned that I can love my quiet time, and apparently I love stories on the ancient human race... our beginnings. 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."
Rating: really liked it
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.
In this case, the slow telling shows the functioning of a forming society, it´s mechanisms and the rise of intelligence that leads to complex societies.
Rating: really liked it
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.
--The repetition. Oh lord, the repetition. Constant reiterations of how different Ayla is, how special, how strange, how unique, blah blah blah. Yes, she is different from the people of the Clan (I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say her belonging to a different species might have something to do with that), WE GET IT, MOVE ON.
--Faulty science. 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? No? 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.
--All of the Neandertal characters have dark hair, skin and eyes, whereas Ayla is blonde, blue-eyed and fair-skinned. I suppose I should give Auel a break on this one, since the book was written in the 1980s, 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.
