The Clan of the Cave Bear

About the book

Around 30,000 years ago, five-year-old Ayla loses her family in an earthquake. She is found, half dead, by a clan of Neanderthals who are on the move after losing their own cave. The clan’s medicine woman, Iza, takes her in, and the old holy man, Creb, becomes her protector.

But Ayla is not like them. She is tall and fair, she laughs and cries, and she thinks in a different way from the clan, who live by fixed rules and remember through the shared memory of their people. Women in particular have a fixed place, and Ayla finds it hard to stay within it. The book is about growing up among people who love you but never quite understand you, and about what it costs to be different.

Auel spent many years on research, and the book is full of detail about herbs, tools, hunting and survival in the Ice Age. That makes the world as vivid as in a fantasy novel, even though it contains no magic in the usual sense.

The books in the series

1. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Danish: Hulebjørnens klan, 1980)
2. The Valley of Horses (Danish: Hestenes dal, 1982)
3. The Mammoth Hunters (Danish: Mammutjægerne, 1985)
4. The Plains of Passage (Danish: Rejsen over stepperne, 1990)
5. The Shelters of Stone (Danish: Folket i klippehulerne, 2002)
6. The Land of Painted Caves (Danish: Hulernes sang, 2011)

In Danish, the series is called Jordens børn.