"The only way to make vast amounts of money from archaeology is to write the Clan of the Cave Bear" (The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel)

Member Name: collingwood21

Product:	The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel
Date:	04/11/02 (157 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very well researched, Beautifully written, utterly absorbing and compelling

Disadvantages: Younger readers may find it a bit long

"The only good way to make good money from archaeology is to bluff your way to becoming a professor. The only way to make vast amounts of money from it is to write The Clan of the Cave Bear". Paul Bahn in Bluff your way in archaeology, page 14.


This is not going to be an easy review to write. Having just today completed "the clan of the cave bear" for the second time (the first being when I was in school), I am in the midst of that feeling you get from just having read something truly special and amazing. How could I possibly do this book justice? I don't know if I will ever be able to manage this, but I am going to attempt to review this book as best I can, simply because I feel more people should know about it, read it and enjoy it. This is the first time I have reviewed a novel as well, so please be gentle with me!


- So what is this book about then?
What makes this book so special is the fact that it is so utterly different and original. We are all familiar with the historic novel, but how many of you have read a prehistoric one? "The clan of the cave bear" is set in a landscape of some 30,000 years ago, when Europe was in the Palaeolithic era (the old stone age) and an interstadial (warmer bit) during a glaciation of the Ice Age the world was gripped by then. Although this is a warmer time, huge sheets of ice still cover Britain and northern Europe, reaching a far south as the Alps, and leaving the south of the continent in a periglacial climate similar to what you might expect in northern Canada today. The cold is such that animals such as the woolly mammoth roam the plains - although I have to disappoint you if you were hoping for dinosaurs, as these had died out some 65 million years previously!

Amongst the cold of southern Europe lives two distinct species of human - Neanderthals and Cro Magnon. The Neanderthal was what you may think of as the caveman; they were robust and m

uscular, with a large, thick skull and a sloping forehead, and were short and solid as many people adapted to cold climates tend to be. These were the older of the two species, having been around since around 230,000 BP (years before present). Cro Magnons, on the other hand, were the new human species that had appeared more recently into this environment. They were an early version of Homo Sapiens and would have looked very different to the Neanderthal, being taller and less muscular with a skull shape like that of ours today. The destiny of this new species, as we now know, was to replace the older one and develop into what we have become today; the main reason for this was because they were more adaptable to the changing environment, and not because the Neanderthal was some shambling half-human idiot as some people like to think. A species does not survive for 200,000 years without a certain measure of intelligence and skill, you know.

The story, set against this backdrop, centres around our heroine - Ayla, a girl born to Cro Magnons and orphaned at age 5 by an earthquake. Cold, hungry and frightened, she is found by a travelling group of Neanderthals looking for a new home after their cave was lost to the earthquake, on the verge of death. The girl is rescued, saved and adopted into the lives of the Neanderthal, who call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear after the animal that is most highly revered amongst them. This set up gives us a story of the ultimate culture clash - of a child of one species having to learn the language and culture of the other in order to survive. The way of the Clan is highly ordered and superstitious, and it is only through the compassion of their medicine woman (Iza) and holy man (Creb) that she is taken in, despite it being unprecedented for such a move to be made. This book follows Ayla and her new family as she grows up, finishing when she is about age 13 or 14. Over the intervening 9 years, you grow to lo
ve an
d identify with Ayla, to admire her bravery and the way she copes and survives despite being so very different from those who surround her.


- Who is the book by?
The author is a wonderful lady called Jean M Auel (pronounced "owl") from Oregon in the US. She has written a series of books - 5 so far, but with least another one intended - called the Earth's Children series, of which "clan of the cave bear" is the first, published in 1980. The incredible thing about Auel is that she is not just a writer. Having decided to write a series of books set the Palaeolithic, she set about researching the era to such a high standard that she has earned the respect of many scientists, anthropologists and archaeologists around the world. It is this attention to detail that helps to create such a highly believable, realistic and absorbing world.


- What did I think?
You may have got the impression by now that I like this book, but I also admire it greatly, for it is beautifully written, meticulously researched and completely original. The Earth's Children series are highly popular worldwide, and have spawned numerous fan clubs, websites and even an online role-playing game! I also love this work as an archaeologist, as it brings such a distant part of the past to life, and has been written with such loving care and attention to all that we know (or like to think we know) about the Palaeolithic. The work that has gone into producing these books is evident not only in the gaps between them (books 4 and 5 came out 11 years apart!) but in the way you can read them and feel "yes, this is what it really would have been like then".

The other thing I like about "the clan of the cave bear" is that it challenges our preconceptions about Neanderthals. The common image of them is highly unflattering and largely wrong - as I have mentioned, they did survive perfectly well for some 200,
000 years,
so they must have been doing something right. However, this book shows them to be intelligent, compassionate, spiritual people, fully capable of communicating with one another, of holding ceremonies and conducting burial rites and of developing effective herbal medicines. And what is more, you can believe it because all of the characters are realistic.

I was once told that the true measure of a good book is whether you are left wondering what happened to the characters you have been reading about after you have completed the book. Well, I most certainly did - I cannot wait to pick up book two of the series and find out what happens next in Ayla's eventful life!

Recommended to anyone aged 15 and over with a love for an epic story and the concentration to follow all 600 pages of this book. I loved it at age 16, and I love it just as much now - read it for a good story, to learn more about the Palaeolithic or to challenge you preconceptions about the past. But above all, just read it.



---------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ------
The full series of Earth's Children are:
1) The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980)
2) The Valley of Horses (1982)
3) The Mammoth Hunters (1985)
4) The Plains of Passage (1990)
5) The Shelters of Stone (2001)

Useful stuff:
http://ecfans.com/
Excellent fansite, with all sorts of articles on the author, the books and recent archaeological work on the Paleolithic

http://www.mikedust.com/history/neanderthal.ht ml
See what the Neanderthal looked like (as far as we know!)

http://www.mikedust.com/history/cromagnon.html
Read more about the early homo sapiens of Ayla's species

http://www.geocities.com/auelpage/series/bk1cl an.htm
See a Neanderthal morph into a Cro Magnon

Price:
The first four books in the series are available in paperback for £7.99. The most rec
ent is still in
hardback, and costs £9.99 ? but it is due to come out in paperback next summer.

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