The Clan of the Cave Bear
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 1986 Coronet Books paperback edition |
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| Author | Jean M. Auel |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Earth's Children |
| Genre(s) | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Crown |
| Released | May 4, 1980 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 468 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-517-54202-1 |
| Followed by | The Valley of Horses |
The Clan of the Cave Bear is a historical fiction novel by Jean M. Auel. It is the first in the Earth's Children series that investigates the possibility of Neanderthals and humans living near each other at the same time.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The protagonist is a young Cro-Magnon girl named Ayla. At the age of 5, she is orphaned in an earthquake and subsequently adopted into a band of Neanderthals who think of themselves as part of an overarching group, the titular "Clan of the Cave Bear" (or simply "the Clan").
The novel attempts to create the effect of kairosis from Ayla's attempts at assimilation into the alien culture of the Neanderthal "Clan." Ayla embodies the Stranger in a Strange Land. She meets Creb, the Mog-ur, a spiritual leader and savant who, although physically handicapped and unable to hunt (as all normal males in the Clan must), represents the acme of the Clan, if not of Neanderthal, evolution. Creb is vastly more gifted than other mog-urs within the greater Clan in his ability to connect with ancestral spirits and knowledge. The Clan is the Darwinian apex of a communal society, with gender and class roles cemented not only by custom, but by physical, mental and spiritual adaptation.
Concepts explored in the novel include the innately greater ability of Homo sapiens (i.e. Cro-Magnon, i.e. modern humans) to understand abstract concepts such as language and counting, their relative deficiency in instinct and their tendency toward innovation. Ayla makes inroads into animal and even plant domestication as well as--from the reader's perspective--the rational codification of knowledge. This rationality is contrasted with the Clan's reliance on inherited memories.
Ayla's obvious physical and less obvious mental differences from Clan people lead to most of the conflicts, as, for example, when she is thought by Clan members to be a very slow learner. The process of "learning" for a member of the Clan is akin to being reminded of something they already knew but had forgotten, but for Ayla, a human, the same information has to be assimilated anew and therefore comparatively slowly.
Ultimately, the novel opts for catharsis, with Ayla finding herself exiled from the Clan to begin a new life on her own; the sequels pick up her story (see Earth's Children). The Valley of Horses is the next novel in this series.
The archaeological and paleontological research for this book is respectable, especially when one considers that all of it was done from Auel's public library, with no budget for travel. Some of the descriptions are based on the cave burial at Shanidar.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
In 1986, the movie, The Clan of the Cave Bear was released. It starred Daryl Hannah and Joey Cramer and was a box-office flop having cost US$15 million to produce and only bringing in $1.9 million in the U.S. None of the other books have been adapted to film.
