Ayla inventing space travel and being the first human to go to Mars probably takes up a lot of pages…
What is the take on different species with various technologies living at the same time?
Well, yes, but she could still write about Durc anyway. I bet it would be more interesting than “Ayla becomes Zelandoni even though she really doesn’t want to, and gives Jondalar lots of blond babies.”
Before SoS he was “Willomar.” For SoS, Auel changed it to Willamar with no explanation. She even said she was changing it because she thought it sounded better. :rolleyes:
Can these cave people write?
It was mainly between Neanderthals and Sapiens, and they got the dates a bit wrong, but the movie was made quite awhile ago. There was another group that appeared to be a bit more primitive than Neanderthals (they were either some remnant Erectus population or a different “race” of Neanderthals).
We know that Sapiens and Neanderthals lived in Europe at the same time for about 10k years. It’s very likely, though not certain, that Erectus was still extant in Asia when Sapiens first arrived there, although they wouldn’t have been in Europe. And we now have Floresiensis (The Hobbit) surviving up until very recently, and overlapping with Sapiens on the island of Flores.
There was some artistic license taken, but it wasn’t too far fetched.
Shhhh. I heard that Ayla invents the alphabet in the next book.
And in the final book, she blogs.
Was Rae Dawn Chong a different species than the protagonist? There were the cannibals…I can’t remember. My problem with it at the time was that they had hardened points and no fire making ability, which I thought went together. Did Neanderthal live near Cro Magnon and not adopt the modern technology?
Ron Perlman was the main Neanderthal and RDC was a Sapiens chick. The original Romeo and Juliet, if you will. The cannibals were just another tribe of Neanderthals (I think they had redish hair), but Perlman’s tribe got attacked early on by the Wagaboos (sp?) who seemed more like Erectus than Neanderthal (they were much hairier, and didn’t wear clothes).
The movie posits that Neanderthals could use fire, but they didn’t know how to make it. They had to find it naturally. That’s probably not correct, but we don’t know for sure. So, they could make the hardened points, but only when they had fire.
Good question. It’s oddly coincidental that as soon as Sapiens arrives on the scene in Europe, you start to see a few Sapiens-like tools in some Neanderthal sites. Maybe they invented them at just the right time, or maybe they learned (or just copied) them from the Sapiens in the area. We don’t know for sure. It’s hard to imagine the two species could live in the same general territory for thousands of years and not have all kinds of interactions. But we don’t have any direct evidence that they lived together or that the interacted in any way at all. But then, fossils are very rare, and all never tell the whole story.
I liked the first two, which I read in high school when they were huuuuuuge in the OMG have you read these books??? sense. Even as a teenager I thought the emphasis on Jondalar’s huge schlong was odd. I had no personal experience with sex, but the idea that bigger = better and enormous = great didn’t logically make sense to me.
I think I read maybe the first chapter of the third one and realized, this isn’t going to get wrapped up anytime soon. I wasn’t interested enough to keep going. It was my first realization that in general I don’t like book series(es), especially when they go on and on and on and on. (David Eddings, anyone?)
I read the first book when I was about 12 years old. It was a paperback that my mother had picked up. I thought it was pretty good, though I thought that some of the sex scenes were a little over the top.
A couple of years later, my mother picked up Valley of the Horses for us to read. I read it first. The whole book was nothing but girly-porn. I got about halfway through and told my mother she could keep it.
I’m still creeped out and a little traumatized by the fact that my mom and I essentially shared a book of porn. :eek: (I’m a guy, BTW.)
Ditto. I liked them when I was twelve and thirteen. I read the last one, and remember rolling on the ground with laughter at the bad poetry. There were tears.
In the next book, Ayla will invent Helper Robots and the Three Laws of Robotics. And the microwave dinner.
And did the Neanderthals wore clothing, but not the Homo Sapiens, or was that just what I selectively remember about Chong’s costuming in a particular scene? 
I remember getting 30-40 pages into Clan of the Cave Bear before giving up in boredom. I was in my late 20s at the time, if that makes any difference.
So this is an actual genre, is it? I think I missed that shelf at Barnes & Noble. 
And it’s been a while since you’ve seen it, I bet. It was a favorite of mine years ago; then I picked up the DVD and watched it again. There’s a lot to recommend it, but the flaws are rather, shall we say, glaring.
Literally. With an actual log.
ETA: Dangit, meant to respond to the OP. I read the first book and liked it a fair amount. Not perfect, but definitely an original. I read the second and rolled my eyes a lot (Ayla’s invention of medical stitches, I think, was the low point). I forced myself to read the third; I thought re-encountering the cougar was neat but the rest of the book is a blur. I haven’t read the other two, or re-read any of the first three.
Read the first as a grade school assignment. Found it entertaining. Good, workable concept, the outsider fighting for acceptance and the hardships she has to endure. Pretty time-consuming, however, not exactly the kind of work a 13-year-old digests easily. If I were to review it on Amazon.com (I’d have to read it again, it’s been too long), I’d probably give it a low 4.
My sister owned a copy of one of the sequels, don’t remember which, but I was never inspired to read it.
Not sure why the author is still continuing with it now. I mean, it’s prehistory. Struggle for survival, ancient mysticism, discovery. It’s been done. Can’t she move on to an era with more, y’know, stuff?
The Sapiens didn’t wear much clothing, but they had all sorts of elaborate body decorations. Of course when we first meet RDC, she’s hung up like a side of beef for the Red-headed Neanderthals’ next meal. But yeah, she was pretty hot (and mostly naked) in the movie. When Perlman gets to the Sapiens camp, they drug him and try to get him to have sex with a “full-figured gal”, if you know what I mean…
Oh dear. My aunt loaned me the first three of these. Quite an eye-opener to my 13 year old self. My goodness. This was lightyears better than porn in the woods!*
Then my mom started reading them, and I was mortified for weeks, wondering if she’d gotten to those parts yet, and would she say anything about them to me? Please, God, no.
Thankfully she didn’t, but the porn loses a good bit of luster once you know your mom’s read it - and worse, when she knows you’ve read it.
- Let me bring you porn from the woods
To make you feel much better than you could know
Dust you down from tip to toe.
Show you how the garden grows.
Hold you steady as you go.
Join the chorus if you can:
it’ll make of you an honest man.
I know exactly how you feel. 