I’ve just started reading Jean Auel’s “Clan of the Cave Bear”, which, if you didn’t know, is a historical novel…well, more of a prehistorical novel, about a Cro-Magnon girl who becomes a member of a Neanderthal tribe. So far, the book’s not bad, although it relies a little too much on stereotypes (“the physical and direct chief”, “the wise medicine woman”, “the physically deformed but spiritually powerful magician”), but one thing is really getting in the way of my suspending disbelief.
Apparently, Neanderthal man has a kind of “racial memory”. Neanderthal don’t just remember what’s happened in their lives, but also in their parents’ lives and grandparents’, and so on. The “physically deformed but spiritually powerful magician” can remember all the way back to fish and amphibians, or whatever. That’s why, according to the books, the Neanderthal are so conservative and not innovative…if they learn much more, their brains will explode or something. It just made me look up and shout “Great Lamarck’s Ghost!”
I’m hoping that this “racial memory” thing doesn’t play an important role in the plot, because it’s really getting in the way of my enjoyment of the book.
Has anyone else ever read this book or series? Thoughts?
I read the first book. Didn’t think it was awful, but I was significantly less than overwhelmed by it. I never felt any urge to pick up the later books in the series.
It’s been a while, but IIRC the racial memory thing does play a fairly large role in the story.
Just wait till the next book, when she meets Long Dong Jondalar who introduces her to the kama sutra.
My recommendation - don’t waste your time. The first is the bbest of the series (in the manner you might recommend the least smelly turd in a pile of dung.)
I had an environmental science professor who actually said that the Neanderthals had racial memory. After that it was incredibly hard to take him seriously. Call me crazy, but I like my science teachers to get their facts from, you know, science, not trashy fiction.
Judging from the shape of the Neanderthal skull, it seems that their brains must have been smaller in the front (the frontal lobes) and larger in the back (memory area) than those of Cro-Magnons or their modern descendants. It is not unreasonable to speculate that these brain differences would have made Neanderthals less innovative than we are, but with much better memories. Any speculation as to how their memories might have been better than ours must be far more…speculative.
If my own memory serves, the main use of this plot point in Auel’s book is to further distinguish Ayla from the rest of her adoptive tribe. She lacks their racial memories, so she has a difficult time picking up things that come easily to her peers but is far more likely to attempt to discover new things through experimentation.
Dinsdale is correct in that the series degenerates into Harlequin BC beginning with the second book, so if you don’t enjoy the first one (or even if you do), you probably shouldn’t try the others.
It’s almost worth it to read the rest of the series, or at least the next one, to appreciate all the jokes people make about Ayla and her endless hot XXX cave action, AND the fact that she invents everything. No kidding. Everything.
It has been years since I read the first book, but I remember my interpretation of the racial memory was more along the lines of instinctive behavior. No one has to teach a bird to make a nest, they just know. I guess it’s plausible that neanderthals knew how to perform certain basic tasks out of instinct rather than by instruction. Well, “plausible” is such a strong word … let’s say plausible in the context of prehistoric fiction featuring a tall, blonde, athletic sex pot.
I thought the fourth book in the series went a little far when Ayla invented the X-Ray machine to help diagnose sickness.
I read the first three books (hey I was bored) and was fascinated how you could read 600 pages and NOTHING HAPPENED. You could summarize it in three sentences. She could spend 6 pages dealing with how someone went to the bathroom.
The books, especially the first one, were not that bad. I like more action in my books but she is one of the best with desriptive writing.
I read the books, and liked the first one. The heads wouldn’t explode; however, if they got much larger, they would get stuck in their mothers’ birth canals. As to the other books, I got bored about half-way through the third one…and parts of those books might as well have been porn. I mean, it’s interesting for a bit, but it gets old, fast.
Just to take another shot at Auel’s later books, racial memory as a plot device seems far less objectionable to me than the size of the hero’s penis as a plot device – at least in any form of storytelling that doesn’t involve a “bow-chica-bow-wow” soundtrack.
If you think that’s bad, try reading the latest one, Shelters of Stone. It’s over 1000 pages of NOTHING. Unless you count forty pages describing a person’s lineage every single time they appear in the story, as something.
The wait for the fifth book was entirely too long,How can anybody justify almost ten years inbetween books, allegedly in a SERIES.
I’ve read them and the thing that turned me off of the series was the chapter about the woolly mammoth sex, described in elegantly vomitrocious detail. Bleah.
I read about eight pages of CotCB before I realized I was skimming paragraphs. It has the dubious honor of being the third book I’ve tossed across the room in disgust.
I know. And I read the whole thing, and then got mad at myself for doing it. I think I only read it because I thought that whole 12 year wait between books might make it better or something. I thought it was basically the same thing as books 2-4 - Ayla and Jondalar meet people. Ayla and Jondalar have sex. They have more sex. Of course, it’s always good sex. Ayla has a conflict with someone/has a hard time fitting in/has people think she is an “animal” because of her background. But she wins them over with her marvelous new inventions.
I figure one of these days she’ll figure out the concept of DNA.
I liked them to some extent, especially the second book in the series, Valley of the Horses. A woman alone in the wild, trying to gather foodstuffs for the coming harsh winter…it had its moments. I liked how she raised the colt from a baby. Then when Jondalar came, and learning to deal with The Others…but the series degenerated after that, especially by the 4th book. I haven’t read the 5th yet, I’ve heard awful things about it.
As to the OP, the racial memories are just like instinct-- it’s not like they could remember specific details of their grandparents’ childhood. And I agree with Lamia, it was more of a plot device to show how different Ayla was from The Clan.
I liked them. I especially liked the Valley of the horses and the Mammoth hunters. I liked the detailes descriptions of how things were made. The sex scenes in Valley of the Horses were pretty good, but I tend to skip over them in the other books or on rereads. I read there were originally supposed to be 5 books total.
I thought the Ayla alone scenes in Valley of the Horses were the best – but maybe because I thought that would be pretty cool to be able to survive all alone. I skimmed all of the Jondalar/Thonolan parts in that book.
They start going downhill without brakes with the third book, and the last was an utter load of cr*p. Not quite as much bodice-ripping, or the prehistoric equivalent, in SOS, but it still sucked.
I don’t know that any book after such a long wait would have lived up to expectations.
It was a whole bunch of nothing. I couldn’t keep track of all the characters who wandered in for a few pages, then wandered off again, never to be seen again. I did want more of a conflict between Ayla and Jondalar’s ex…except for a stupid practical joke that backfired, she disappeared.
I think they discover wine-making and mirrors, and some strange cave. Ayla has her baby, Whinney has her foal. Jondalar’s mother is ill, but we don’t know with what. That’s about it. Oh, and Ayla agrees to study with the Zelandoni or whatever.
I agree with the concensus here: Clan of the Cave Bear was good, the Ayla-alone-in-the-cave parts were good in Valley of the Horses … and it was bow-chicka-bow-wow from then out.
But I must say these books led me to several works I have enjoyed immensely. The first is The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry by Bryan Sykes. He shows how most Europeans are descended from one of seven women, who are described in mini Clan of the Cave Bear-like biographies. There’s even a web site where you can find out how to submit a sample of your own DNA and discover which of the seven is your genetic mother! Oxford Ancestors
I also enjoyed two novels by Bjorn Kurten, Dance of the Tiger and its sequel, Singletusk. Kurten is an anthropologist and the novels are his way of dramatizing his theories about Cro-Magnons and Neandertals. At the end, he further explains, and it’s fascinating. I highly recommend them as antidotes to Ayla!
(Side note: all this reading also led me to Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, a thoroughly engrossing, and enlightening journey through human history that ought to be required reading for everybody, but especially Dopers.)
