She came close to walking in the next world, but she’s alive now. “Iza saved her life, Brun, she carries part of the girl’s spirit now, that makes her part Clan. “I wasn’t thinking of making her one of us, I only wondered if the spirits would allow her to live with us until she gets older.” It’s never been done before!” Brun objected. Who said anything about accepting her into the clan? It wouldn’t be allowed, Ursus won’t like it.

“Accept her into the clan! She’s not Clan, she was born to the Others. Broud does all he can to destroy her, but Ayla is a survivor. But she makes an implacable enemy of the group’s future leader. She is cared for by its medicine woman Iza and its wise holy man Creb. Its heroine is Ayla, a courageous and indomitable young woman whose story beings when she is a five-year-old orphan adopted by the Clan, a group of Neanderthal.Īyla inspires first surprise, then wariness and finally acceptance by the Clan. Auel’s magnificent epic of life on the glacial continent of the last Ice Age, when two kinds of human beings, Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, shared the earth. The Clan of the Cave Bear is the first book in the Earth’s Children series by Jean M. 'Beautiful, exciting, imaginative' New York Times

Set 25,000 years in the past, yet utterly relatable today, The Clan of the Cave Bear is an epic tale of love, identity and the struggle to survive. Where others see similarity, he can only see difference, and as his hatred for the strange girl of the Others deepens, he grows determined to get his revenge. Everyone, that is, except Brun, the brutal and proud youth who is destined to become their next leader. Yet Iza, the Clan's medicine woman cannot leave the child to die.Īs Ayla learns the ways of the Clan and Iza's ways of healing, Iza grows to love her, and the rest of the Clan to accept her. To them Ayla looks peculiar and ugly, her blonde hair and blue eyes marking her out as one of the Others, who have recently invaded their ancient homeland. When an earthquake destroys her family's camp, Ayla is left orphaned and alone in an unfamiliar and dangerous land, her likelihood of survival slim.īut then she is found by a woman of the Clan, a people very different from her own kind. The first book in the internationally bestselling Earth's Children series, an epic work of prehistoric fiction beloved by generations of readers.

Jean m auel the clan of the cave bear