Bibliofreakblog

The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel

It’s tough when you have a understanding of something to not let inconsistancies or violations bug you when you just want to be entertained.  For example, whenever we watch movies about, say, the American Revolution, my husband will point out that they are using the wrong guns.  And so, because of my basic knowledge of anthropology and evolution I was often irked while reading this book.

Some of it is not Jean Auel’s fault.  This book was written in the early 1980’s and science has come a long way in the fields of anthropology and archaeology since then.

Some of it is totally her fault as she used a certain literary license in creating her characters.

So, to get it out of the way, here’s what bugged me:

1. Apparently Neanderthals were psychic, at least when tripping on certain drinks.

2. Not only were they psychic, they had a “racial memory” where they knew everything about say, plants, or hunting, and just had to go about retrieving the information.  

3. They had a complex system of sign language to communicate.

4. They were very strictly divided between males and females, the males being dominant.

5. Humans at the time (Homo sapiens as opposed to Homo neanderthalensis) were way taller than Neanderthals.  Also humans already had blond hair/blue eyes.

O.K., so let’s address these.  1 & 2, are just ridiculous.  As for 3, at the time in was written, it was thought that Neanderthals really didn’t have language.  But since then hyoid bones (a phenotype that big basis for us talking) and also the FOXP2 gene (the genotype responsible for language) in Neanderthals.  4. There’s just little evidence for this.  While they probably had a fairly egalitarian society, dominated by an alpha male, and skills were individualized, with hunting being highly regarded, I don’t think that females were considered less than males.  There is no adaptive reason for it.  Finally, as for 5, again, more recent evidence suggests otherwise.  The modern humans of the time may have been slightly taller than Neanderthals, but remember, back then (some 20-30,000 years ago) modern humans were not very tall.

But, O.K., less than half way in, I was able to get over it and just enjoy the story.  I always like to play devil’s advocate, so I did that with the characters in this book.  Maybe, says I, these traits were just part of these particular Neanderthals in this area (as well as the H. sapiens in the area, regarding them) and so they were a bit divergent from the rest of the Neanderthals.  Maybe they didn’t have FOXP2 genes–it’s been discovered missing in that family in England that’s so widely studied.  Maybe they did establish a culture very much divided by gender.  Who knows?  I wasn’t there.  And as for the psychic thing, well, I never really mind a dash of fantasy or magical realism thrown in to heighten a story or create a metaphor.

So, then, I was quite happy with this book.  

The story is of a H. sapien who was adopted by a clan of Neanderthals and raised in their ways.  She is all wily and rebellious and improves upon their technology and some of them don’t like her for it.  But she establishes some very loving relationships which sort of makes you wonder about the nature of things and just when the soul evolved.

Overall, it rang true to me, once I reflect on it…and don’t count the few things that bothered me.  Jean Auel did a TON of research for this book, and it shows.  

 
Buy The Clan of the Cave Bear on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins
River Out Of Eden: A Darwinian View Of Life by Richard Dawkins
The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin  
The First Word by Christine Keneally
The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker
The Talking Ape: How Language Evolved by Robbins Laidler
The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov 
Dance of the Tiger: A Novel of the Ice Age by Bjorn Kurten 
The Inheritors by William Golding
The Neanderthal Parallax by Robert J Sawyer
People of the Wolf by Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W Michael Gear
Beyond the Sea of Ice by William Sarabande
Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Song of the River by Sue Harrison

Other works by Jean Auel:

The Valley of Horses
The Mammoth Hunters
The Plains of Passage
The Shelters of Stone 

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