The Clan of the Cave Bear

Tags

The Valley of Horses,The Mammoth Hunters,The Plains of Passage

Summary

The novel references the "coming" advance of "the polar ice" sheets, setting the story before 18,000 years Before Present, when the farthest southern encroachment of the last glacial period of the current Ice Age occurred. Auel's timeframe, somewhere between 28,000 and 25,000 years B.P., corresponds with archeological estimates of the Neanderthal branch of mankind dying out some time between 30,000 and 22,000 years B.P..

Description

The Clan of the Cave Bear is a historical novel by Jean M. Auel about prehistoric times set before the extinction of the Neanderthal race after 600,000 years as a species, and at least 10-15,000 years after Homo sapiens remains are documented and dated in Europe as a viable second human species. It is the first book in the Earth's Children book series which speculates on the possibilities of interactions between Neanderthal and modern Cro-Magnon humans.