I'm calling time on this one; I'm not finishing. I read it before... at least a couple of times... but that was 20 years ago, and it did not age well. The brief summary: Ayla, a Cro-magnon girl, is orphaned in an earthquake, found by Neandertals, and raised among them, until her differences, and the enmity of the heir-apparent of the chief, forces her into exile.
One part is somewhat forgivable, and some fun world-building. Auel's Clan (Neandertals) cannot speak well, so they have an elaborate sign language. This is the forgivable part, because a Neandertal hyoid bone (the only bone in the body not connected to another bone, so easily lost when dealing with skeletal remains) had not been found, so the consensus when she started writing was that Neandertals could not speak with the same fluency of of modern humans... the hyoid is part of what lets us make such a wide variety of sounds.
The rest, though? That gets a bit less forgivable. Neandertal society, as presented, is absolutely sex-differentiated, which is what makes Ayla, who does not have the biological sex-differentiated memories a near outcast. Clan women would not consider touching weapons, because the culture of the Clan is ingrained into every member... but, Ayla, being Cro-Magnon, does not have that, so she learns to hunt. Several times, pedophilia is presented as being normalized in the society ("beguiled by some young coquette" was the phrase used), and a major story thread is her repeated rape by the story's antagonist (which is culturally supported, naturally, since Clan women are naturally subservient to men in all things). This is compounded by the fact that Neandertals are described as pretty uniformly brown, with brown eyes, extensive body hair, and bushy hair on their head, while Ayla is blue-eyed and blonde-haired, leaving to a reading where the precocious and clever beautiful white girl is raised by these benighted, barbaric brown people with their backwards ways.
I liked it well enough when I was younger. But this story starts at the deficit of being based on old archaeology, and runs downhill from there, through racism, sexism, and rape.
The rest, though? That gets a bit less forgivable. Neandertal society, as presented, is absolutely sex-differentiated, which is what makes Ayla, who does not have the biological sex-differentiated memories a near outcast. Clan women would not consider touching weapons, because the culture of the Clan is ingrained into every member... but, Ayla, being Cro-Magnon, does not have that, so she learns to hunt. Several times, pedophilia is presented as being normalized in the society ("beguiled by some young coquette" was the phrase used), and a major story thread is her repeated rape by the story's antagonist (which is culturally supported, naturally, since Clan women are naturally subservient to men in all things). This is compounded by the fact that Neandertals are described as pretty uniformly brown, with brown eyes, extensive body hair, and bushy hair on their head, while Ayla is blue-eyed and blonde-haired, leaving to a reading where the precocious and clever beautiful white girl is raised by these benighted, barbaric brown people with their backwards ways.
I liked it well enough when I was younger. But this story starts at the deficit of being based on old archaeology, and runs downhill from there, through racism, sexism, and rape.
