The Clan of the Cave Bear

The Clan of the Cave Bear is a 1980 work of prehistoric fiction by Jean M. Auel about prehistoric times. It is the first novel in the Earth's Children series, which speculates about the possible interactions between Neanderthal and modern Cro-Magnon humans.

The novel references the advance of the polar ice sheets, setting the story about eighteen thousand years BCE, at the farthest southern extent of the last glacial period. Auel's own time-frame, somewhere between twenty-eight thousand and twenty-five thousand BCE, corresponds generally with archaeological estimates for the disappearance of the Neanderthal branch of humanity.

Ayla's position is the book's instrument. She is a Cro-Magnon child raised by Neanderthals, so the reader sees the group's customs from outside while the group sees her as different, and the novel's speculative material about language, memory and ritual is delivered through that contrast. The series continued across several volumes, and this first one is the title most readers encounter. The archaeological speculation is the other half of the book, and it arrives through Ayla's learning, so the reader picks up the clan's rules at the same time she does.