The third book of the best-selling Earth's Children series by Jean M. Auel picks up immediately after the end of the second novel The Valley of the Horses. The heroine of the series, Ayla, and her new lover Jondalar have just encountered a band of people whose identity is based on mammoth hunting. The meeting is shocking for Ayla because until this point in her seventeen years of life, she has never seen another living human except for Jondalar. From the age of five, Ayla had been raised by a cousin species of humans, known in the novel as Clan that are presumably Neanderthal people.
Ayla's upbringing leaves her without any cultural knowledge of how to live among her own kind. Her first experiences among the humans are bewildering and frightening. The group of mammoth hunters who take in Ayla and Jondalar designate their home as the Lion Camp, and Ayla takes this as a good sign because her totem animal is the cave lion that acts as her spiritual guide in life.
The people of the Lion Camp are also captivated by Ayla because she is beautiful, skilled as a healer, and rides a horse. The author does an excellent job in the novel of imagining the beginnings of animal domestication and how people might react to seeing for the first time a horse that obeys a human. Auel's approach to the process of animal domestication is plausible, and the way her narrative demonstrates the benefits that the animals brought to humans is compelling. Ayla's horse allows her to scout prey for the hunters more quickly and the horse helps to carry more meat back to the camp.
In this third novel, Auel gets to delve into an illuminating exploration of how early people might have lived upon the ice age steppes of Europe and Central Asia. Through Ayla's eyes that know only the culture of the Clan with its strict gender roles and unquestioning obedience to a group leader, the culture of her own people presents an astounding contrast. All that she was prohibited from doing among the Clan, Ayla is free to do among the mammoth hunters. She can hunt; speak her mind, laugh, and cry. She is also introduced to art, music and communicating with written symbols. These abstract concepts were unknown to the Clan. Throughout the narrative, the ability of humans to experiment with new ideas and innovate were presented in contrast to the Clan ways that are based on memory. Among the Clan, things are done as they were always done. They are not questioned and as a result they are not improved. This is not to say that the Clan lacked extraordinary skills. The healing arts Ayla learned among the Clan are highly effective, which brings her respect among the mammoth hunters. However, her association with the Clan is also controversial because most humans consider the Clan to be animals and call them by the derogatory term flatheads. The prejudice against the Clan is a source of conflict between Ayla and many characters in the novel.
Auel presents the mammoth hunter society as having looser gender roles, which she illustrates to be a strength. Because women and men can cross over gender lines to cook, hunt, gather, butcher, and so forth, they are more productive because everyone can pitch in on certain tasks when needed. The cooperative mindset of the prehistoric people is also an important theme of the novel. Although people certainly have their own interests and talents, they exist within a society that tacitly expects everyone to work together for survival.
Because readers of The Mammoth Hunters will be coming from the perspective of an individualistic and patriarchal culture, they will find this novel especially enthralling as it presents a society that respects and values women, bases hereditary on matrilineal descent, and depends on cooperative efforts. However, the prehistoric people in the novel are not selfless communists. They seek to improve their status and collect more valuable goods. They trade in possessions and skills and frequently gamble.
Amid the finely detailed portrayal of prehistoric human society, the gripping emotional drama of Ayla commands the narrative as always. A wrenching love triangle emerges among Ayla and Jondalar and her new suitor Ranec. As this romantic storm brews, most readers will likely wish for Ayla to stick by Jondalar, but because Ayla is such a endearing and powerful character, you, like me, will probably decide that you will follow Ayla wherever she travels. Being mad at her is impossible. She is a strikingly vivid character, both larger than life and totally familiar. Ayla represents a literary triumph for Auel, who I believe has delivered yet another brilliant novel. I praise Auel's writing so highly because her characters became real for me. I think about them when I am not reading the books. I worry about them. I wish I could talk to them. In The Mammoth Hunters, Auel has created that most blissful of reading experiences: one that is emotionally tangible.
For readers who like adventure, drama, romance, powerful spirituality, and contemplating the mysterious origins of humanity, The Mammoth Hunters is highly recommended. I rate it five tusks of mammoth ivory.
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