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She married Ray Bernard Auel in 1954, and the couple moved to Portland, where they raised five children.

“I have learned a great deal," she said, "from asking questions, taking classes, and traveling.” In writing Clan of the Cave Bear, which began as a short story, Auel did extensive research, including enrolling in an aboriginal lifeskills class taught by anthropologist Jim Riggs in central Oregon.Īuel’s own journey began in Chicago, where she was born Jean Marie Untinen to Finnish immigrants on February 18, 1936. She learned how to make tools out of flint and how to tan hides, and she visited caves and prehistoric sites in Europe. Jean Auel's books are anchored in meticulous, hands-on research. Subsequent books in the series continue Ayla’s story: The Valley of Horses (1982) The Mammoth Hunters (1985) The Plains of Passage (1990) The Shelters of Stone (2002) and The Land of Painted Caves (2011).

The “Others,” the Cro Magnon, will eventually make them extinct. Reliance on memory is at once a strength and a fatal weakness as, locked into ancient traditions, they are not able to adapt to new circumstances.

They also possess group memory that extends back thousands of generations. They express themselves through a highly developed body language of movement and symbol. Neanderthals possess emotions in the novel but not speech. Auel portrays Ayla’s adoptive family, the clan of the Cave Bear, as an alternative-not a lesser-human species. Set 25,000 years ago, it begins the story of Ayla, an orphaned Cro Magnon child adopted by a Neanderthal clan. Rowling.Ĭlan of the Cave Bear was conceived as the first of the six books of the Earth’s Children series. The success of Clan of the Cave Bear was not exceeded until 1997, with the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone ( Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States) by J.K. The book was made into a feature film in 1986. Most books on best-seller lists appear for a few weeks at most, but Clan of the Cave Bear held its place for eight months, selling millions of copies worldwide and putting Auel in the company of Stephen King and Anne Rice, two of the most popular writers of the 1980s. And she did it with one book, Clan of the Cave Bear (1980).

No contemporary Oregon writer has achieved the superstar celebrity status of Jean Auel.