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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Clan of the Cave Bear

1980 novel by Jean M. Auel

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ2328959 ↗
Source-derived summary

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 book series, which speculates on the possibilities of interactions between Neanderthal and modern Cro-Magnon humans.

Setting

The novel references the advance of the polar ice sheets, setting the story 18,000 years BCE, when the farthest southern encroachment of the last glacial period of the current ice age occurred. Auel's time-frame, sometime between 28,000 and 25,000 BCE, corresponds generally with archaeological estimates of the Neanderthal branch of humankind disappearing.

Plots

A five-year-old girl, Ayla, who readers come to understand is Cro-Magnon, is orphaned and left homeless by an earthquake that destroys her family's camp. She wanders naked and unable to feed herself for several days. She is attacked and nearly killed by a cave lion, and, suffering from starvation, exhaustion, and infection of her wounds, she collapses, on the verge of death.

The narrative switches to a group of people who call themselves "Clan" and who the reader comes to understand are Neanderthal. Their cave was destroyed in the earthquake, and they are searching for a new home. The medicine woman of the group, Iza, discovers Ayla and asks permission from her brother Brun, the Clan leader, to help her, despite the child being clearly a member of "the Others," the distrusted antagonists of the Clan.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Clan of the Cave Bear” as 1980 novel by Jean M. Auel. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1980—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1980-05-04. The account is most persuasive where Clan, Cave and Bear can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1980 novel by Jean M. Auel. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2328959. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Clan of the Cave Bear”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Clan of the Cave Bear primary sources, The Clan of the Cave Bear archive and Clan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Clan of the Cave Bear”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Clan of the Cave Bear” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.