Novels About Prehistoric Times

The Earth Children Series

I am a fan of Jean Auel’s Earth Children Series, which started with Clan of the Cave Bear. The first two books in particular gave myriad details on the topography, flora, fauna, and possible societies of prehistoric times. I know the author put in a great deal of research. How its accuracy has held up over time and new archeological findings, I don’t know. The next books became more speculative—magic, clairvoyance, etc.—and, in one person’s view that I read, cave porn. There certainly started to be a lot of repetition. The last book made it clear that the story was not finished, but Ms. Auel has not written that final book, a disappointment to her fans.

The series follow a little girl separated from her modern-man parents during an earthquake and raised by an earlier people who are going extinct. The stories show the girl growing up and struggling to fit in, first with her adopted people and then with her own. She has skills and ways unknown to them and is looked on either with suspicion or admiration, neither of which she is comfortable with.

Song of the Axe

Written by John R. Dann, this story is advertised as in the tradition of the Earth Children Series. I saw little similarity other than the time period. This book is much more fantastical and less historically detailed. It is obvious the writer intended at least two books. Part II goes over incidents from Part I as you would in a sequel, and the beginning of this 600 page tomb is very choppy, as though hastily lopped off to bring down the word count.

The dialogue is blunt and simple, no doubt to sound like a simpler people and time, but it makes the characters all sound alike. Nevertheless, I became engaged with the two main characters who considered themselves mated for life as they face evil—the evil ran in tribes and families, which was unbelievable, and promising characters were often quickly killed, but I did care what happened to the main characters and kept reading.

The Prehistoric in a Young-Adult Novel

Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff was written in 1958 but holds up perfectly since it is about prehistory. This book caught my interest and imagination more than most. Diem is a disabled boy in the Bronze Age who must overcome his handicap to survive and be accepted. Truthfully, he probably never would have been allowed to live in the real world, but his struggles made for a sympathetic but not maudlin story and created a great deal of tension as he traversed the mine field of tribal expectations. The story is about a boy but not written from a childish perspective. Riveting.