Rating: 6/10
- Accuracy: Based on research into prehistoric life, though many details about Neanderthal culture are speculative and some now outdated.
- Readability: Easy and absorbing, despite long descriptive passages.
- Plot: An orphaned Cro-Magnon girl is raised by a clan of Neanderthals, who struggle to accept her difference.
- Science bonus: Auel builds on palaeoanthropology and ethnobotany, and Iza’s herbal medicine is presented as empirical knowledge passed down and refined.
After an earthquake kills her family, a five-year-old girl, Ayla, is found by a clan of Neanderthals. The clan’s medicine woman, Iza, and holy man, Creb, adopt her. Ayla is taller, fairer and more independent than the clan, and her curiosity challenges their rigid traditions. The clan’s future leader, Broud, comes to hate her.
Jean M. Auel researched prehistoric life thoroughly, and the novel is full of detail about tools, plants, medicine and survival. The Neanderthal culture she imagines, with its sign language, rituals and collective memory, is fascinating.
Ayla is a compelling heroine, and the book’s emotional core is her relationship with her adoptive family. The novel became a huge bestseller and began a six-book series, Earth’s Children.
The weaknesses are the characterisation of the Neanderthals as limited and unchanging, which scientific research has since challenged, and the sometimes repetitive descriptions. The treatment of violence, including sexual violence, can be disturbing.
The 6 reflects a popular, absorbing prehistoric epic that brought the Stone Age to millions of readers, even if its science has dated.
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