The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [22]
“You do know that the Second Cave of the Zelandonii is the oldest settlement of Zelandonii still in existence?” Kimeran said, his voice slightly slurred. “That’s why it’s called Elder Hearth.”
“Yes, I knew that,” she said, wondering if he would need the “morning after” drink she had concocted for Talut, the Mamutoi leader of the Lion Camp.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Sergenor said. “As the families of the First and Second Caves grew too large for their shelters, some of them, offshoots of both Caves as well as new people who had come into the region, moved farther away, taking the next counting words when they established a new Cave. By the time the group of people from the Second Cave who founded our Cave decided to move, the next unused counting word was ‘seven.’ They were mostly young families—some newly mated couples, the children of the Second Cave—and they wanted to stay close to their relatives, so they moved here, just across Sweet Valley, to make their new home. Even though the two Caves were so closely related, they were the same as one Cave, I think they chose a new number because that’s the way it was done. So we became two separate Caves: Elder Hearth, the Second Cave of the Zelandonii, and Horsehead Rock, the Seventh Cave. We are still just different branches of the same family.”
“The Twenty-ninth is a newer Cave,” Sergenor continued. “When they moved to their new shelters, I suspect they all wanted to keep the same counting-word name, because the smaller the counting word, the older the settlement. There is a certain prestige in having a lower counting word and Twenty-nine was rather large already. I suspect none of the people founding the new Caves wanted a larger one. They decided to call themselves Three Rocks, the Twenty-ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, and then use the names they had already given to the locations to explain the difference.
“The original settlement is called Reflection Rock, because from certain places you can see yourself in the water below. It is one of the few shelters that face north and is not quite as easy to keep warm, but it is a remarkable place and has many other advantages. It is the South Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave, or sometimes the South Holding of Three Rocks. South Face became the North Holding, and Summer Camp became the West Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave. I think their way is more complicated and confusing, but it’s their choice.”
“If the Second Cave is the oldest, then the next-oldest group still in existence must be Two Rivers Rock, the Third Cave of the Zelandonii. We stayed there last night,” Ayla said, nodding as she understood more.
“That’s right,” Proleva said, joining in.
“But there is no Fourth Cave, is there?”
“There was a Fourth Cave,” Proleva replied, “but no one seems to know what happened to it. There are Legends that hint at some catastrophe that struck more than one Cave, and the Fourth may have disappeared around that time, but no one knows. It’s a dark time in the Histories, too. Some fighting with the Flatheads is inferred.”
“The Fifth Cave, called Old Valley, upstream along The River, is next after the Third,” Jondalar said. “We were going to visit them on our way to the Summer Meeting last year, but they had already left, remember?” Ayla nodded. “They have several shelters on both sides of Short River Valley, some for living, some for storage, but they don’t give them separate counting words. All of Old Valley is the Fifth Cave.”
“The Sixth Cave has disappeared, too,” Sergenor continued. “There are different stories about what happened to it. Most people think illness reduced their numbers. Others believe there was a difference of opinion between