The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [508]
Those early modern humans called Cro-Magnon were the first people who not only had skeletons like ours but were like us in many other ways, which can be convincingly demonstrated by the archaeological record. They were our many-times-great-grandparents; whatever qualities we claim for ourselves, we must grant them. They had the same range of intelligence that we do, the same emotional responses and psychological reactions, the same ease and facility with language, the same talents, skills, and abilities. And they had a remarkable creative impulse. I’ve seen it, and it certainly convinced me. Neanderthals are still unknowns, but they were far more advanced than most of us imagine; they were also human with brains larger than the average today. There were differences between us, but they were our close cousins. Once I learned this, I knew I could write the story of a young Cro-Magnon woman raised by a clan of Neanderthals who then finds her way back to her own kind of people. Ayla’s struggle creates tension and conflict, but it is not a modern theme. It is a universal theme. It’s natural, part of the human condition, to want to be accepted. People understand this and always have.
RH: Your research is praised throughout the world for its accuracy and detail. Can you tell us a bit about your process?
JA: Most of the information comes from reading and library research, but I have also learned a great deal from asking questions, taking classes, and traveling. For example, I took a class from an expert in arctic survival, where we spent a night on the snowy slopes of a nearby mountain to learn how to live in cold conditions. From a class in aboriginal life skills, I learned how people live off the land, and how to brain-tan a deer hide into wearable buckskin. I’ve taken plant identification classes and classes on how to cook wild foods. Ayla’s medicine-woman skills come from a combination of first-aid books, books on herbal medicines, and asking questions of doctors and other skilled health practitioners like nurses and paramedics. I have visited many of the sites I write about to get a feel for them, even though conditions are most likely different now. I even worked for a short time at an archaeological dig so I could understand where information comes from and how scientists find it.
RH: How much in your books is based on fact, and how much is fiction? That is, do you fill in the gaps left by history?
JA: My books are entirely fiction, based on as much factual information as I could find on their subjects. They take place 30,000 years ago, and the only things left from that time are hard objects—things made of stone and bone, such as stone tools, carved items, animal and human skeletal remains—and, as it turns out, microscopic residues. Pollen has been found in Neanderthal graves. Hair from various animals and DNA traces of animal blood from stones and knives add information. Inference fills in a certain amount. For example, if the skeleton of an old Neanderthal man shows that from a young age he had been blind in one eye, had had an arm amputated, and walked with a limp, it is fair to surmise that he was not hunting woolly mammoths, which raises interesting questions: Who amputated his arm? Who stopped the bleeding? Who treated the shock? How did he live to be an old man? Obviously someone took care of him; the question is why? Could it have been because they loved him? Or that his culture took care of their weak and wounded? Perhaps “red in tooth and claw” is not an appropriate way to describe those enigmatic human cousins.
RH: The Earth’s Children® series is an epic adventure spanning many years. Have you always known where the story is going, or has each book been planned separately?
JA: When I started, my question was “I wonder if I could write a short story?” Then I got into the research and got all fired up, and I realized I was writing a book. At the time, I was calling it Earth’s Children®, and as it grew, I thought it would be one big saga that fell easily into six parts. I wrote about 450,000