#141 in Historical fiction
The Clan of the Cave Bear
- 536
- Pages
- about 10 h
- Reading time
- Film 1986
- On screen
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Our view
“The Clan of the Cave Bear” imagines prehistory from the inside, through a Cro-Magnon girl raised by a Neanderthal clan. Its strength is immersion: you live in that world beside Ayla, whose stubborn self-reliance makes her easy to side with. Some readers point out that its picture of Neanderthals reflects older science, without enjoying the story less for it. More than five hundred pages, and only the first of six volumes.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
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.
Reading order · Earth's Children hexalogy
Full order & progress →- The Clan of the Cave BearThis book
7.97.9 / 10 - The Valley of Horses
7.97.9 / 10 - The Mammoth Hunters
7.67.6 / 10 - The Plains of Passage
7.67.6 / 10 - The Shelters of Stone
7.77.7 / 10 - The Land of Painted Caves
7.47.4 / 10
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen once.
- FilmThe Clan of the Cave BearIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.8 across 366 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 71% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Historical fiction average of 8.0. That is how 7.9 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.2 | 75 | 21% |
| Hardcover | 7.7 | 291 | 80% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Clan of the Cave Bear?
It has 536 pages — longer than 67% of the ranked books in Historical fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Historical fiction — with scores between 7.8 and 7.9, closest to this book.
