The Land of the Painted Caves

Being Jean Auel’s sixth in the Children of Earth Series it finds our heroine heavily involved in her training as a medicine women and preoccupied with raising her infant child. Who knew that prehistoric society was so matriarchal or at least egalitarian. We repeated read stanzas from the Great Earth Mother Creation Myth. Seems it was a woman who gave birth to the world and created a mate for herself that appears to be the sun. When she got around to creating people it was a woman who was first created and a man came later to provide her with a mate. As much as the Biblical account of creation shows a chauvinistic bias that has served to put women in their place this account acknowledges women’s role as nurturers and caregivers seeing a female as the agent of creation.

A large part of the novel is taken up with visits to caves and descriptions of the cave paintings in them. The action jumps 4 years in the second section of the book. Ayla is still supported by her six-foot-six-inch blonde companion with the brilliant blue eyes and charismatic appearance. She gets her call as a medicine women and the remainder of the book is taken up with her initiation into the fold at a summer meeting. Somehow this opus lacks the appeal of some of the earlier novels, certain sections seeming to drag on and on.