Ayla in Clan of the Cave Bear

Ayla is a Cro-Magnon child of about five, orphaned in an earthquake-induced cave-in and wounded by a cave lion. She is adopted by a tribal group of Neanderthals who call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear and who refer to Ayla as "one of the others"he Clan has just been driven out of its home by the earthquake, and the treatment of Ayla's wounds by the Clan's Medicine Woman Iza is initially in doubt. Influenced by sister-brother bonds, the Clan's leader Brun reluctantly gives permission for his sister to treat the child,inevitably as he grumbles to himself, to her adoption — but only when she proves to be a token of good luck; Ayla finds the cave they thereafter make their home.Auel's story seeks to demonstrate differences between these first humans, who'd held sway on Earth for over 300,000 years

In her tales, Homo neanderthalensis is possessed of a innate but very different type of intelligence rooted in a 'racial memory', which is both sex-linked and common to the children of the species. This memory causes Ayla to be viewed, initially, as slow, perhaps even dull and stupid, relative to near-age Neanderthal children, who mature much faster and live less long. Much of the tension of the early storyline deals with Ayla's tendency to think outside of the experiential box and therefore to commit social faux pas unthinkable to Neanderthal children with their innate memories of how to function.

Ayla's different developmental path allows major contrasts to be drawn between Neanderthal culture and those behaviors and responses to stimuli that would be logical to a modern human. Ultimately, Ayla's proclivities create friction that reflects unfavorably upon the heir apparent to the Clan leader's son, a mean, near-age male named "Broud", who repeatedly victimizes Ayla after some escalating childish provocations. These victimizations include rape as modern culture would understand it; in the milieu of the Clan, however, it represents the normal duty of a woman, who must "relieve a man's needs". This duty is culturally non-negotiable, but Broud exploits it brutally, in order to get even with the too-clever-for-her-own-good Ayla. She becomes pregnant as a result. The struggle between the two climaxes with Broud ascending to rule of the group and taking the ultimate revenge by sundering Ayla from her three-year-old toddler, Durc, requiring his henchman, the young and inexperienced shaman (Goov), to curse Ayla with ritual death, driving her out of the group as an evil spirit. The book ends with another cave-in as Ayla grabs supplies and begins a journey north to find "the others," as her adoptive mother had once advised.