Ayla (Earth's Children)
Encyclopedia
Ayla is the main character of Jean Auel's Earth's Children
novels. She is an early homo sapiens woman who was raised by Neanderthals.
Ayla was played by Daryl Hannah
in the 1986 movie The Clan of the Cave Bear. Her character is parodied in the Japanese video game Chrono Trigger
.
in the river beside the campsite when the earthquake starts and watches the tragedy in horror. Wandering aimlessly, alone, frightened, hungry and helpless, Ayla eventually encounters a cave lion which chases her into a narrow crack in a rock wall; attempting to pull Ayla out, the lion gashes open Ayla's leg, leaving four deep parallel wounds on her thigh. After a day spent hiding in terror, Ayla, driven by thirst, emerges from her hiding place to drink at the nearby stream and then collapses, delirious from fever and starvation. There she is found by a group of Neanderthals, a "Clan" led by Brun, and adopted by Iza, that Clan's medicine-woman or healer. Though neither Iza, Ayla's adoptive mother, nor Creb, the "Mog-ur" (a Shaman-like character) her adoptive father, know Ayla's age for certain, author Jean Auel places Ayla at five years old in the book's second paragraph, and her foster family eventually guesses her age accurately.
See The Clan of the Cave Bear
, The Valley of Horses
, The Mammoth Hunters
, The Plains of Passage
, and The Shelters of Stone
for a detailed synopsis of Ayla's life.
.
One of Ayla's most important insights is the concept that men have something to do with the conception of children. Clan people believe that pregnancy and birth are a matter of spirit totems competing; when a woman menstruates, it means her totem has fought off another and has won, but if a woman gets pregnant it means her totem has been overcome. Ayla suspects that this all has something to do with sex, or the "relieving of a man's needs" with a woman. She comes to think of this as a combination of male and female "essence."
Ayla has a longstanding problem with Broud, the son of the leader's mate, who is jealous of the attention she receives. His envy causes him to behave in a disgraceful manner; while women expect to be ordered around, Broud also beats and rapes her, impregnating her at the age of eleven. These actions cause his mother's mate to question whether Broud is fit to be leader. Upon becoming leader after the former tribal head believes he is ready, Broud orders a death curse on Ayla and forces her to leave the Clan forever, leaving her son Durc behind.
Throughout the series, there are many references to Ayla's having great spiritual and intellectual powers, many of which actually may be simple reasoning and common sense. She does have a knack for inventing things, and is credited with many innovations actually made over thousands of years of human history.
When Ayla acts as the medicine woman at the Clan Gathering and prepares the sacred herb for the Mog-urs' ceremony, she ingests some of the juice from the root and is strongly affected by its psychotropic properties. Creb makes telepathic contact with her, and she follows him through his psychic exploration of the Clan "memories." She then follows the path of the Others' divergence from the Clan, and among other things sees a glimpse of the future: "Boxlike structures...long ribbons of stone...strange animals crawling at great speeds...huge birds that flew without flapping their wings." Apparently Auel intended to describe Ayla seeing a glimpse of the modern era, and even beyond to the next stage of human evolution. Creb has seen all these things with her, and telepathically orders her out of the cave when she returns to her own mind, knowing in his heart that only the Others will continue to evolve and that the Clan will die out.
The last book In the Earth's Children's Series, Ayla is now about 25 years old and training to become a spiritual leader of the Zelandonii. Her training includes a series of harrowing journeys.
Earth's Children
Earth's Children is a series of speculative alternative historical fiction novels written by Jean M. Auel set circa 30,000 years before present. There are six novels in the series...
novels. She is an early homo sapiens woman who was raised by Neanderthals.
Ayla was played by Daryl Hannah
Daryl Hannah
Daryl Christine Hannah is an American film actress. After making her screen debut in 1978, Hannah starred in a number of Hollywood films throughout the 1980s, notably Blade Runner, Splash, Wall Street and Roxanne and Kill Bill.-Early life:Hannah was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Susan...
in the 1986 movie The Clan of the Cave Bear. Her character is parodied in the Japanese video game Chrono Trigger
Chrono Trigger
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995. Chrono Triggers development team included three designers that Square dubbed the "Dream Team": Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Square's Final Fantasy series; Yuji Horii, a...
.
Background
Ayla is orphaned as a young child when an earthquake opens a fissure in the ground into which the camp of her parents and the group of which they are part fall and are destroyed. Ayla is swimming nudeNudity
Nudity is the state of wearing no clothing. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic. The amount of clothing worn depends on functional considerations and social considerations...
in the river beside the campsite when the earthquake starts and watches the tragedy in horror. Wandering aimlessly, alone, frightened, hungry and helpless, Ayla eventually encounters a cave lion which chases her into a narrow crack in a rock wall; attempting to pull Ayla out, the lion gashes open Ayla's leg, leaving four deep parallel wounds on her thigh. After a day spent hiding in terror, Ayla, driven by thirst, emerges from her hiding place to drink at the nearby stream and then collapses, delirious from fever and starvation. There she is found by a group of Neanderthals, a "Clan" led by Brun, and adopted by Iza, that Clan's medicine-woman or healer. Though neither Iza, Ayla's adoptive mother, nor Creb, the "Mog-ur" (a Shaman-like character) her adoptive father, know Ayla's age for certain, author Jean Auel places Ayla at five years old in the book's second paragraph, and her foster family eventually guesses her age accurately.
See The Clan of the Cave Bear
The Clan of the Cave Bear
The Clan of the Cave Bear is an historical novel by Jean M. Auel about prehistoric times set before the extinction of the Neanderthal race after 600,000 years as a species, and at least 10-15,000 years after Homo sapiens remains are documented and dated in Europe as a viable second human species...
, The Valley of Horses
The Valley of Horses
The Valley of Horses is a historical fiction novel by Jean M. Auel. It is the sequel to The Clan of the Cave Bear and second in the Earth's Children series.-Plot summary:...
, The Mammoth Hunters
The Mammoth Hunters
The Mammoth Hunters is an historical fiction novel by Jean M. Auel released in 1985. It is the sequel to The Valley of Horses and third in the Earth's Children series.-Plot summary:...
, The Plains of Passage
The Plains of Passage
The Plains of Passage is an historical fiction novel by Jean M. Auel published in 1990. It is the sequel to The Mammoth Hunters and fourth in the Earth's Children series.-Plot summary:...
, and The Shelters of Stone
The Shelters of Stone
The Shelters of Stone is a historical fiction novel by Jean M. Auel published in April 2002. It is the sequel to The Plains of Passage – published 12 years earlier – and fifth in the Earth's Children series...
for a detailed synopsis of Ayla's life.
Characteristics
Ayla is described as tall, with blonde hair, gray-blue eyes, a well-toned body, and a strangely accented voice (actually a speech mannerism.) She has been raised with Clan customs, sign language instead of speech, not to laugh or smile, and not to cry. Almost every male Cro-Magnon character in the series finds Ayla exceptionally beautiful, though Ayla describes herself as "big and ugly" because she was regarded by the Clan as ugly. Another word frequently used to describe her is 'exotic', indicating that she seems a bit foreign to everyone who meets her, and that her own people live somewhere else. A detailed description of her features in The Mammoth Hunters indicates that she might be SlavicSlavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
.
One of Ayla's most important insights is the concept that men have something to do with the conception of children. Clan people believe that pregnancy and birth are a matter of spirit totems competing; when a woman menstruates, it means her totem has fought off another and has won, but if a woman gets pregnant it means her totem has been overcome. Ayla suspects that this all has something to do with sex, or the "relieving of a man's needs" with a woman. She comes to think of this as a combination of male and female "essence."
Ayla has a longstanding problem with Broud, the son of the leader's mate, who is jealous of the attention she receives. His envy causes him to behave in a disgraceful manner; while women expect to be ordered around, Broud also beats and rapes her, impregnating her at the age of eleven. These actions cause his mother's mate to question whether Broud is fit to be leader. Upon becoming leader after the former tribal head believes he is ready, Broud orders a death curse on Ayla and forces her to leave the Clan forever, leaving her son Durc behind.
Throughout the series, there are many references to Ayla's having great spiritual and intellectual powers, many of which actually may be simple reasoning and common sense. She does have a knack for inventing things, and is credited with many innovations actually made over thousands of years of human history.
Clan of the Cave Bear
As a child among the Clan, she is described as lucky, favored by the spirits. Iza surmises that Ayla was born to a medicine woman of the Others (Cro-Magnons) though Ayla has very little memory of her birth mother and knows nothing of the tribe of the Others to whom she was born. Although Ayla lacks the Clan's ability to access ancestral memories, Iza succeeds in training her as a medicine healer. In her childhood and young adulthood she invents several things previously unknown, as well as innovations to existing tools and their uses (see below.)When Ayla acts as the medicine woman at the Clan Gathering and prepares the sacred herb for the Mog-urs' ceremony, she ingests some of the juice from the root and is strongly affected by its psychotropic properties. Creb makes telepathic contact with her, and she follows him through his psychic exploration of the Clan "memories." She then follows the path of the Others' divergence from the Clan, and among other things sees a glimpse of the future: "Boxlike structures...long ribbons of stone...strange animals crawling at great speeds...huge birds that flew without flapping their wings." Apparently Auel intended to describe Ayla seeing a glimpse of the modern era, and even beyond to the next stage of human evolution. Creb has seen all these things with her, and telepathically orders her out of the cave when she returns to her own mind, knowing in his heart that only the Others will continue to evolve and that the Clan will die out.
Valley of Horses
Alone in a secluded valley where she has fled after being expelled from the Clan, Ayla adopts and raises a cave lion cub she calls Baby, and a horse she calls Whinney. She originally stops in the valley to stay for the winter, but stays to take care of the animal friends. She learns that to survive on her own, she must break many Clan traditions she had previously been raised under. She meets Jondalar when he is attacked and mauled by Baby, and tends his wounds. He begins teaching her his language. Some weeks or months later she dreams of her own mother speaking to her and of an earthquake (which betoken tragedy and upheaval to Ayla.) After this dream, Ayla suddenly speaks Jondalar's language fluently even to the idioms, where before she had spoken only in broken sentences. Auel may have meant this event as a partial recovery of repressed memories, but Ayla still does not remember her own or her mother's name, her language, or anything of her past before her adoption. Jondalar recovers and takes Ayla, Racer (Whinney's offspring) and Whinney with him while he completes the pilgrimage he is on, intending to bring her home to meet his family.The Mammoth Hunters
Ayla continues to have psychic and prophetic experiences linked to the rituals used by the Mamutoi people. She dreams that she has two sons, Durc and an unknown son who appears to have no Clan lineage at all; they are on the verge of open conflict, and Ayla struggles to reach them in time to prevent the destruction of one son by the other. It is suggested that the meaning of the dream has less to do with her 'children' than the evolution of the Others and decline of the Clan. Her new friend Ranec comes to believe that she is an incarnation of what he calls the "Spirit Woman," the perfect spirit model of a woman in whose image all are made, and that she may even be the Earth Mother incarnate. Shaman Mamut indicates to Jondalar, Ranec, and Vincavec, another Mamutoi shaman who wants to marry Ayla, that Ayla has some great purpose. Vincavec attempts to hypnotize Ayla, but she is able to resist him, as well as the spiritual influences of others. Though Ayla contends that her ability to tame and win the loyalty of animals is only a matter of time, patience and proper handling, her gift for making friends of numerous animals is considered a sign of her supernatural gifts.Plains of Passage
On the journey back to the Zelandonii territory, Jondalar's home, many of the tribes Ayla encounters mistake Ayla's extreme creative intelligence and even her common-sense reasoning for supernatural powers. Jondalar and Ayla both insist that she has no such gifts, but they do not stay in one place long enough to convince anyone otherwise. Ayla continues to have prophetic dreams.Shelters of Stone
Upon arriving at the Ninth Cave, Jondalar's dwelling, Ayla realizes that this cave is identical to one she's been seeing in her dreams. Her dreams and waking psychic visions become more frequent and more powerful, and the female shaman Zelandoni can sense them. However, Ayla rejects Zelandoni's offers to train her as a priestess, saying she merely wishes to live a normal life. Zelandoni finally convinces Ayla to join the spiritual devotees, known as Those Who Serve the Mother.The Land Of Painted Caves
Published March 29, 2011.The last book In the Earth's Children's Series, Ayla is now about 25 years old and training to become a spiritual leader of the Zelandonii. Her training includes a series of harrowing journeys.
Invention and skills
- Phenomenal Memory: Because she doesn't have inherent Clan memories which allow recall after a few reminders, Ayla is at first seen by the Clan as dimwitted because she must be told or shown repeatedly how to do things. As a defense, she works to develop her memory skills so she needs to be shown or told only once. This knack comes in handy when she encounters new languages.
- Two-Stone Technique: after almost being harmed by a lynx when she missed with her sling, Ayla develops a technique to reload her sling after a cast during the downfall, for immediate use.
- DiagnosisDiagnosisDiagnosis is the identification of the nature and cause of anything. Diagnosis is used in many different disciplines with variations in the use of logics, analytics, and experience to determine the cause and effect relationships...
: as reasoned by Iza, although Ayla could not memorize all Clan medicinal lore, she has the ability to reason intuitively, recognize the causes of illnesses and treat them appropriately. - BrassiereBrassiereA brassiere is an undergarment that covers, supports, and elevates the breasts. Since the late 19th century, it has replaced the corset as the most widely accepted method for supporting breasts....
: Ayla is the only Clan woman permitted to hunt (small game only, using a sling.) As she matures, she finds that her breasts impede her mobility. "She noticed that men wore a leather loinclothLoinclothA loincloth is a one-piece male garment, sometimes kept in place by a belt, which covers the genitals and, at least partially, the buttocks.-History and types:Loincloths are being and have been worn:*in societies where no other clothing is needed or wanted...
to protect their exposed and delicate organs, and fashioned a band to hold her bosom in place, tied around her back." (The Clan of the Cave Bear, chapter 26) - AtlatlAtlatlAn atlatl or spear-thrower is a tool that uses leverage to achieve greater velocity in dart-throwing.It consists of a shaft with a cup or a spur at the end that supports and propels the butt of the dart. The atlatl is held in one hand, gripped near the end farthest from the cup...
: Works with her partner Jondalar to develop a "spear-thrower." - DomesticationDomesticationDomestication or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. In the Convention on Biological Diversity a domesticated species is defined as a 'species in which the evolutionary process has been...
: out of loneliness in her valley, Ayla has raised a horse, Whinney, her foal Racer, a Cave LionCave lionPanthera leo spelaea also known as the European or Eurasian cave lion, is an extinct subspecies of lion known from fossils and many examples of prehistoric art.-Physical characteristics:This subspecies was one of the largest lions...
cub she calls Baby, later with the mammoth hunters she gets a wolfGray WolfThe gray wolf , also known as the wolf, is the largest extant wild member of the Canidae family...
she simply calls Wolf. - Horse Equipment: Inspired by the idea that she can ride Whinney, Ayla invents drag poles, carrying packs, and notably the travoisTravoisA travois is a frame used by indigenous peoples, notably the Plains Indians of North America, to drag loads over land...
. - Percussion Fire Starting: After a mistake in making flint weapons, Ayla recognizes that sparks from striking a 'firestone' of iron pyrite with a piece of flint can start a fire
- Sewing NeedleSewing needleA sewing needle is a long slender tool with a pointed tip. The first needles were made of bone or wood; modern ones are manufactured from high carbon steel wire, nickel- or 18K gold plated for corrosion resistance. The highest quality embroidery needles are plated with two-thirds platinum and...
: Ayla tried and failed to learn the Mamutoi sewing techniques, and instead came up with a sharp bone with a hole, which she calls a "thread-puller," to draw sinew through leather—instead of just punching holes and pushing the thread in with another tool. - Surgical Stitches: When Ayla first encounters Jondalar his leg has been torn open by a Cave Lion, to the point where the muscle is hanging off the bone. Ayla determines that in order to heal properly, his leg would have to be physically held closed. She notices how his clothing (in the typical style of his people, but unfamiliar to her) is formed of panels of cloth tied together with thongs, and has the idea to literally tie his leg back together by boring holes in his flesh and muscle, then threading cord through the holes and tying them off. Much later (in The Shelters of Stone) Wolf is mauled almost to death by another wild wolf; Ayla uses her "thread puller" sewing needle to stitch his wounds. Needless to say, both patients made full recoveries.