Costa del Sol

The Shelters of Stone

Jean Auel, the author of the prodigious epic, Earth’s Children, visited the Ardales Caves, Boquette de Zafaraya (Alcaucin) and Tajos de Doña Ana (Periana) to research for the sixth and final part of this fascinating series.

The fifth book, the Shelters of Stone has certainly set a challenge because there are so many story lines that readers will want to see completed.

The six book series documents the life of Ayla, a cro-magnon child, who is orphaned and then cared for by a tribe (Clan) of neanderthals.
Lawrence Strauss, who accompanied Jean Auel and her husband was told that evidence discovered in Málaga province does tend to support the theory that neanderthals and cro-magnons did co-exist, or at least live alongside each other, before neanderthals became extinct.

You do not need to be an anthropologist to enjoy Auel’s books but they might make you want to study the subject. The riveting, detailed descriptions of the Earth of 25,000 years ago, the animals and people that inhabited it and the geological factors that moulded it leave the reader almost no need to try to imagine each scene.
There is enough detail about the trades and skills that mankind had already discovered that the reader could almost go out and build a bowl boat, skin a deer and cure its hide and collect a pharmacopia that will cure most ills.

Like many of her fans, I would have loved to be able to meet this wonderful writer or even have known that she was coming to visit, but I am also impatient for the final instalment to be completed.
If you have not read Earth’s Children and you like a good story based upon extensive research into a world most of us can hardly imagine, you should seek out the first five books and hope that the sixth is ready when you have finished reading them.

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