Ayla (Earth's Children)

Ayla is the main character of Jean Auel's Earth's Children novels. She is a Cro-Magnon woman who was raised by Neanderthals. Ayla was played by Daryl Hannah in the 1986 movie "The Clan of the Cave Bear".

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 nude 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."

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 character in the series finds Ayla exceptionally beautiful, though Ayla describes herself as "big and 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.

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 puts 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 intends 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 has a psychic link with a Cro-Magnon man, Jondalar (who will become her husband) long before she meets him. She experiences his emotions in her dreams, and may have picked up her knowledge of how to draw a spark from flint and iron pyrite from her psychic connection with him. After she rescues the badly-injured Jondalar from a cave lion and tends his wounds (the cave lion being "Baby", the lion she raised when she found him injured as a baby.), and he comes to live with her and begins teaching her his language, 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 with only a trace of a Clan accent, though the day before she had spoken only in broken and barely-coherent sentences. This transformation is implied to have been the result of Ayla finally facing the trauma of having lost her family, which in the early pages of "Clan of the Cave Bear" is described as repressing memories. It is also a testimony to her extraordinarily-trained memory, which was cataloging his speech without her conscious effort.

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.

helters 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.

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.
*Diagnosis: 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.
*Brassiere: Ayla is the only Clan woman permitted to hunt (small game only, using a sling.) As she matures, and especially after giving birth, she finds that her breasts impede her mobility. "She noticed that men wore a leather loincloth 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)
*Atlatl: Works with her partner Jondalar to develop a "spear-thrower."
*Domestication: out of loneliness in her valley, Ayla has raised a horse, Whinney, her foal Racer, a Cave Lion cub she calls Baby, and a wolf she simply calls Wolf.
*Horse Equipment: Inspired by the idea that she can ride Whinney, Ayla invents drag poles, carrying packs, and notably the travois.
*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 Needle: 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) is formed of panels of cloth tied together with thongs, and has the idea literally to 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.

Children

Durc

Ayla's son, fathered by Broud. Durc was born when Ayla was eleven years old, the result of Broud's repeated rapes in his attempt to exert control over Ayla. Because of his Cro-Magnon appearance, Durc is thought to be deformed by the Clan. According to Clan law, a child must live seven days before being named and accepted in the Clan, and Ayla was originally going to attempt to force his acceptance by running away until seven days had passed. However, Ayla realized the error of her thinking before it was too late and returned to the Clan after 6 days and begged Brun to accept her son. Durc had heavy brows like the Clan, but a thin neck and pronounced chin like Ayla, and he can speak in both Clan signs and verbal speech. Shortly after Iza's death, Ayla lost her mother's milk and Durc was nursed by the other nursing mothers of the Clan. As a result, Durc used the 'mother' sign for every woman of the Clan, and reserved the spoken word 'Mama' for Ayla. When Broud ordered Ayla cursed with death and forced her to leave, Ayla left Durc in the care of her sister Uba and under the old clan leader Brun's protection. Before he died, Creb came to believe that Durc is Ayla's gift to the Clan, to ensure that some vestiges of the Clan will survive as they die out.

Jonayla

Ayla's daughter, fathered by Jondalar.