The Clan of the Cave Bear

The Neanderthal “Clan” in the story reveres a pantheon of invisible animal spirits, chief among them the cave bear spirit that gives the Clan its name. Every child receives a personal totem at their naming ceremony. The totems are believed to guide and protect the individual, and their presence recurs in rituals and everyday clan life. For example, clan hunters carry carved totem marks on their bodies, as males have their totem symbol scarred into their flesh at manhood. The cave bear itself is a sacred symbol of the Clan’s collective identity. The Clan maintains a reverence for the cave bear as a symbol of strength and survival. At the Great Clan Gathering, the central ritual involves symbolically sacrificing a cave bear.

Women each receive a totem as well, but they tend to be weaker animals that could be easily defeated in the eyes of the Clan, something necessary in their cosmological view for the conception of children. When Ayla is accepted into the clan, she, too, receives a totem. However, Creb interprets it to be the cave lion, a strong and masculine spirit that is unheard of for a girl to have. The push and pull of spirituality and the interpretation of the will of the totems is agonized over and politicized throughout the novel.