Have you ever heard of it? I have read it about 20 years ago and like it but read it more for the romance than the history and in Dutch.
As the JeanMAuel site says:
The story of Ayla begins when, as a 5-year-old orphan, she is adopted by the Clan, a group of Neanderthals. Initially she inspires surprise, then wariness and finally acceptance by the Clan. She is cared for by its medicine woman, Iza, and its wise holy man, Creb. But she makes an implacable enemy of the group's future leader, Broud. He will do all he can to destroy her - but Ayla is a survivor.Reading it was a totally different experience 20 years later, because of a more experienced view on the world in general I suppose and maybe also because there is nothing better than reading a book in its own language.
It is fascinating to read how people in that day and age were supposed to have lived. But it taught me something very deep really... and of course, unsurprisingly, about food!
Ages and ages ago when 'we' lived in caves there was no Tesco with abundance of anything processed. Not that I think those cave people were necessarily healthier than we are, I think the average age of death must have been around 30 :) (am guessing here though)
Anyway what I noticed in the description of how the clan lived was that grains, fruit and vegetables were always readily available, every now and then someone would kill a little animal like a rabbit (and never meat eaters) and once or twice a year the men would go on a hunt to kill 1 animal which would then tie a clan over for an entire winter by drying the meat and putting it in the ground.
Makes you realise WHY big amounts of red meat every day is not something our bodies are necessarily built for, the clan only ate little bits of dried meat which they then also chewed on for ages, no way you can eat a big amount of it. Also I understand better the constant call for fruit and vegetables. It has made me even more convinced that the way forward for me is to stay as low in the foodchain as possible.
Like.. if you think through how many processes that salmon and broccoli (quite tasteless too) quiche I had yesterday had to go through before being taken out of our freezer it is scary really. How many hands that must have gone through (which is even more scary better not think about that too much!)
So.. once we have eaten the fridge empty of rubbish (coz we can't waste it, there ARE limits ;)) I vow to only make my own quiche :-)
Reading the next book of the 'Earth Children' now though, Valley of the horses, so glad I live now and have a nice filled up Tesco available!
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