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Ayla was played by ] in the 1986 movie '']''. Ayla was played by ] in the 1986 movie '']''.


The book doesnot specify how one pronounces the name ''Ayla.'' Two obvious options suggest themselves:
# ''AY-la,'' rhyming with ''Layla'' in the ] song;
#''EYE-la''

There is no definitive statement word from Auel. She ''has'' stated that her name is pronounced ''owl,'' but has not done the same service for her most famous character. The movio has apparently chosen the first option. People have named their children ''Ayla,'' and most of them pronounce the name in the first way. Since Auel has not complained, this may be the right way.
==Background== ==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 in the river beside the campsite when the earthquake starts and watches in horror as this happens. Wandering aimlessly, alone, frightened, hungry and helpless, Ayla eventually crosses paths with 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 4 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. 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 in the river beside the campsite when the earthquake starts and watches in horror as this happens. Wandering aimlessly, alone, frightened, hungry and helpless, Ayla eventually crosses paths with 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 4 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.

Revision as of 01:01, 27 November 2007

Ayla is the main character of Jean Auel's Earth's Children novels. She is described as tall, with blonde hair, gray-blue eyes, a well-toned body, and a strangely accented voice—though it actually is just a speech mannerism. 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. Ayla was played by Daryl Hannah in the 1986 movie The Clan of the Cave Bear.

The book doesnot specify how one pronounces the name Ayla. Two obvious options suggest themselves:

  1. AY-la, rhyming with Layla in the Eric Clapton song;
  2. EYE-la

There is no definitive statement word from Auel. She has stated that her name is pronounced owl, but has not done the same service for her most famous character. The movio has apparently chosen the first option. People have named their children Ayla, and most of them pronounce the name in the first way. Since Auel has not complained, this may be the right way.

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 in the river beside the campsite when the earthquake starts and watches in horror as this happens. Wandering aimlessly, alone, frightened, hungry and helpless, Ayla eventually crosses paths with 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 4 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.

She is found by a group (the "Clan") of Neandertals and adopted by Iza, the Clan's medicine-woman or healer. Iza and Creb, the "Mog-ur" (a Shaman-like character) estimate that she is approximately five years old at this time. (In the second paragraph of the first chapter of Clan of the Cave Bear, Auel states that Ayla is five.)

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.

Ayla was the goddess of moon in ancient Canaanites kingdom in Jerusalem.

Powers

Throughout the series, there have been references to Ayla having great spiritual and intellectual powers.

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, 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 does not have the Clan's ability to access ancestral memories, Iza succeeds in training her as a medicine healer, and in her childhood and young adulthood she invents a couple of things the Clan has never heard of, and creates innovations to existing tools and their uses. 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. She is trapped in a 'void', from which Creb is able to save 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 sees a strange cave with a rock above it that appeared to be frozen in mid-fall. She attempts to return to herself and escape her visions, but sees a glimpse of the future: "Boxlike structures... long ribbons of stone... strange animals crawled at great speeds; huge birds that flew without flapping their wings." (It appears that Auel intends to describe Ayla seeing a glimpse of our era, and beyond even, almost to the next stage of human evolution). Creb 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... that the Clan will die out. Ayla has a long standing problem with the Son of the Leader's mate, Broud. He hates Ayla and feels that she is always getting the attention that he deserves. He uses everything in his power to try to control Ayla, including ordering her around, beating her, raping her (thereby impregnating her at the tender age of 11). He even causes his mother's mate to question whether Broud is fit to be leader. Eventually when he becomes leader, Broud puts a death curse on Ayla and forces her to leave the Clan, and leave behind her son Durc, forever.

Valley of Horses

While alone in her valley, Ayla has a psychic link with Jondalar long before she meets him. She experiences his emotions in her dreams, and has a disturbing psychic day during which she discovers how to draw a spark from flint and iron pyrite. After Jondalar comes to live with her she experiences another psychic vision. This time, it is of her own mother speaking to her, and of an earthquake, which betoken tragedy and upheaval to Ayla. After this dream, Ayla speaks the Zelandonii language (which Jondalar's been teaching her) fluently, with only a trace of a Clan accent, whereas the day before she had difficulty putting together coherent sentences. This may be a sign of extreme linguistic adaptability, rather than a spiritual gift.

The Mammoth Hunters

Among the Mamutoi, Ayla begins to learn about her powers from Mamut. She experiences Searching and Calling rituals, which are conducted before hunts in attempts to ensure success. She dreams that she has two sons, Durc and an unknown son who does not appear to have 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. 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. Mamut indicates to Jondalar, Ranec, and Vincavec, another Mamutoi shaman determined to mate Ayla, that Ayla has some great purpose, that Mut (the Earth Mother) has a plan for her. Ayla also proves that she has the ability to ward off the mesmerizing talents of Vincavec, and to resist the spiritual powers 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 controlling the horses (Whinney and Racer), Baby, and Wolf are considered a sign of her supernatural gifts.

Plains of Passage

On the journey back to the Zelandonii territory, 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 does not, but they do not stay in one place long enough to convince anyone otherwise. Ayla's prophetic dreams once again center on the cave with the falling rock, towards which Creb is leading her, though Ayla does not know where it is or why it is so important.

Shelters of Stone

Upon arriving at the Ninth Cave, Ayla realizes that the cave she saw in her original visions and in her subsequent dreams is the Ninth Cave, Jondalar's home. Her dreams and waking psychic visions become more frequent and more powerful, and Zelandoni can sense them. At the end of the fifth book, though Ayla has rejected Zelandoni's previous offers to train as a priestess (since she merely wishes to live a normal life) Zelandoni finally convinces Ayla to join Those Who Serve the Mother.

Invention and skills

  • Atlatl: Works with her partner Jondalar to develop a spear thrower
  • 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, Ayla has the ability to intuitively reason and recognize the causes of illnesses and treat them appropriately.
  • Domestication: out of loneliness in her valley and motherly obligation the horses Whinney and her foal Racer, the Cave Lion Baby, and the wolf Wolf have been domesticated by raising them while young.
  • Horse Equipment: after living with Whinney various equipment has been invented for her to help such as drag poles, carrying packs, and notably the travois.
  • Percussion Fire Starting: after a mistake in flint making Ayla recognizes that sparks from striking a 'firestone' of iron pyrite with a piece of flint can start a fire
  • Sewing Needle: after frustration of Mamutoi sewing technique Ayla was able to conceive the idea of a sharp bone with a hole, which she calls a "thread-puller", to draw sinew through leather instead of just punching a hole then pushing the thread in with another tool.
  • Bra: Once the Clan returns from the Clan Gathering, Ayla takes up hunting with her sling again. However, as she has not done so for some time, she finds that "heavy breasts bobbing at every step annoyed her when she ran or jumped," In response to this (showing her skill at solving problems with logic), "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))
  • Surgical Stitches: When Ayla first encounters Jondalar in The Valley of Horses, 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. It is only when noting how his clothing (in the typical style of his people) is formed of panels of cloth tied together with thongs that she 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 tieing them off. Much later on (in The Shelters of Stone), Wolf is mauled almost to death by another wild wolf, and Ayla this time 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. Originally thought to be deformed by the Clan, Ayla attempted to force his acceptance by running away until seven days had passed, the official length of time a child must live to be named and accepted by the Clan. Durc had heavy brows like the Clan, but a thin neck and pronounced chin like Ayla, which allowed him to 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 word 'Mama' for Ayla. When Broud cursed Ayla with death and forced her to leave, Ayla left Durc in Uba's care and under 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. Ayla was fearful that, despite believing that her daughter would have no Clan features because she was the daughter of Jondalar's 'essence', Jonayla would still be deformed. Jonayla was conceived when Jondalar and Ayla had life-affirming sex upon successfully crossing the last glacier before Zelandonii territory in the Plains of Temptation.

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