Jean M. Auel - The Shelters of Stone

This eBook version of THE SHELTERS OF STONE contains bonus content not found in the printed version.

A Sneak Preview from
Read an exciting preview from Jean M. Auels The Land of Painted Caves, on sale in hardcover in Spring 2011.

Read excerpts from each of the novels in the Earths Children series.

In this special Q&A, Jean M. Auel discusses her bestselling Earths Children series.

THE SHELTERS OF STONE
A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY
Crown hardcover edition published June 2002

Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York

EARTHS CHILDREN is a trademark of Jean M. Auel

All rights reserved
Copyright 2002 by Jean M. Auel
Map and illustrations copyright by Radica Prato
Inset map copyright Palacios after Auel

Excerpt from The Land of Painted Caves copyright 2010 by Jean M. Auel.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002000995
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
For information address: Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, NY

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-307-76764-6

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book The Land of Painted Caves. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

v3.1_r2

For KENDALL,
who knows more about whats to come than almost anyone
except his mother,

and for CHRISTY,
the mother of his boys,

and for FORREST, SKYLAR, and SLADE,
three of the best,
with love

BY THE AUTHOR OF

The Clan of the Cave Bear
The Valley of Horses
The Mammoth Hunters
The Plains of Passage

Hailed as the publishing event of the decade
THE SHELTERS OF STONE is the fifth in the bestselling Earths Children series, following:

THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR
Our nomination for the years great escape.

Playboy

Imaginative, exciting.

The New York Times Book Review

THE VALLEY OF HORSES
A powerful story Auel is a highly imaginative writer. She humanizes prehistory and gives it immediacy and clarity.

The New York Times Book Review

Auel may be creating one of the most believable characters in English fictionone to rank with Sherlock Holmes, Scarlett OHara, and a handful of others.

UPI

THE MAMMOTH HUNTERS
A compelling, pulse-quickening tale of adventure, love, and survival during a period of human history that has seldom been drawn upon by other fiction writers.

Chicago Tribune Book World

Storytelling in the grand tradition. From the violent panorama of spring on the steppes to musicians jamming on a mammoth-bone marimba, Auels books are a stunning example of world building.

Vogue

THE PLAINS OF PASSAGE
Pure entertainment at its sublime, wholly exhilarating best.

Los Angeles Times

Thrilling This magical book is rich in details of all kinds but it is the depth of the characters emotional lives that gives the novel such a stranglehold.

Cosmopolitan

Publishers Weekly

Novels by Jean M. Auel

THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR
THE VALLEY OF HORSES
THE MAMMOTH HUNTERS
THE PLAINS OF PASSAGE
THE SHELTERS OF STONE

And the latest novel in the Earths Children series

THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES

I am more grateful than I can say for the assistance of many people who have helped me to learn about the ancient world of the people who lived when glaciers advanced far south of todays margins and covered a quarter of the earths surface. However, there are some details which I have chosen to use, particularly with regard to certain theories and the timing of certain sites and events, which may not be accepted by the majority of the professional community at this time. Some may be oversights but others were chosen deliberately, usually because it felt more accurate to this subjective novelist who must write about people with an understanding of human nature and logical motivation for their actions.

Most especially, I want to thank Dr. Jean-Philippe Rigaud, whom I met on my first research trip to Europe at his archeological excavation named Flageolet in southwest France, once a hunting camp on a hillside that overlooked a broad grassy plain and the migrating Ice Age animals it supported. Though I was just an unknown American novelist, he took the time to explain some of the discoveries of that site, and he helped to arrange a visit to Lascaux Cave. I was brought to tears when I saw that sanctuary of prehistoric splendor painted by those early modern humans of Upper Paleolithic Europe, the Cro Magnonswork that can still stand against the finest of today.

Later, when we met again at La Micoque, a very early Neanderthal site, I began to get more of a sense of the unique time at the beginning of our prehistory when the first anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe and encountered the Neanderthals who had been living there since long before the last Ice Age. Because I wanted to understand the process that is used to learn about our ancient ancestors, my husband and I worked for a short time at Dr. Rigauds more recent excavation, Grotte Seize. He also gave me many insights into the rich and expansive living site, which today is named Laugerie Haute, but that I have called the Ninth Cave of the Zelandomi.

Dr. Rigaud has been of help throughout the series, but I appreciate his assistance with this book in particular. Before I started writing The Shelters of Stone, I took all the information I had gathered about the region and the way it was then and wrote the entire background setting in terms of the story, giving the sites my own names and describing the landscape so that when I needed the information it was easily available in my own words. I have asked many scientists and other specialists uncountable questions, but I never asked anyone to check my work before it was published. I have always taken full responsibility for the choices I made in selecting the details that were used in my books, for the way I decided to use them, and the imagination I added to themand I still do. But because the setting for this novel is so well known, not only to archeologists and other professionals, but to the many people who have visited the region, I needed to be sure that my background details were as accurate as I could make them, so I did something I had never done before. I asked Dr. Rigaud, who knows the region and understands the archeology, to check over those many, many pages of background material for obvious errors. I didnt fully realize what a huge job I had asked of him, and I thank him profoundly for his time and efforts. He paid me the compliment of saying that the information was reasonably accurate, but he also told me some things I didnt know or hadnt understood, which I was able to correct and incorporate. Any mistakes remaining are entirely mine.