BBC Big Read 2021 discussion

This chapter finds the Clan journeying and looking for a new cave home. Their walking formation, arranged by safety tactics and hierarch is interesting. The author beings to describe the Neanderthals, and in page 11: "She had a large beaky nose, a prognathous jaw jutting out like a muzzle, and no chin." With my understanding of anatomy, I'm not sure what the author's understanding is. The chin is the end of the mandible bones, and Neanderthals had large mandibles. The jaw consists of both the mandible which is movable and the maxilla which is the fixed upper jaw. A prominent mandible would give the man a large chin. I feel like she read some anatomic descriptions of these creatures without really understanding. I don't see anything in the fossil record that would indicate they were bow legged, but they did have shorter limbs.

Truly, seeing the child Homo sapiens sapiens the Home sapiens neanderthalensis (many don't believe a separate species as they interbred) would have appeared misshapen and ugly. Only our vanity would say we were somehow more beautiful to them.

I appreciate on page 15 that the author drew on research that debunks the idea that the hunters primarily fed the Clan. As primitive hunter gatherer cultures have been examined, it is found that while meat is essential and the preferred food (men talk of the ideal food being meat with fan running down their chins), it was the foraging gatherer who created the food stability. Often when men returned from an unsuccessful hunt of many days, while fasting, there was food on the table, gathered by children and women, and the tribe survived. "the women often contributed the greater share, and their sources were more reliable."
This gave me an interesting and new view of what it must have been like to be a hunter-gatherer. In modern life of the agricultural age, we not only feel in control of nature, but the incredible stress of "needing" to be in control for our survival. We have the power to corral animals and plant fields. The agricultural age man can turn the earth, literally to our design. But we really are not in control and we know it. A storm, a drought, lack of rain, too much rain, an early frost - all can bring crop failure and starvation. With power comes great worry. Not so for the gatherer of the Clan. The healthy ecosystem of the planet just provides food. Just as God provides for the birds and they do not go hungry, God provides through nature for the gatherer. The birds have a ready supply of insects and seeds. The gorilla has more leaves than he can eat. Walking through the forest, the herbs, roots, grubs, fruits, nuts, seeds, and fish are readily abundant. You just reach out your hand and eat. So much so, that humans of survived the ages and reached the modern times. What a peace to just let nature provide for you. What a different perspective contrasted to that of modern man.

Moving on to page 21: "Iza held the girl close as she walked back with her, making soothing murmurs that sounded like soft growls." I'm reminded of an associates recent description of the gorillas when he went on a modern safari for photography. They were very close the massive, and potentially dangerous gorillas. The guides carefully instructed them that if they gorillas were making soft growls and murmurs, they were content and happy. Growls can be good!

A lot of people highlighted on page 29. Interesting that Neanderthals had larger cranial cavities and brains than us. More room for the type of brain that retains memories and processes visual information. Like in the elephant, a hunter gatherer lifestyle benefits from a large memory bank: where are the best food sources, what dangerous areas to avoid, where are the best watering holes. We've learned that memories from 10 or more years ago guide the elephants to their watering holes.

In the modern era, we are leaning more and more on the crutch of the peripheral brain. That iPhone you have in your pocket that has your shopping list and the phone numbers of your friends is a peripheral brain, so to speak. It's doing the memory storage for you. It has a GPS function, so while humans have relied on excellent spatial memory for ages, you can still use it to find your way around town. You have given up valuable memory skills to that device. Scientists say our brains may shrink as a result, but become faster at the calculations we need in modern life.

Of course the author's ideas telepathy is pure conjecture, but the idea of racial or genetic memory is sound. We just don't think about it applying to us much. All animals have something we call "instinct," where they just know what to do: how to crack a seed, where to find pollen, how to dig a den, where to live in winter, how to store up food for hibernation. Some of this is learned from parents, but much of it is just genetic memory. When we look at our children, any parent can observe how personality traits are not entirely learned, but in many ways present since someone was a baby. Something they used to call temperament.

Happy Reading.

I started to have a very peculiar problem with this book: to keep reminding me that it's just a novel with no historical accuracy.

The way the author describes the clan, their social structure, and how they live was so vivid, so clear that it is hard not to take it as historically accurate.

I have a very urban background, to say the least, so when the author started to talk about prehistoric waterproof bags, I got full "what?"

Suppose history classes were this entertaining. At least I know that I can use animal bladders to make such bags now. The other way to make such bags that require cutting off an animal head and debone it from that opening to avoid damaging must require skilful hands.

The mix of their food source, relying mostly on what the women could collect, complemented the hunt's outcomes, was an interesting surprise.

The clan leadership is lead by a family. The leader, the medicine woman and the magician are all siblings. Is this part of how other clans would also be run, like a dynasty, or it was just a coincidence in this case?

Talking about the holy man brought some perspective about their lifespan because he was the oldest and wisest, and he was 30 years old.

Another highlight for me was Grod being the flame bearer, first because of practical aspects. It's easier to keep a fire than to start a new one, and the second was something transcendent: you must carry the fire from the old cave to the new cave.

That fire was the same fire that has been with the clan across many caves from immemorial times. How to not appreciate such concern about keeping connected to your lineage? We cannot find precise if any evidence remotely backs this, probably not at all. However, it is a powerful message that should still resonate in our minds, even more on our days. We pay little to no value to this wonderful depository of knowledge that we inherited from our ancestors.

From now on, you'll see the expression "tradition says" happening a lot.

Again I am baffled by the simple everyday things they did, like how they used to boil water to make tea by putting rocks into the firepit and then getting them hot into the water to heat it. The other cooking technics mentioned were equally amazing. I think by now you get my struggle to keep in mind that this is just a romance :D

Their spirituality was also interesting, and being honest, when you look at some of the "natural religions" worldwide, there is still a lot of that around. My favourite quote from that part is about how illnesses form in the body: "illnesses and accidents are manifestations of the war of the spirits in the body".

To close my notes on this chapter, here we see another takeout to take seriously to ourselves, extrapolating the story, because we should see ourselves oscillating between caveman and sapiens on our attitudes. It's not a "telepathic minds connection", but we carry knowledge in our genes for sure.

If I had to pick one single line from chapter 2, it must be that. One can play around with this phrase and get so much out of it because we had our feet in the cave as well.

Can remember the past but can't imagine a future other than a repetition of the past.

Chapter 1 was good, but chapter 2 got me hooked.