Very scarce book in a good condition - 233 pg. >>> Hunt, trek, and feast among Neanderthals in this stunning vision of prehistory on the cusp of a new age, from the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding. This was a different voice; not the voice of the people. It was the voice of other. When spring comes, the people leave their winter cave, foraging for honey and shoots, bulbs and grubs, the hot richness of a deer's brain. They awaken the fire to heat their naked bodies, lay down their thorn bushes, and share pictures in their minds. But strange things are happening - inexplicable scents, sounds, and violence - and, suddenly, unimaginable creatures are half-glimpsed in the forest; an upright new people of bone-faces and deerskins. What the early people don't know is that their season is already over ... >>> This novel is an imaginative reconstruction of the life of a band of Neanderthals, consisting of an old man (Mal), an unnamed old woman, four adults (Ha, Nil, Lok and Fa), a little girl (Liku) and a baby, simply referred to as "the new one". It is written in such a way that the reader might assume the group to be modern Homo sapiens as they gesture and speak simply among themselves, and bury their dead with heartfelt, solemn rituals. They also have powerful sense impressions and feelings and appear sometimes to share thoughts in a near-telepathic way. As the novel progresses it becomes more and more apparent that they live very simply, using their considerable mental abilities to connect to one another without extensive vocabulary or the kinds of memories that create culture. They have wide knowledge of food sources, mostly roots and vegetables. They chase hyenas from a larger beast's kill and eat meat, but they don't kill mammals themselves. They have a spiritual system centering on a female principle of bringing forth, but their lives are lived so much in the present that the reader realizes they are very different from us, living in something like an eternal present, or at most a present broken and shaped by seasons.
