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Book: The Plains of Passage
Quotes of Book: The Plains of Passage

Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
The motion of a glacier was outward in all directions from its origin, and the speed of its motion depended on the slope of its surface, not on the slope of the ground underneath. If the surface slope was great, the water within the glacier flowed downhill faster through the chinks in the ice and spread out the ice as it refroze. They grew faster when they were young, near large oceans or seas, or in mountains where the high peaks assured heavy snowfall. They slowed down after they spread out, their broad surface reflecting the sunlight away and the air above the center turning colder and drier with less snow.
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Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
much adapt to the environment as alter the environment
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Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
At a bend in the river, an upland stream fell into the Middle Mother, which itself came from higher ground. The marrow-chilling air had caught and stilled the waters in the act of falling, and the strong dry winds had sculpted them into strange and grotesque shapes. Caricatures of living creatures captured by frost, poised to begin a headlong flight down the course of the long river, seemed to be waiting impatiently, as if knowing the turning of the season, and their release, was not far off.
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Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
The figure, made by the woman standing in front of him, had not been manufactured by modifying-carving or shaping or polishing-a material that occurred naturally. It was made of ceramic, fired clay, and it was the first material ever created by human hand and human intelligence. The heating chamber was not a cooking oven, it was a kiln. And the first kiln ever devised was not invented for the purpose of making useful waterproof containers. Long before pottery, small ceramic sculptures were fired into impermeable hardness. The figures they had seen on the shelves resembled animals and humans, but the images of women-no men were made, only women-and other living creatures were not considered actual portrayals. They were symbols, metaphors, meant to represent more than they showed, to suggest an analogy, a spiritual similarity. They were art; art came before utility.
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Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
Ayla got up and went outside the tent. A mist hovered close to the ground and the air felt cold and damp on her bare skin. She could hear the roar of the waterfall in the distance, but the vapor thickened into a dense fog near the back end of the lake, a long narrow body of greenish water, so cloudy it was nearly opaque. No fish lived in such a place, she was sure, just as no vegetation grew along the edge; it was too new for life, too raw. There was only water and stone, and a quality of time before time, of ancient beginnings before life began. Ayla shivered and felt a stark taste of Her terrible loneliness before the Great Mother Earth gave birth to all living things.
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Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
To the north of them the great continental glacier had dipped southward, as though straining to encompass the beautiful icy mountains within its overwhelming frozen embrace. They were in the most frigid land on earth, between the glistening mountain tors and the immense northern ice, and it was the depths of winter. The air itself was sucked dry by the moisture-stealing glaciers greedily usurping every drop to increase their bloated, bedrock-crushing mass, building up reserves to withstand the onslaught of summer heat. The battle between glacial cold and melting warmth for control of the Great Mother Earth was almost at a standstill, but the tide was turning; the glacier was gaining. It would make one more advance, and reach its farthest southward point, before it was beaten back to polar lands. But even there, it would only bide its time.
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Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
He didn't know he had only the shell of the woman he loved. It didn't matter. The shell was enough.
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Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
Roe Deer, when your spirit returns to the Great Earth Mother, thank Her for giving us one of your kind, that we may eat," Jondalar said quietly.
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Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
Though the ones who had come before them had slowly developed and improved various implements and tools, the people like Jondalar and Ayla were the first to imagine and innovate to such an extravagant degree. Their brains could make abstractions easily. They were capable of conceiving of an idea and planning how to implement it. Beginning with simple objects that utilized advanced principles that were intuitively understood, they drew conclusions and applied them in other circumstances. They did more than invent usable tools, they invented science. And from the same wellspring of creativity, utilizing that same power to abstract, they were the first people to see the world around them in symbolic form, to extract its essence and reproduce it; they originated art.
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Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
But why should they blame her? They should blame the men who won't let her alone,
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Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
When all was over, they buried the dead ancestor under piles of dirt, grass, leaves, or snow. Mammoths were even known to bury other dead animals, including humans.
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Jean M. Auel _ The Plains of Passage
In a world so empty of human life, there was comfort in the thought that an invisible realm of spirits was aware of their existence, cared about their actions, and perhaps directed their steps. Even a stern or inimical spirit who cared enough to demand certain actions of appeasement was better than the heartless disregard of a harsh and indifferent world, in which their lives were entirely in their own hands, with no one else to turn to in time of need, not even in their thoughts.
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