First-time readers of the Earth's Children series can read The Mammoth Hunters without too much confusion because Auel repeats important information and recreates scenes from the earlier books. The Mammoth Hunters opens with Ayla and Jondalar, the lover whose life she saved in The Valley of Horses, traveling and meeting a clan of people called the Mamutoi. The Valley of Horses primarily describes people separated from their community. Ayla lives alone in her valley after being pronounced "dead" by the clan, and Jondalar travels only with his brother. The Mammoth Hunters, however, is very much a book of community.

While The Clan of the Cave Bear is also a book of community, it depicts a closed community in which Ayla has few friends and in which her skills are unappreciated and feared. In The Mammoth Hunters she forms friendships with other women and is herself a...