A NOVEL SET IN PREHISTORY
The Oak People
Introduction and Index of Chapters
Home, for the Oak People, is a cave on the slopes of the Antelope Nose mountain. From their watching place near the cave entrance, they scan the plain below for wild game and look out to the great Salt Water in the distance. They survive by hunting and foraging for edible plants, but their way of life is under threat. The antelope and deer do not come in such numbers as they once did and hunger beckons.
The Oak People gather with the Desert People on the plain at full Moon. At the feast, Ansa, a young woman from the desert, is to be joined by Bidari. When the gathering is over, Ansa will not return with her people to the desert but will instead come to live in the cave of the Oak People, as the mate of Bidari. Will she be accepted by her new family, once they discover the fearful secret she carries? And who is the wild boy she discovers, living alone on the Antelope Nose? Despite everything that conspires against her, it seems that Ansa is destined to play an important role in the future of the Oak People. A future that is threatened not only by the ever-present vagaries of the natural world but by new, sinister dangers in human form.
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Index of Chapters
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Setting the Scene
Ancient Egyptian sailors, sailing close to modern-day Israel’s Mediterranean coast, became familiar with the shape of the Carmel mountain range as it appeared to them from the sea, and gave it the name of the Antelope’s Nose or the Gazelle’s Nose. There are a number of caves on the Carmel and, on its western slopes, currently, some 3km from the sea, lies the entrance to Kebara cave.
During the stone age, the cave is known to have been occupied at different times by Neanderthals and by early humans of our own lineage. There is evidence that these different branches of humanity coincided along this coast in prehistory, hunting wild deer and gazelles and foraging for plant foods. Recent research indicates that Neanderthals and homo sapiens people did interact more than was once thought and even interbred, meaning that modern-day people from European or Asian backgrounds have 1–2% Neanderthal DNA.
Mollusc shells found in the Carmel caves indicate that the cave inhabitants probably travelled to the seashore from time to time, perhaps for food, as the Oak People do in the novel.
The slopes of the Antelope Nose are today green all year round, covered with pines, carob, almond, and terebinth trees, as well as groves of Palestinian oaks (quercus calliprinos). Plant remains found in Kebara cave suggest that the inhabitants were gathering and processing acorns, pistachios, wild legumes, and vetches as well as fruit, at least 40,000 years ago. Animal bones found revealed that they ate tortoises and hunted larger animals for food: gazelles (small antelope), deer of various kinds, and occasionally wild boar.
Early modern humans are thought to have lived in small bands of, perhaps, twenty-five people, probably based on one or two extended families. They would have links with other groups from whom sexual partners could be found, as their young matured. Little is known for certain about the culture of hunter-gatherer bands but music and art seem to have played a part in their lives. Bone or ivory flutes have been found, dating from the Paleolithic period. Paintings and engravings can still be seen in caves, produced by their prehistoric occupants.
Story-telling, too, is probably as old as the earliest forms of human society. Like the San Bushmen story of the mantis and his son, which I have woven into The Oak People, early stories and myths probably centered on the animals and the natural environment which was so crucial to human survival and of which they felt themselves to be a part.
Just how stone-age people related together is clearly impossible to know. However, it is an interesting feature of the small hunter-gatherer groups that still survive in isolated parts of Africa, Asia, and South America that social relations are egalitarian and based on cooperation. The particular skills of each group member are recognized and valued. Perhaps because small groups made up of interdependent individuals cannot afford violence and feuding, considerable effort is expended to make sure that decisions are consensual and no one individual tries to become dominant. Perhaps the hierarchical style of leadership with which we are most familiar only emerged when groups become larger, cooperation became less feasible and consensus became more difficult to maintain.
What does seem likely is that early humans felt affection and pity for each other, much as we do. There is evidence of individuals living for years after sustaining injuries that would have rendered them unable to hunt or forage for food, and therefore a burden to the group. The only explanation for their survival is that other group members fed and cared for them.
The religious or spiritual practices of early modern humans must remain a matter of conjecture. The Oak People in the novel reverence Balqa (the Moon) and conceive of him as male. Many cultures have associated the Moon with femininity but not all. The Phrygian culture of Western Asia Minor has a male lunar god called Mên, who is associated with fertility, healing, and punishment.
Evidence has been found of early modern humans burying their dead with artifacts including flints and shells and pieces of ochre as early as 92,000 years ago, which might suggest a belief in an afterlife.
The ethnic religions of many peoples around the world include the tradition of seers or shamans, individuals who act as messengers between the human and the spirit world. They are those who seem able to travel to other worlds or dimensions and bring back messages or healing for the group. Itzal, the shaman of the Painted People in the novel, is one such individual, though in his case the spiritual knowledge he claims access to is corrupted by the all too human traits of dominance and violence.
Ansa, the main protagonist of the novel, enters a different kind of transcendental state when she comes close to death in childbirth and has what is commonly called a near-death experience. Near-death experiences have been reported throughout recorded history but as medical techniques become more effective in prolonging life for those who experience heart attacks, for example, many more near-death experiences are being reported, across cultures, and studied. Often the divine figures who appear will be interpreted through the lens of the religious or social context of the individual concerned. But there are some features of the experience that seem to crop up regularly and cross-culturally: the famous tunnel with light at its end, the sensation of looking down from above on your own body, the apprehension of knowledge and wisdom that is beyond normal human capability. Perhaps the most striking feature of many profound near-death experiences is the long-lasting change it brings about in the experiencer and the way that death is never again feared.
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Thank you for your interest.
