The Mammoth Hunters
by Jean M. Auel

Unabridged - MP3

The third book in the series, The Mammoth Hunters was released in Fall 1985. It details Ayla's personal growth as she learns to cope with a society of widely-disparate individuals and their unpredictable behaviors, mysterious motivations, and habits. Traveling about on a pre-winter holiday and exploring nearby regions on horseback, Ayla and Jondalar meet and end up making a prolonged visit with a tribe known as The Lion camp of the Mamutoi, (Mamutoi meaning: "Mammoth Hunters of the Great Earth Mother 'Mut'"), who live relatively near Ayla's valley in the present-day Ukraine.

The Mamutoi are Ms. Auel's nod to the tool culture identified as the Eastern Aurignacian. After an initial "wow" period, in which the people come to know Ayla, her horses, and Jondalar, Ayla's inexperience with other human beings and her consequent unfamiliarity with social situations results in her acceptance of an invitation to be adopted into the Lion Camp—despite Jondalar's love for her and his intention to take her to his own people, the Zelandonii, in the pleasant climate of southwestern France. Ayla's psychic scars and loss of her child figures large in her reasoning, as for a time she hopes to return to her Clan's peninsula and bring Durc back to live with her.

At the same time, Jondalar is attempting not to hold on too tight, to give Ayla room to make her own decisions, but he is driven into outbursts born of over-concern. He therefore offers an opening to the tribe's resident artist and carver, an engaging half-black Mamutoi who is charming and handsome. The Mamutoi do adopt Ayla, but her love for Jondalar is threatened by her brief affair with Ranec, after a misunderstanding leads her to believe that Jondalar is no longer interested in her.

Ayla's history with the Clan, ability to train animals, and talent for invention result in many surprises for her new community. Not least among them is her rescue of a lone wolf cub, whose mother she had killed without knowing that she was not a member of a pack. The Lion Camp observes the training of the pup, as for the first time, Ayla purposefully determines how to domesticate an animal, abandoning the haphazard, unintentional training she'd given Baby and Whinney, the horse. Though she is alienated from Jondalar, they are able to discuss the training of the stallion Racer, Whinney's colt.

Ayla's growth in her ability to understand social interactions and motives burgeons as her earlier experience with the Clan's Great Meeting intersects with her experiences at the Mamutoi summer meeting. She is able to map old experiences and graft them onto new ones. Ultimately, she realizes that she and Jondalar have never had a clear discussion of his interests and preferences and of whether or not he cares for her as she cares for him. She is certain that she prefers Jondalar to Ranec and that she is looking forward to her mating with the latter as she would to a funeral for a much beloved child—that is, not at all.

The Mammoth Hunters ends with Jondalar, Ayla, the wolf, and their two horses beginning the long journey south to the mouths of the Danube, where the story segues into the beginning of the travel tale told in "The Plains of Passage".