Thread replies: 17
Thread images: 4
Thread images: 4
File: 84505-004-9AE8CD22[1].jpg (35KB, 550x363px) Image search:
[Google]
![84505-004-9AE8CD22[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/yz4QPIz.jpg "84505-004-9AE8CD22[1]")
35KB, 550x363px
I want to write a novel about humans in the Late Pleistocene, a time in which homo sapiens cohabited the earth with other homo species including neanderthals, posessed rudimentary knowledge of cooking and clothing, but were not yet at the agricultural/domestication stage. For artistic purposes, the people in my novel will have domesticated wolves, a basic grasp of fire and cooking, and a complex social structure with many things that are associated with modernity. The idea of this is firstly to make the case that humans in this era were more advanced than we give credit for. I'd therefore like them to have early religion and an early equivalent of money, art and culture. The second point of this is to summarise the human experience in a more natural setting - to strip back the complexities of postmodernity and look at what makes up a good and meaningful life, what the basic struggles are and how we conquer them, those kind of ideas.
I am just wondering on how to structure this kind of novel. Do I begin with a protagonist during his teenage years, experiencing a coming of age, and then detail the trials of adulthood up to old age/death? Do I focus on a group and write a kind of Middlemarch of the Stone Age? Or do I splice together different people's stories within that age? Any creative ideas you guys have to make things more interesting? I was thinking of representing the Gods/Spirits as though they actually exist, since the people of the time would know no differently, but maybe a hyper-realistic approach may be better...what do you guys think.
>>
File: 51ABT97467L._SX325_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg (38KB, 327x499px) Image search:
[Google]
38KB, 327x499px
>>8405021
This is a super realistic nigh non-fiction journey through the birth of civilization if you want to take the high road or....
>>
File: clan-of-the-cave-bear.jpg (30KB, 420x649px) Image search:
[Google]
30KB, 420x649px
>>8405027
A super trashy novel about white women getting fucked by neanderthals
>>
File: Mammoth_Hunters.jpg (326KB, 1087x1600px) Image search:
[Google]
326KB, 1087x1600px
>>8405033
A third option is also from the earths children period, which is basically a soap opera in an early modern human camp, along with graphic sex.
>>
>>
This post may get REFUTED IMMEDIATELY, but for the part where you mentioned the gods or spirits interacting with the early humans in some way, my first thought was of the prehistoric interlude in American gods, involving the mammoth deity Nunyuninni. Maybe have complex substance-taking by a shaman class correspond with divine characters manifesting their will through worn totems, symbols and talismans, and atmospheric events like a sudden squall of rain or breeze.
>>
>>8405021
I am doing the same thing, good to know I'm not the only one who sees the potential.
Mine is and will be a non-chronological series of vignettes showing many lifestyles of the era. It will be focused around the Upper Paleolithic around 40,000 BP when the Homo Sapiens and Neandertals coexisted. Which by the way, there are signs of wolf domestication back to 60,000 BP.
The only good fiction book I have found of this era is Dance of the Tigers, it takes place around the same time as the Aurignacian culture but not in the same location so it is somewhat unrelated.
>>
>>8405021
Don't turn it into shoddy fantasy by adding gods. We have got pretty enough of it already.
>>
>>8405329
This. Psilocybin mushrooms were common in prehistoric (and modern) Europe. Read "Food of the Gods" by Terence McKenna if you want some ideas to come up with a more interesting approach to Stone Age religion. Also look at old spaghetti westerns if you want ideas about showing the struggle to survive in the wilderness.
>>
>>8405630
spaghetti westerns and terence mckenna im sorry to say, would ruin a book
>>
Good god I've been waiting for a good prehistory novel since I read Wolf Brother as a kid.
Good luck OP
>>
Raymond Williams wrote a novel partially set in the stone age. Might want to look into that OP.
>>
Are there any books where a human man fucks a neanderthal chick?
>>
>>8405630
Terrence McKenna literally made shit up as he went he is in no way an authority on anything other than maybe modern psychedelic drug use
>>
>>8405021
>an early equivalent of money
This seems a little high-tech compared to your other ideas. Money, as in tokens denoting wealth or debt, is a very recent invention.
It also requires quite a cognitive leap to understand money: the abstract notion that "this represents something else," which I'm not sure proto-humans were ready for.
The Middlemarch idea sounds interesting. The tribe was the main social unit, after all. The story of a tribe's struggle for survival, and competition with other tribes, could be pretty compelling.
>>
>>8405021
Sounds like an interesting idea and I hope it works out for you. Have you read Seiobo There Below? I think structuring it similarly would be great. Have a wide range of subjects (all centering around your main theme) and devote some tens of pages to each; I think Seiobo gives around 80 to each little story it tells.
Ideally don't try to force them to intersect. You want a wide variety to show that civilisation was just as nuanced then as it is now, albeit in different ways. Have a story about a mother caring for her sick child, a shaman trying to get the rain to come, an animal stalking a tribe, the spirit of nature as it turns to spring etc. Any and all kinds of ideas that might be useful to showcase your central point.
Or not, doesn't matter, I'm just some guy on the internet. You do you man and I hope it works out.
Thread posts: 17
Thread images: 4
Thread images: 4