Jean M. Auel, née Jean Marie Untinen is an American writer. She is best known for her Earths Children books, a series of historical fiction novels set in prehistoric Europe that explores interactions of Cro-Magnon people with Neanderthals. Her books have sold 34 million copies world-wide in many translations.

Author Jean Marie Auel (surname pronounced like owl) is the second of five children of Neil Solomon Untinen, a housepainter, and Martha Wirtanen. She and her husband, Ray Bernard Auel, have five children and live in Portland, Oregon.

Auel has been a member of Mensa since 1964. She attended Portland State University and the University of Portland. While studying, she worked as a clerk (1965-1966), a circuit board designer (1966-1973), technical writer (1973-1974), and a credit manager at Tektronix (1974-1976). At one time, she shared a secretary with author Ursula K. Le Guin.[citation needed] She earned an MBA in 1976 and has received honorary degrees from the University of Maine and Mount Vernon College for Women.

In 1977, Auel began extensive library research of the Ice Age for her first book. She joined a survival class to learn how to construct an ice cave, and learned primitive methods of making fire, tanning leather, and knapping stone from aboriginal skills expert Jim Riggs. Auel describes Riggs as the kind of person you could put into one end of a wilderness naked, and hed come out the other end fed, clothed, and sheltered. Clan of the Cave Bear was nominated for numerous literary awards, including an American Booksellers Association nomination for best first novel.


After the success of the first book, Auel was able to travel to prehistoric sites and to meet many of the experts with whom she had been corresponding. Her research has taken her across Europe from France to Ukraine, including most of what Marija Gimbutas called Old Europe. She has developed a close friendship with Dr. Jean Clottes of France who was responsibl