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Comment by riffraff | Hacker News Reader

> In the 1990s hair-dragging rape scenes in the Clan of the Cave Bear novels (20 million copies sold by 1990) caused the books to be banned from American public libraries.

I think I read this book in the 90s and yes, there's a rape (maybe more?) but it's an exception as the neanderthals are generally shown as relatively "civilized", not as brutes. : the raped sapiens was actually saved as a child by the neanderthals. And there's no hair dragging scene I remember.

But it's been so long ago, I may misremember.

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In the novel I believe they have some weird telepathic abilities due to size of their heads or ridges on them or something.

I remember it as portraying them using lots of subtle gesturing, sign language and slight head/posture changes to supplement sparse verbal communication, which made it seem like they knew what the other was thinking until you learned to decode it.

Did they actually have telepathic abilities in the book? Did I mentally erase that?

Yes, it's there. Th series is kind of all over the place.

God damn. I read a bunch of them as a teenager and went back as an adult to read one of the later installments and I was pretty weirded out by domestic scenes that I can only describe as Flintstones-esque. It surprised me because I remembered the series having a reputation for being well researched (albeit some of that research was outdated by the time Shelters of Stone came out).

Likewise the sex scenes struck me as very frequent and drawn out. Odd to pivot that series to caveman themed romance novels!

AFAIR the shaman of the tribes have some psy/spiritual abilities, which actually connect with the rape bit, during some shamanic meetup (?) the religious leaders ee into the future... and the neanderthal/sapiens offspring is the only one who has one. I liked that bit.

Never read the books but I do remember my grandmother who owned them and my mother both telling me kids couldn’t read them while giving me full access to dragon riders of pern

> But it's been so long ago, I may misremember.

Therefore a useless comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clan_of_the_Cave_Bear

> Ayla's main antagonist in the novel is Broud, son of the leader Brun, who feels that she takes credit and attention away from him. As the two mature, the hatred in Broud's heart festers. When they are young adults, he brutally rapes Ayla in a bid to demonstrate his total control over her; he continues to sexually assault her multiple times a day.

No hair dragging, but something worse.

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