It is important that the definitive argument in favor of his salvation comes from Creb, who is deformed himself. He states, "Brun, this is the man Ayla saw as whole [meaning himself]. This is the man who set her standard. This is the man she loves and compares with her son. Look at me, my brother! Did I deserve to live? Does Ayla's son deserve any less?" (Auel 343). Notably, the first female to recognize Creb as a valuable man is Ayla, despite the fact that Creb fails to fit into the rigorous mold the Clan sets for a functioning man. Ayla's son must, necessarily, be saved for the same reason: he may be able to contribute something of value to the clan outside of what the traditional gender roles demand. In this respect, Ayla's son is another aspect of change that the Clan has difficulty grappling with. The rigid nature of the community Auel creates in the Clan of the Cave Bear is confronted with drastic changes by the admittance of a modern human among their ranks. This novel is particularly...

The form the change takes, however, is centered upon gender roles and implies that these social organizations were not as prevalent in human communities from the same period. Auel suggests that the natural ordering of society was not as male dominated as her Neanderthal Clan was. "Long ago, before we were Clan, women helped men to hunt.... It was later that men began to hunt for a woman and her young, and even later before women with children stayed behind." (Auel 246). So, tale aims to debunk the notion that hunter-gatherer communities were necessarily organized along sexual grounds; and additionally, the very reason that the modern human outlived the Neanderthal may have been that they lived in clans in which roles were determined along the lines of need and ability, and not unyielding tradition.
Bibliography

Auel, Jean M. The Clan of the Cave Bear. New York: Crown Publishers, 1980.