The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth's Children #1)

by Jean M. Auel

In this primitive society, sex was as natural and unrestrained as sleeping or eating. Children learned, as they learned other skills and customs, by observing adults, and they played at intercourse as they mimicked other activities from a young age. Often a boy who reached puberty, but had not yet made his first kill and existed in a limbo between child and adult, penetrated a girl child even before she reached her menarche. Hymens were pierced young, though males were a little fearful if blood was spilled and quickly ignored the girl if it happened. Any man could take any woman whenever he wished to relieve himself, with the exception, through long tradition, of his female sibling. Usually, once a pair were mated, they remained more or less faithful out of courtesy for another man’s property, but it was counted worse for a man to restrain himself than to take the nearest woman. And a woman was not averse to making subtle, coy gestures that were understood as suggestive if a man appealed to her, inviting his advances. To the Clan, a new life was formed by the ubiquitous essences of the totems, and any relationship between sexual activity and childbirth was beyond conception.