Jean Marie Auel (/aʊl/; néeUntinen; born February 18, 1936) is an American writer who wrote the Earth's Children books, a series of novels set in prehistoric Europe that explores human activities during this time, and touches on the interactions of Cro-Magnon people with Neanderthals. Her books have sold more than 45 million copies worldwide.[2]
Auel was born Jean Marie Untinen in 1936 in Chicago.[3] She is of Finnish descent, the second of five children of Neil Solomon Untinen, a housepainter, and Martha (née Wirtanen) Untinen.
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 the aboriginal skills expert Jim Riggs.[6]
After the sales success of her first book, Auel has been able to travel to the sites of prehistoric ruins and relics, and also 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. In 1986, she attended and co-sponsored a conference on modern human origins at the School of American Research, Santa Fe.[8] She has developed a close friendship with Doctor Jean Clottes of France, who was responsible for the exploration and the scientific study of the Cosquer Cave discovered in 1985 and the Chauvet Cave discovered in 1994.[9][10]
In October 2008, Auel was named an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture and Communication.[11]
By 1990, Auel's first three books in her Earth's Children series had sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and been translated into 18 languages; Crown Publishers paid Auel about $25 million for the rights to publish The Plains of Passage and the two subsequent volumes.[12] By May 2002, on the cusp of the publication of the fifth book, the series had sold 34 million books.[13] The sixth and final book in the series, The Land of Painted Caves, was published in 2011.[14]
Jean Marie Untinen married Ray Bernard Auel after high school. They have five children and live in Portland, Oregon,[3] in the Goose Hollow neighborhood.[15]
