With thirty-four million books in print in twenty-nine languages by 2000, Oregon writer Jean M. Auel has become a worldwide publishing sensation with her unlikely "Earth's Children" series about life in the Paleolithic world. Beginning with The Clan of the Cave Bear in 1980, Auel has charted the everyday life of a Cro-Magnon female named Ayla in five novels, each a bestseller and two of which have spawned popular movies. Between 1980 and 1990 Auel published four of these novels; fans around the globe had to wait another dozen years for the fifth installment, The Shelters of Stone, which--like its predecessors--immediately rose to the top of international bestseller lists. Auel, noted for her thorough research and attention to detail, told Blake Edgar in Archaeology, "I'm not even a trained novelist when it comes right down to it. . . . I'm certainly not a trained scientist." Edgar, however, went on to note that "the bespectacled...