She was born Jean Marie Untinen, the second of five children. She wsa born on February 18, 1936 in Chicago, Illinois. After high school she married Ray Bernard Auel and raised five children of her own. In 1964 she became a member of Mensa. She earned her masters degree in 1976 - attending night school while working for a Portland electronics firm. At that time she quit her job in order to find 'more suitable work'.
After looking for a 'more suitable job' for 3 years she got an idea for a short story about a girl in prehistoric times. According to Jean, "The 'short story' led me to do some research; the research fired my imagination, and the wealth of material made me decide to write a novel. The first draft turned out to be more than 450,000 words and fell into six parts. On rewriting, I realized each of these six parts was a novel in itself. I have used that rough draft as the outline for the series."
Jean's extensive research has taken her to prehistoric sites in France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine, the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Germany (to follow a portion of the Danube for the 4th novel).
Auel learned first hand how to do many of the things that she talks about in all of her books. She learned how to knapp flint, construct snow caves, tan hides, gather and prepare wild foods, medicinal plants and herbs, how a fire is made, how a spear-thrower is used, how bulrushes make sleeping mats, how to pressure-flake a stone tool, and how to squish deer brains to turn deer hide into velvety soft leather.
"These people were the first modern humans. It's fairly well accepted by most of the archaeological community that they had the same range of intelligence and the same psychological and emotional reactions as we have, except that theirs were directed in different ways. We could not have lived in their world and they would have trouble adapting to ours. What I was trying to show is that just because prehistory seemed to be a 'simpler time', that doesn't mean that prehistoric man did not need a great deal of intelligence, knowledge and wisdom to survive."
Future plans: "I've been working 17 years on this project, and I want to do something else--maybe a mystery, or a thin little literary science fiction book, or something. But, I admit, I've learned a lot. I love the research. I can't think of anything more fun than learning anything I want and earning a living writing about it the way I want to."
