The Plains of Passage

The Plains of Passage is a historical novel by the American writer Jean M. Auel, published in 1990. It is the fourth book of the Earth's Children series and follows The Mammoth Hunters.

The series is set in prehistoric Europe and follows Ayla, a woman raised by a group of Neanderthals, and Jondalar, who comes from a people further west. In this book the two of them make the long journey along the Great Mother River, the Danube, from roughly the territory of modern Ukraine to the region around Les Eyzies in the Dordogne. Auel uses the journey to show the range of societies along the route, with their different beliefs, diets, tools and ways of dealing with outsiders, and the meetings between Ayla and those groups carry much of the book.

Auel researched the period's technology, plants and animals and built the novels around that material, so the travel is worked out in terms of what can be made, eaten or traded at each stage. The series eventually ran to six novels, of which this is the fourth.