Dance of the Tiger

Set 35,000 years ago in Scandinavia, during a thaw in the great Ice Age, the novel follows a Cro-Magnon named Tiger as he tries to defeat Shelk, a tyrant and a hybrid (Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon), the man who killed his father.

Kurtén's skin color identification for both populations appears to agree with recent DNA studies, including those proposing the African origin of modern humans.

Auel's initial book, published a few years later than Dance of the Tiger, portrayed Neanderthals as light-skinned and Cro-Magnons as more racially varied, either light or dark-skinned.

Cro-Magnon children and adults are portrayed as having smooth brows and small faces; the characteristic features of childhood act as "innate releasing mechanisms" for feelings of affection.

Kurtén's supposition that Neanderthals and ancestors of modern Homo sapiens occupied same areas in the same time in Europe has been confirmed by fossil evidence.