In Ice Age Europe, when modern humans were spreading across the continent and the last Neanderthals were fading from our story, something remarkable happened deep beneath the limestone hills of southern France. In the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, in the Ardèche valley, a young human child walked through a dark passage and left her footprints in the soft clay floor.
Beside her walked a wolf.
That much we know. Frozen in time for over 30,000 years, those parallel tracks hint at a moment of curiosity, courage, and perhaps companionship long before the first domesticated dogs trotted at our heels. They offer a tantalising glimpse into a forgotten world — the world that inspired my new novel.
The Girl and the Wolf is a story that imagines how such a bond might have begun. It follows Almora, an inquisitive, strong-willed child of the Drognai clan, raised alongside a rescued wolf cub named Sharma. As Almora grows into a capable young woman, her life takes an extraordinary turn when she meets Tanu — one of the last Neanderthals in Europe. Their unlikely love, and Tanu’s struggle to be accepted by Almora’s people, explores themes of kinship, belonging, and the courage to overcome fear of the Other.
The Real Chauvet Child and Wolf Tracks. In 1994, archaeologists exploring the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in the Ardèche region of France made an astonishing discovery: some of the oldest known human art on Earth — and something even more unexpected was to come.
In 2022, on the soft clay floor of a deep passageway, they discovered the footprints of a child, estimated to be around eight years old. Alongside them were the impressions of a large canid, likely a wolf. The tracks run side by side for several metres before disappearing into darkness, untouched for more than 30,000 years.
There is no evidence the animal was tamed, and it may simply have been following the child’s scent or path. But the fossil record occasionally offers us moments like this — fleeting hints of ancient encounters between humans and wolves before the process of domestication began.
The footprints raise intriguing possibilities:We cannot know with certainty what happened that day in Chauvet Cave. But those footprints remind us that the story of humans and wolves began long before the first village dogs lay beside our hearths — deep in the Ice Age, when the world was young and full of wonder.
- Were early humans already forming tentative bonds with wild wolves?
- Did shared hunting grounds foster familiarity and cautious tolerance?
- Could small acts of curiosity and courage have eventually led to true companionship?
