As for them being a dying race - they did die out. Though there is evidence that they interbred with archaic humans, they were subsumed by them.
They did. I'm just not comfortable with the dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-skinned people being the dying race and the white blue-eyed blonde being the replacement. I know that the representation of Neanderthals pretty much matches what people thought back then, but the perception of Neanderthals as dark and Cro-Magnons as blond might have been, at least in part, rooted in subconscious racism. (it's not as if anthropology and racism haven't collided in the past.)
By setting her novel far in the past, she said, "I can write about problems like racism, sexism, prejudice in such a way that people can deal with them as abstract concepts. They can have enough distance from their own lives that maybe they can think about them without the emotional hang-ups of the present day. Let's hold out something like the Neanderthals as a way of asking, 'Why can't we look at people as individuals, with individual human capacities and dignity, instead of seeing them only through group fear or prejudice?'"
That makes me suspect that, in line with her theme, she was trying to evoke and then subvert racist tropes, but didn't do very well at the latter. Because it does sound as if her intentions were good.
Re: Checking the Source
They did. I'm just not comfortable with the dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-skinned people being the dying race and the white blue-eyed blonde being the replacement. I know that the representation of Neanderthals pretty much matches what people thought back then, but the perception of Neanderthals as dark and Cro-Magnons as blond might have been, at least in part, rooted in subconscious racism. (it's not as if anthropology and racism haven't collided in the past.)
There's also the fact that Auel was actively trying to write about various isms. From the Washington Post, February 21, 1986:
By setting her novel far in the past, she said, "I can write about problems like racism, sexism, prejudice in such a way that people can deal with them as abstract concepts. They can have enough distance from their own lives that maybe they can think about them without the emotional hang-ups of the present day. Let's hold out something like the Neanderthals as a way of asking, 'Why can't we look at people as individuals, with individual human capacities and dignity, instead of seeing them only through group fear or prejudice?'"
That makes me suspect that, in line with her theme, she was trying to evoke and then subvert racist tropes, but didn't do very well at the latter. Because it does sound as if her intentions were good.