History Literature / QuestForFire

* AllCavemenWereNeanderthals: An early aversion of this trope. The protagonists are neanderthals but the various tribes they encounter clearly represent separate species. The afterward of the 2020 English edition identifies the Kzamm, Wah, Red Dwarves, Blue-haired men and Men of the trees as ''Homo antecessor'', ''Homo sapiens'', ''Homo luzonensis'', ''Gorilla''/''Gigantopithecus'' and ''Pierolapithecus catalaunicus'' respectively.

** at one point, Naoh deflects a thrown spear with his axe. Hafted axes weren't invented until the neolithic and paleolithic hand axes wouldn't have done much good against any kind of thrown projectile.

* Given the patchy record of human prehistory at the time, Rosny was required to take huge liberties to even tell such a story. As is sometimes the case with science fiction, some of the speculative aspects held up surprisingly well! See the trivia section for more details.

* StockDinosaurs: Not true dinosaurs but most of the stock ice age mammals make appearances: woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave bears, cave lions, aurochs, ''Megaloceros'' and saber-toothed cats. Even ''Gigantopithecus" joins the party decades before its fossils were discovered!

** The Blue-haired men appear to be based on gorillas (the recent discovery of the Mountain gorilla would definitely have been on the author's mind) but the story clearly does not take place in Africa.

* StockDinosaurs: Not true dinosaurs but most of the stock ice age mammals make appearances: woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave bears, cave lions, aurochs, sabre-toothed cats and of course neanderthals.

* FrazettaMan: Played with. The man-eating Kzamms are hairy and bestial but have somewhat more sophisticated fire-keeping methods than the Oulhamr. The Blue-haired Men are even more ape-like but much less bloodthirsty. Aghoo and his brothers are the straightest examples, being brutish and hairy neanderthals, but they are merely three individuals who are despised and feared by the rest of their tribe..

* FrazettaMan: Played with. The man-eating Kzamms are hairy and bestial with ape-like proportions but have somewhat more sophisticated fire-keeping methods than the Oulhamr. The Blue-haired Men are even more ape-like but much less bloodthirsty. Aghoo and his brothers are the straightest examples, being brutish and hairy neanderthals, but they are merely three individuals who are despised and feared by the rest of their tribe..

* BeastMan: Downplayed but one of the Kzamm is described with eyes that glow red in the fire and wolf-like movable ears. Interestingly, the Oulhamr initially perceive anatomically modern humans as this.

* BeastMan: Downplayed but one of the Kzamm is described with eyes that glow red in the fire and wolf-like movable ears.

* AmbiguouslyBrown: The Oulhamr are described as "tawny like the deer, not black like the panther".

* BlackAndGrayMorality: Naoh and the other Oulhamr are not good guys by our own culture's standards but at least they aren't cannibals like the Kzamm.

* BeastMan: Downplayed but one of the Kzamm is described with eyes that glow red in the fire and movable wolf-like ears.

* EveryoneHasStandards: The Ouhlamr maybe a violent horde of neanderthal raiders but they draw the line at cannibalism.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: The Oulhamr are a war-like society with a casual attitude towards bloodshed and rape.

* InterspeciesFriendship: Naoh and the chief mammoth.

* RougeAnglesOfSatin: the deer ''Megaloceros'' is referred to as ''Megaceros'' which is actually a kind of fungus.

** The chief of mammoths is apparently male. Mammoths likely lives in matriarchal societies like modern elephants do.

* BarbarianHero: Naoh

* CannibalTribe: The Kzamms.

* CoversAlwaysLie: The 2020 edition's cover shows a tundra environment complete with reindeer, muskoxen, arctic foxes, ptarmigans and a wolverine carrying off an arctic hare. The story takes place in a much warmer climate probably somewhere in the middle east based on environmental details.