The narrative imagines advanced prehistoric people who inhabit an Ice Age landscape where glaciers meet semi-tropical forests, following two figures, Lhatto and Ogga, as they experience love, aesthetic feeling, and spiritual impulses. It challenges scientific caricatures of prehistoric life by portraying articulate speech, emotional complexity, and dramatic action, and situates individual passions against a richly described natural environment whose contrasts shape character and social life. The tale blends romanticized anthropology with reflections on evolution, environment, and the human capacity for beauty, worship, and intimate feeling.