Set in eastern Africa 100,000 years ago, Women of the Plains tells the story of a confrontation between two cultures of early Homo sapiens, the ancestors of all modern human beings. When the young huntress Oja gets separated from her nomadic band after a hunting accident, she finds herself in a strange place where the people have settled into permanent villages. As she struggles to find her place in this new world, her old friends Uru and Namak go looking for her. Oja must eventually choose between the way of life she has always known and that of the people who have embraced her as one of their own.