What's A Few Millennia Among Friends?

 Leaving the Prehistoric Behind

So we leave the Cro-Magnons happily hunting, eating and breeding according to Wikipedia from about 40,000 to 25,000 years ago.  What happens then?  The next mentions in my very cursory trip through history is that the Celts and Gauls cavort through the area for many millennia.  There doesn't seem to be much forward motion towards civilization.  Ah!  But then the Romans arrive and just love it in the Dordogne.  It's got it all.  Great climate, located on trade routes with its numerous rivers and lots of room to spread out and subjugate whoever has had the nerve to settle there before them.  In Perigeux (the capital of the Perigord --AKA Dordogne-- they establish a sophisticated city and thrive until the decline of the Roman Empire around 500 AD.  We went to an excellent museum in Perigeux which featured the remnants of the Roman period.  Michael's photos will give you an idea.

The Tower of Vesunna is a fanum (temple) dedicated to Vesunna, a tutelary goddess of the Petrococorii (a Gallic tribe that lived in the Perigord region). This was located outside of the Vesunna Gallo Roman Museum in Perigeux.

 

A floor mosaic recovered from the ruins of a Roman house discovered at Tour de Vésone during the construction of large public housing complex.

The next three photos show portions of columns recovered from the ruins.

This column dated from 50 AD reflects the beginning of mass winemaking in the Périgord..

This column shows Neptune the Roman god of the freshwater and the sea.

The funeral monument of Bassiania Viblina.

Part of a Roman votive altar to Mercury.

Another Roman altar with a bull, sword, pitcher and spoon depicted on one side. On the opposite side is a long inscription dedicated to Magna Mater (Cybelle - an Anatolian mother goddess adopted by the Romans around 204 BC). 

This head of the statue of Jupiter is dated from the 2nd century AD.

A model of the domus (large Roman urban house) discovered during the excavation for a large public housing complex mentioned above. The domus was a unique monument to Vesunna and it was decided to move it and create a museum around the remains of the original domus.

The inner courtyard of the domus shown in the model above.

The next three photos show how advanced Roman plumbing was in the domus. Water for the Roman bath as well as separate channels for human waste was directed through tiled channels under the floor.

This shows an exposed hypocaust, which the Romans used to heat the house as well as water for the baths. These tiles were used to elevate the floor. A fire was built with the heat traveling under the floors to heat the house.

The remnants of a fresco recovered and moved to the museum.

But all good things must come to an end.  The Visigoths, not known for their refined manners or scholarly knowledge arrived sometime in the 5th-6th Century and were followed by the Francs about a century later.  All of Europe is a story of conquest and submission and revolution but the Dordogne sort of sets the bar for fighting and chaos. Following the Francs came the Carolingian Reign which began in the 8th Century.  It was run titularly by the Carolingian King but but he seemed to be easily distracted and delegated power to his favorite Bishops to do as they would -- or wouldn't. And then more barbarians! Yes, the Vikings came to town.  Damn those gorgeous rivers that allowed for excellent raiding and pillage.  They came and went and came and went throughout the 9th Century. The Bishops sort of retained a loose control but everybody operated pretty independently for several centuries.  Then things got really chaotic, while also highly productive, as the English and French start to duke it out.  But that is in the next blog.

A Break in the  Historical Recounting

As we warned you, there will not always be  predictable thread weaving the blogs together.  This is one of those left turns.  Michael and I were looking forward to kayaking and planned to do it once a week but the weather intruded and we only got to paddle (well, he paddled and I sat) three times.  As usual the scenery was beautiful even when the weather was a little threatening.  But here is the thing.  Kayaking is not generally regarded as a sport where you might be attacked by wild life.  Well, it happened again.  Readers may remember our encounter in South Carolina while kayaking in an estuary bordered by reeds.  As we relaxed and soaked in the beauty a seriously sized alligator launched out of the reeds and tried to attack our kayak missing it by a couple of feet.  It was unpleasant.  When we talked to our son Alex he was not sympathetic. " God, it was the first week in June.  That's when they nest.  She was just protecting her babies."  Oh, well pardon us.  

So, here we are gliding  placidly down the river and admiring the occasional swan we pass.  Ahead we see two swans mid-river and we approach staying about 30 feet away from them.  With the look of a crazed avian one of the swans launches and, with beady eyes drilling into us, heads directly for the kayak with  what looks like murderous intent.  "No eye contact!" I yell at Michael.  We paddle on while the swan circles us malevolently for about 300 feet and then he breaks off and heads back.  As we passed the other swan Michael saw that there were four or five cygnets next to the Mom.    Aha!  We relax at his departure and continue down river when suddenly there is a huge shadow over the boat and a mighty splash as the irate swan returns for round two of intimidation.  The wing span on this thing was probably 6 feet.    We displayed as much submission as one can display in a kayak and must have appeased him since he gave the swan equivalent of a snort of derision and returned to his brood.

On our first kayak trip, as on all of our trips, Deirdre gave commentary and looked for any dangers while I paddled. On this trip we paddled from Bergerac to the village of  Gardonne, a short 13.5 kilometers.

Our second kayak trip from Montignac-Lascaux to Saint Leon sur Vezere was 12 kilometers and took us past more interesting sites than our first trip. This and the photo below are of the Château de Losse, built in the 16th century.

We always had to count the number of bridges, such as this one, to determine when we would get to our destination.

The châteaus were built on the limestone cliffs above the river to provide protection (however it also came with a view).

Château de Clerans was another we saw as we paddled down the Vezere River.

We could just see the bell tower of this church.

After paddling we returned to Montignac-Lascaux for lunch. We ate at a wonderful restaurant overlooking the river.

Most of the town was well above the banks of the river...

and the house were built on the tops of the limestone cliffs.

Our third fateful paddle of 18 kilometers was from Les Eyzies to Limeuil. There were stretches where the river was covered by these floating white flowers.

Here we passed some very high limestone cliffs...

and saw several swans, including the vicious male swan that attacked us defending his mate and cygnets.

As before we will include a few random photos for your viewing enjoyment.

Traveling when we did allowed us to see a variety of plants and flowers in bloom. Quite a number of then were roses.

These flowers were on a European horse chestnut tree.

These blooms were on Bear's breeches.

These flowers were from the Asian virgins bower (Clematis) plant.

We had the opportunity to have lunch with our friends Corrine (on the right) and Jeroen (on the left) in Peyzac-le-Moustier. We had stayed at their gite on two different occasions.

Starting From the Ground Up

 Anthropology is Confusing

So I decided we'd start this series with a blog on caves, grottes, rocs, abri etc.  All of these were home to pre-historic denizens of the Dordogne.  We had visited many of these on previous trips but the Dordogne is just rife with them so off we went to explore some more.  I decided I should learn more about the inhabitants so consulted the internet to expand my knowledge and impart it to all of you.  But it's really confusing so I will indulge in the Cliff Notes version.  First fact:  The Dordogne has been inhabited for about 400,000 years.  They loved it there because of its many rivers, abundant game and fish, temperate climate and, of course, the caves, grottes, rocs & abris.  Pretty much why we like it -- except maybe for the caves.

I'm going to skip over everything prior to 400,000 years because it is very complicated and the hominoids weren't too interesting. Interesting or not, they migrated out of Africa and spread out both to Europe and Asia.  What happened between that migration and the Neanderthal period I couldn't quite get -- seemingly they wandered around evolving.  So, now we come to the Neanderthals who were the first tenants of the various ground-based dwellings.  They had fire and simple tools and created very simple crafts and jewelry.  They had large brains (bigger than ours) but they weren't very efficient or complex like you would see in the Cro-Magnon people.  So the Neanderthals flourished from 400,000 years ago until about 40,000 years ago whereupon they became extinct.

Now we get to the Cro-Magnon group.  Their name is derived from the site at which the first Cro-Magnon remains were discovered.  So guess where that was...in the Dordogne at the town of the same name which is very close to Les Eyzies which is the home of the famous cave paintings.  They arrived on the scene about 35,000-40,000 years ago.  This means, since all these years are approximate, there were thousands of years of overlap when Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon were co-existing and, it is believed, interbreeding to some extent.  While Neanderthals are not considered direct ancestors to homo sapiens (yes us) many of us may have a smidge of Neanderthal in us.  So don't look so shocked when that Ancestry.com result shows up.

The Cro-Magnons were similar in size and shape to the Neanderthals but the brains were very different in capabilities. The Cro-Magnon people made more sophisticated weapons, crafts, jewelry and had more of a sense of community.  They had distinct roles in their group and they cared for their disabled.  They buried their dead but it was unclear if they thought about an afterlife or gods.  And, of course, there were the marvelous cave paintings along with ceramics.    They did not generally live in the caves that they painted.  These spaces were ceremonial and, often times, far into a cave where hauling in game or firewood would be impractical.  So, there is my very quick summary of the folk who either inhabited or frequented the caves etc. that we would visit.

We had already seen the famous caves at Lascaux with our sons years ago and on recent trips had seen many more similar, if a little less spectacular, sites.  If you are interested you can refer to https://www.sites-les-eyzies.fr/decouvrir/grotte-de-font-de-gaume/la-grotte-de-font-de-gaume for Grotte de Font de Gaume, where only 95 people are allowed in per day (so advance ticket purchases are advised). For Abri Cap Blanc you can go to https://www.sites-les-eyzies.fr/decouvrir/abri-du-cap-blanc/l-abri-du-cap-blanc to see the animals sculpted into the rock face. Since those earlier days of adventure we have aged (am I dwelling on that?) which meant that I had a series of questions for the tourist bureaus at the various towns at the sites we wanted to visit.  For those underground I would ask:  1) Are they very dark or is there light; 2) are there a lot of stairs; and 3) is it wet and slippery? Routinely the tourist board member would reassure me that there was light, perhaps a few steps and very little water.  Invariably it was quite dark, there were many steps of worn and non-uniform shape and these were often glazed with water to increase the fun.  I don't think they meant to lie outright but viewed the world through the eyes of 30 somethings.

Each visit to a different site filled me with the hope that this visit would be well lit, level and dry.  After four experiences of groping my way along and grabbing Michael's arm in a death grip we decided to skip the last two planned sites.  While Michael's photos are magnificent we unfortunately have none of the Grotte de Villars (which prohibited any photography). They said this was prohibited in all of the Grottes in France, but we found this was not true. We also do not have any of Font de Gaume which boasts rare colored renderings of animals, nor the Abri Cap Blanc which features animals sculpted into the rock face. The links to both of these are in the paragraph above. Michael had photos of these last two, which got lost somehow.

Michael did get pictures of the Grotte de Maxange with its incredible stactities, stalagmites, fistulous formations, magnificent panels of aragonites, but also and especially the tremendous geological formations called eccentric natural and and extremely rare phenomenon. 

The rock face at the entrance to the "Grotte" (cave) shows the different rock formations from the light brown to the black.

This European Smoketree caught my attention for its unusual color as we were waiting to enter the cave.

This column with it's sign on the front directed us to the entrance.

The entrance to the Cave of Maxange. It was only discovered on August 15, 2000 in a building stone quarry run by Angel Caballero when this cavity appeared, which is now filled with stones from the quarry and a doorway to the cave was added.

The site was opened to visitors in 2003 and since then the cave has been extended with new galleries. These various stalagmites were the first thing we saw on entering the cave.

These fistulous formations were seen throughout the cave. These are tubular, single-crystal concretions of calcite that elongate and within which water circulates. 

When these are white they are pure white calcite with no metallic salts. The various metallic salts color the calcite, creating the different colors depending on the metallic salt. 

These next two photos show stalactites with fistulous around them.

Fistulous attached to a stalactite.

Flowstones like these are composed of sheetlike deposits of calcite and are formed where water flows down the walls (as in this case) or along the floors of a cave.

These are stalactites with some fistulous and "eccentric" formations.

Another eccentric formation...

and a close up, which shows the unusual shape which is formed attached to a stalactite.

Another eccentric formation and fistulous formations.

Stalagmites which have different colors due to the various metal salts dissolved in the water.

Now that you know what to look for, I will let you view more of the unusual formations in the cave.

This photo, which is a close up of the photo above, looks like some alien creature.

A broken off section of a stalagmite. 

The next two photos show eccentric formations which have sections of pure white indicating there were no dissolved metal salts in the water that flowed to create them.

While this approach of creating blogs based on topic seems to be working we'll just throw in a few uncategorizable (is that a word?) photos for fun.  Take care. 

Some places we visited had art work of various kinds.

The artist of this piece labeled it "Galactica Mantra".

Limeuil Garden had some magnificent Iris in bloom, like this one and the ones below.

It is rare that we can get a picture of both of us, but this garden had a large mirror allowing this photo.

When we were going to lunch in one village we came across this tree,...

which judging from the down fall was quite a significant section of the tree. This eliminated the outdoor dining at this restaurant. We assume this occurred when no patrons were present, because there was no sign on blood or bodies.

Occasionally we would encounter a "pack" of classic cars, such as these two MGA Roadsters, which were in production from 1955 to 1962.

And this MGB Roadster which was in production from 1962 to 1980.