Today I learned that the Dordogne is a river! A very nice
river indeed, which meanders through one of the most beautiful regions of
France, so next time I come to France I am buying a canoe and will paddle down
the Dordogne to the ocean. It should be fun.
Yesterday I was so tired that I misspelled several words and
forgot to mention a couple of pieces of trivia. For example, I didn’t know that
the Perigord is the self-proclaimed Queen of the Foie Gras (which I knew is goose liver but here is also “produced”
from ducks) and the nougat (candy
made with walnuts). The foie gras is excellent without doubt, but has attracted
bitter criticism from animal right activists. Basically you over feed the goose
or duck until their liver grows a few times its normal size. The Perigordiennes
consider it a tradition, however, and everywhere you see shops and farms
devoted to the raising of ducks and geese.
I also forgot to mention that I am having a great time
hurling my little Fiat through the narrow roads of the Perigord, recklessly defying
death around each blind curve. I am now convinced that God has not only blessed
this region with incredible beauty, but everyone who enters the region gets
assigned at least two guardian angels.
Today I started by getting a little lost (just what one
needs to see this beautiful region), but eventually reached Les Eyzies, to
visit the National Museum of Prehistory. It is a fine collection, which tracks
the evolution of early Australopithecus and Hominids, and eventually explodes
in detail about the Neanderthal and Cromagnon presence in France. The key to
the study of the last 500,000 years are the stone tool kits used by the
different Homo species, which has given rise to a beautiful series of stage
names:
Homo erectus (400,000
to 200,000 years ago) had the Acheluian stone tool kit (Paleolithic), dominated
by large, tear-shaped, bifacial flint. Since they are sharp all around they are
not simple axes, and the current thinking is that they were blanks from which
other tools could be flaked.
Homo sapiens
neandertalensis (300,000 to 30, 000 years ago) had the Mousterian stone
tool kit (Mesolithic), without bifacial flint, with short and stubby cores as
blanks, and relatively thick and large tools.
Homo sapiens sapiens (40,000
years to present), for which the Neolithic stone kits are named, from oldest
(40,000 years ago) to youngest (10,000 years ago), Aurignacean, Soloturian, and
Magdalenian. I will spare you the details, but the key trend is that the tools
become smaller and smaller, and the workmanship becomes finer and finer with
time. The cave paintings I talked to you about yesterday are either Soloturian
or Magdalenian.
A key development during the Soloturian and Magdalenian was
the invention of “portable” art, that is, small ornaments in the atlatls (spear
throwers) and spear shafts, and very significantly the small female figurines
we have come to call “Venuses”. Characteristically these Venuses have no
prominent facial features, but rather emphasize the fertility-related
attributes of females, such as wide hips, large breasts, and engorged vulvas. Nobody
knows what their function was, but it is easy to believe that they were
representations of fertility, perhaps both in humans and in the bountiful
Earth. Now, you may not know this, but I am a collector of Neolithic portable
art, and now my collection has been increased by four pieces: The Venus of
Sireuil (24,000 years old and found in La Dordogne), the Venus of Lespugue
(25,000 years old and found in Garonne), the Venus of Eliseevitchi (17,000 years
old and found in Siberia), and a beautiful small carving of a laying bison, the
Bison of the Madeleine (15,000 years old and found in La Madeleine). I am a bit
poorer after my shopping spree, but I am a very happy man J
At noon time I went for the long walk I had promised myself
in the forests of the Perigord. They are dense forests (too many trees for my
Icelandic taste), and it is easy to imagine yourself with a shotgun in the
crook of your arm (you never know when a hare or pheasant may jump out of the
brush), following your pig in the search of the elusive truffle (the gold of
Provence). Incidentally, one of the ad spots I see everywhere is that Foie Gras, c’est la truffe de Perigord!
The rest of the day I spent becoming acquainted with the
medieval history of the area, which has a large concentrations of castles of
the 12th and 13th centuries, and a large number of
medieval towns, all of which vie for the title of La plus belle village de France. The towns of Serlat, Domme, La
Roque Gageac, and Castelnaud la-Chapelle were particularly lovely.
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