We woke up to steady rain! Yesterday we also had morning rain. Is this going to be a pattern? In California we say we have a Mediterranean climate because it does not rain in the summer. But of course now is the growing season in the Mediterranean, so the vines and other plants need to drink (in California we use irrigation to simulate the spring and early summer rains), and I imagine the rain will cut out in the late summer to let the grapes ripen and build up their sugar content. I will have to keep note of seasonal changes while I am here.
Today was a cultural
day, which we started by visiting the Château de Bonaguil. This old medieval
fortress was built in the mid 1200’s, and played an important role in the
100-year war (1337-1453) between France and England, probably changing hands
between the factions several times. Its heyday started in 1470, when Rouergue
de Bérenger became the lord of the castle and considerably expanded it into its
present form (but a good portion of it is in ruins now). After his death, in
1531, the castle lost its importance and was eventually acquired by the village
of Fumel as a historic monument.
We also stopped
briefly at Fumel, where its own château overlooks the river Lot, is of
more modern construction, and has been beautifully maintained to now serve as
the mairie (City Hall).
In the afternoon, and
still under light rain, we did “my official” walk through Bergerac, although I
must confess that I was as much a tourist as Giulia because I had not visited
the Church of Notre Dame de Bergerac ( a beautiful neogothic church where we
were treated to an organ mini-concert), or the city museum. We did see the
statue of Cyrano, the very district, the quaint shops along the twisting
pedestrian streets, and the wharf from which wine form the region was shipped
to England, Ireland, and even Scandinavia! Turns out that this region of
France, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, was under control of the English all the way
to the 100-year war, and La Dordogne was the key route to transport wine
and tobacco to the coast, and from there to the English world. I am sure I will
have a chance to fill you in on more details as new visitors will hone my
knowledge of my beautiful town.
The new day brought
shining sunlight, so we are going to go hiking along the portion of the valley
of La Vézère where many prehistoric sites have been discovered. One of
the main reasons folks liked to live here was the availability of chert nodules
(petro cour in Latin, which in modern French has become Perigord).
The interesting thing about these nodules is that they are concretions that
developed randomly in the shallow limestone banks (akin to the banks of the
Bahamas, where tidal currents move the grains of calcite and fossil fragments
around to form oolites and cross bedding in the soft grainstone limestones),
rather than as deep-water chert bands. It was at this time that the practice of
applied geology was born in Europe, for surely a specialist was needed to guide
the stone knappers to the places where good nodules were found! More about this
later, when I tell you of our walk to La Micoque.
An hour driving
brought us to the charming town of Les Eyzies, where everyone in town has been
hard at work to make tourists very welcome. Lots of parking, camping parks,
rent of bicycles and canoes, brasseries, and of course beautiful
landscapes and many prehistoric sites. We chose to walk the Boucle of La
Micoque, just because it looked like a cool walk with plenty of sights of abris
(hangovers of the limestone cliffs, where many of the early inhabitant of the
valley of La Vézère chose to live, and where many a medieval village was
also “attached” to). These hangovers are very distinctive in the area, and form
where a soft, porous grainstone limestone rests on top of a dense, impermeable
marl (a clayey limestone); water that seeps through the porous grainstone
limestone seeps on the form of a spring at the contact, weakening the top rock
and causing it to cave in to form the abris. We had walked less than
half a kilometer when we got to the abris Cro-Magnon, which we blew off
as yet another tourist trap. But no, this is the original site where the
remains of the Cro-Magnon people were first found! By the way, the word
Cro-Magnon comes from the Occitan language roots Cro – cave or hollow and
Magnon – the name of the old guy who owned the land.
We walked another
couple of kilometers and finally got to the hill named La Micoque, which
we started going around and slowly climbing. There was this little side trail
that you could follow off the main track to get to the abris de La
Micoque, and for a moment there we thought about ignoring it. But the good
judgement of Giulia prevailed and we walked the extra 500 meters to get to a
fence built around a small cliff formed by colluvial deposits. Well, this
turned out to be the oldest known site (there may be some debate here) of
Neanderthal presence on the land! In fact, the prehistoric period that marks
the initial occupation of Neanderthals in Europe is the Micoquien, of the early
Paleolithic industry, dating to about 300,000 BC. Imagine that. We were looking
at a camping site where 10 meters (30 feet) of accumulation spanned the period
between 330,000 and 100,000 years BCE!
The rest of the walk
was just delightful, walking through a shaded forest where a few old oak trees
were to be found. I combed the leaf litter around the roots, in the hope of
finding a truffe, but had no luck. I was also looking casually at the
rocks, when one of them caught my attention. It was a chert nodule, and after I
found one I found several others within a stretch of the path that was maybe
200 meters long. Clearly I had found a gisement or deposit, where for
some unknown reason the chert concretions were abundant. Now, if I were a Micoquien
I would keep the location to myself, grab a few of the valuable nodules, and go
trade them to my fellow Micoquinées for the liver of the bison they had
just hunted, or any other thing my heart desired. And there, my friends, would
be the start of my career as a consulting geologist! Of course, here I must
acknowledge that consulting geologists had been hard at work in Africa, for at
least the last 2 million years, but there is something to be said in this
business for local experience. At the end I collected the beautiful nodule I
had seen originally (maybe the size of an orange), a little one for Ronnie, and
a monster piece that very much looked to me like the muscular body of a bison.
I hope Ronnie has room in his suitcase to bring it back to California.
Back at Les Eyzies, we
took the time to visit their excellent Musée de la Préhistoire, which
has wonderful displays about the paleolithic traditions (straddling the
transition form Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon populations), as well as the first
samples of paleolithic art in the Cro-Magnon era starting at 35,000 years BC.
It is also the point of entrance to one of the high abris and fabulous
views of the valley of La Vézère.
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