Most people visiting Las Cases barely glance at the château. Instead, they dive straight inside the farm shop to buy dried hams, sausages or fresh pork. The farm and château sit beside the main road from Revel to Castres, and before the Malinge family started making charcuterie, Las Cases had enjoyed a curious succession of occupants. From Stone Age to Romanisation The oldest objects discovered at Las Cases include flint arrow heads and polished stone axes from Neolithic times when humans were domesticating their first pigs. One day, Jean-Luc Malinge also discovered Roman relics while he was ploughing a field. He called in the archaeologists from Puylaurens, and more careful excavations unearthed a tilemaker’s workshop from the 1st century BCE. They also found pits where clay had been extracted and a building where the tiles were dried before being fired. The next year, Jean-Luc went looking for more remains and found an oven. Although it had been used by a tilemaker, he wasn’t a Gallo-Roman. Instead, the oven dated from the 13th century CE. People were making tiles at Las Cases for at least 1,400 years!
Remembering Napoleon We don’t know the names of the tilemakers, Roman or medieval. But in 1765, a young man was born in the Château de Las Cases whose name would be immortalised thanks to Napoleon.
The Memorial of Saint Helena In 1823, Las Cases published an eight-volume work in both French and English, drawing on his conversations with Napoleon. With Bonaparte dead, fear of the Corsican Ogre had already begun to turn to fascination, and thanks to its timely appearance, ‘Mémorial de Saint-Hélène’ became an international best-seller and remained popular into the 20th century. It also made Las Cases a very rich man. How much of ‘Mémorial de Saint-Hélène’ is truly based on Napoleon’s own words, and how much was imagined or embellished by the author, remains a matter of debate. Several people featured in the book were less than delighted with their portrayal, and Las Cases, fearing prosecution, made amendments or added further justifications in subsequent editions.
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Given the name of this blog, I thought it was time to compose a few paragraphs about the most southerly of the 101 départements français. In the part of France that lies in mainland Europe, the most southerly department is Pyrénées-Orientales. Look a little more widely, and what is often referred to as France Metropolitaine includes Corsica, an island that is split into two departments with nearly all of Corse-du-Sud being south of the border between Pyrénées-Orientales and Spain. But there are five more departments overseas, and two of them lie south of the equator in the Indian Ocean on opposite sides of Madagascar. To visit the most southerly part of France, I took a 9,000-kilometre flight from Paris to the island of La Réunion. In administrative and legal terms, this is a true French department, and bizarrely this also makes La Réunion the most far-flung corner of the European Union. One of the most active volcanoes in the world La Réunion is a volcanic island. Its south-eastern end is dominated by the Piton de la Fournaise, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Since the first colonists arrived in the mid-17th century, it has erupted over 200 times. When I climbed it on 14 June 2023, I was a little perturbed by the warning sign: AN ERUPTION IS PROBABLE IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS. BE CAREFUL. Fortunately for me, this latest eruption did not begin until I was safely back in France Metropolitaine. At 08.50 on the morning of 2 July 2023, lava began oozing out of the volcano’s southern slope. You can view photos and videos in the French press. A far more spectacular and unusual eruption took place in 2007. The summit of the volcano is 2,632 metres above sea level, but on this occasion magma spewed out of the eastern slope at an altitude of only 600 metres. Within a few hours, the lava had run all the way down the mountain and into the Indian Ocean. The road that runs around the island has since been rebuilt and runs through this barren volcanic landscape. Its name? Lava Road. Saved by a miracle A little further north, the eruption of 1977 left an even more striking sight thanks to what some regard as a miracle. When lava began to flow down the mountain, 1,500 inhabitants from the village of Piton Sainte-Rose were evacuated. Part of their village was destroyed, but when the lava reached the church, it flowed around both sides, destroyed the west door but stopped short of the nave. All the stained glass exploded due to the intense heat and the floor was damaged, but otherwise the church was spared. Subsequently it was renamed Notre Dame des Laves, and although this event may not have been a miracle, it certainly created an unforgettable sight. The highest mountain in the Indian Ocean Piton de la Fournaise is around 500,000 years old, but the original volcano that created the island of La Réunion emerged from the ocean around three million years ago. Known as Piton des Neiges, it grew through a series of eruptions. Today, at 3,070 metres above sea level, it is the highest mountain in the Indian Ocean. Piton des Neiges has been dormant for around 10,000 years, and during this time erosion has created three vast cirques: Cilaos, Mafate and Salazie. For the fit and active, these cirques provide a challenging and stunning environment for a range of outdoor adventures. I spent two days hiking into, around and out of Mafate, spending the night in a simple wooden hut in a tiny village called La Nouvelle. There are no roads in Mafate, but around 700 people live there, mainly surviving through tourism and subsistence farming. Pity the postman and the priest Most supplies are flown in by helicopter, which can make the morning skies surprisingly noisy, but spare a thought for the postman who has to deliver letters to these 700 inhabitants. La Poste is disinclined to give postie a helicopter so he has to carry 10-15 kilograms of mail on his back up and down some of the steepest slopes I have encountered. Luckily he only does one or two rounds a week. I was also intrigued to meet a priest standing outside the church preparing to celebrate mass. The Lord may give him wings, but not a helicopter, so he too is obliged to travel in and out by foot. I suspect this gentleman is the fittest priest I have ever met. No doubt he also gives a good mass, but after a long day in the mountains I was more tempted by researching the local beer. The right hand photo below also illustrates that, although during our stay the weather by the coast was usually dry, hot and sunny, late afternoon and evening in the mountains invariably brought mist, rain, a storm or all three. Whale watching Away from these wild and inaccessible areas, most visitors head for the west coast where the sand is golden instead of black and a reef protects swimmers from shark attacks. Between July and October, this is also an outstanding location for spotting humpback whales, and I had the good fortune to view one of this year’s early arrivals while he circled our catamaran. The changing face of a tropical island
Until the first colonists settled on the island in the mid-17th century, La Réunion was uninhabited. In the 18th and 19th centuries, coffee, spices and sugar cane dominated an economy which was largely dependent on imported slaves. When slavery was abolished in 1848, the population comprised 45,000 free men and 65,000 slaves. After three centuries as a colony, La Réunion became a French department in 1946. In 2020, the population reached 860,000, putting La Réunion in the top quarter of the most populated French departments. In terms of population density, it’s in the top dozen. With Piton de la Fournaise occupying around one third of the island’s entire surface, and much of the land around Piton des Neiges being too vertiginous to be habitable, most of the population is squeezed into a busy coastal strip. Nevertheless, there are few large hotels and tourism feels refreshingly low-key. Would I make another visit? Definitely!
From political exile to founder of the Foreign Legion When Louis XVIII was restored to the throne, even Soult’s political skills couldn’t save him from exile. But after four years in Germany, he was allowed to return to France where Louis XVIII restored him to the rank of marshal. Charles X awarded him a peerage and Louis-Philippe made him minister of war. As part of his plans to expand the army, Soult created the Foreign Legion in 1831. By this time, he had also begun a construction project in his home town. His wife’s maiden name was Berg, and their new home became the Château de Soult-Berg. It was completed in 1835. Queen Victoria’s coronation In 1838, Louis-Philippe chose Soult to be his representative at the coronation of Queen Victoria in London. As far as I can determine, Soult and Wellington never met face-to-face during all the years they spent fighting each other in Portugal, Spain, France and Belgium. But according to the tale I was told during my visit to Soult-Berg, this long-overdue encounter took place at the time of the coronation. Supposedly, while Soult was at a banquet, Wellington crept up behind him, grabbed his shoulders and cried, ‘I’ve got him, by damme; I’ve found you at last, Marshal Soult!’ And the next day, the two men rode around London in a carriage admiring the sights and receiving rapturous applause. I had always doubted this story until I came across a piece in the 3 July 1838 edition of the French daily newspaper La Quotidienne, written by its London correspondent two days after the coronation.
Although there is no mention of the two former foes taking a carriage ride together, the idea of Soult receiving rapturous applause from the public is believable. According to Nicole Gotteri’s authoritative and monumental biography of Soult, this visit to London was among the highlights of Soult’s career, one of his most glorious campaigns. At the age of 69, a man who had spent so many years fighting the British was treated like a hero, received too many invitations to accept, visited the main sights in London, made trips to Windsor, Liverpool and Manchester, and hosted a ball in his ambassadorial residence where 1,000 high-society guests danced until five in the morning. The Château de Soult-Berg When Soult returned to France after this triumphal visit, Louis-Philippe appointed him foreign minister. Soon after, he added the role of prime minister, and at various times during the next seven years he also held the post of war minister. In 1847, Soult retired from politics and returned to his home at the Château de Soult-Berg. One of his first acts was to order the construction of a grand mausoleum attached to the parish church. On 26 November 1851 he died at home and was buried in this neo-classical tomb where the highlights of his career as a soldier and a politician are engraved in white marble. Shortly before the day of Soult's funeral, the town honoured its most famous son by changing its name to Saint-Amans-Soult. It lies ten kilometres east of Mazamet, in the department of the Tarn and in the shadow of the Montagne Noire. Note: all photographs of painted portraits were taken inside the Château de Soult-Berg.
Naurouze is one of those places that seems to attract legends and history, as well as being notable from a geological and geographic perspective. It is located south-east of Toulouse, conveniently close to the main road between Villefranche-de-Lauragais and Castelnaudary.
Unfortunately, this event is a legend because it had long been known that Naurouze was a watershed. Riquet’s genius lay in working out how to collect and channel a large volume of water from the Montagne Noire to Naurouze.
The monument to Pierre-Paul Riquet Even in a place so rich in legends, Riquet is quite literally a towering presence. In 1825, his family decided that the Stones of Naurouze would make a perfect pedestal for a monument to his memory. Unfortunately, they also decided to protect their obelisk by encircling the site with a stone wall nearly three metres high, with a single entrance which is firmly sealed by locked iron gates. A short stroll between the obelisk and the canal takes you down the Chemin des Légendes, past the engineer’s house and a flour mill built by Riquet and along a path lined with plane trees planted in 1809. This shady avenue traverses an octagonal island, 400 metres from side to side, encircled by a channel bringing water from the Montagne Noire to the canal. Originally, this island was a basin built by Riquet to store more water for his canal, but unfortunately it soon silted up and was abandoned to become a grassy meadow. Just beyond the island is the highest section of the canal. A legendary meeting between Wellington and Soult Another legend claims that after the Battle of Toulouse in 1814, Soult and Wellington met at Naurouze and signed their armistice. This too is untrue, although Marshal Soult did indeed stop at this mill on 13 April 1814, and it was here that he received Wellington’s aide-de-camp and a French officer who brought dispatches and newspapers from Paris telling him that Napoleon had abdicated. Roman remains
Even that does not exhaust the supply of stories at Naurouze. Two thousand years ago, the Via Aquitania passed through here a few paces to the north, and the Roman town of Elusio grew up alongside it. In the twelfth century, the church of Saint Pierre d'Alzonne was built on the Roman remains, and inside the church porch you can see a collection of unusual discoidal gravestones. Just beyond the church is another site, Peyre-Clouque, which includes the remains of Elusio’s Roman baths and a collection of 52 stone coffins dating from the 6th century CE. Note that Peyre-Clouque can only be visited by prior arrangement (contact the mairie in Montferrand for up-to-date details). Two places to the east of Toulouse are known as le cimitière des anglais, or the English cemetery. The question is, are any Englishmen buried there? This story follows on from my previous post about the Battle of Toulouse, fought on 10 April 1814 between the armies of Wellington and Soult. In that post, I explained that Wellington’s allied army included troops from all corners of the British Isles, several German cavalry regiments and a large number of Spanish and Portuguese units. The retreat along the Canal du Midi The day after the battle, Marshal Soult and his army retreated along the south bank of the Canal du Midi. The allies were scouting the hills to the north, so Soult’s engineers blew up the bridges along the canal to keep them at a safe distance. The French planned to cross the canal at Baziège and follow the old Roman road towards Castelnaudary. To protect this crossing point, Soult posted infantry and cavalry units in the hills above Baziège to stop the allies attacking the long column of his retreating army. The Battle of Baziège A detachment from the French 75th infantry regiment took up a position in the grounds of the Château de Lamothe, two kilometres north-east of Baziège. Four hundred metres to the north-east of the château stands the chapel of Sainte-Colombe, and inside its porch is a brief account of a cavalry clash that took place in the surrounding fields on 12 April 1814. At the end of it, 25 French and 52 allied cavalrymen lay dead.
The account in the chapel’s porch claims the allied dead came from the 5th dragoons, a British regiment. My own research suggests they came from a brigade that comprised an Anglo-Irish regiment (the 18th hussars) and the 1st hussars of the King’s German Legion. This cimitière des anglais is unlikely to be filled with Englishmen, although there may be few.
Le cimitière des anglais? Le cimitière des irlandais? Le cimitière des allemands? No one knows for sure.
If you are walking the GR46 long-distance footpath, or simply enjoy exploring Toulouse beyond the Place du Capitole, you may encounter this imposing memorial column on a hill behind Matabiau railway station. Whenever I see it, the word ‘folly’ comes to mind, not with regards to the monument but because it commemorates a pointless and bloody battle in which 1,000 men lost their lives and over 6,000 were wounded. Spot the difference between French and Occitan There are two plaques beside the column, one in French, one in Occitan, and anyone who can understand both languages will notice an intriguing difference between the two texts. Both tell us that the column was inaugurated in 1839 and designed by the architect Urbain Vitry to commemorate the Battle of Toulouse, 10 April 1814. The Occitan version then adds an extra phrase: ‘a battle lost by the armies of Napoleon against those of Wellington.’ This reflects the fact that at the time the column was being built, some French officers were disputing their defeat. Toulouse, in contrast, had retained a strong royalist sentiment throughout the Napoleonic period, as Wellington discovered for himself after the battle. The fighting on 10 April lasted from dawn to dusk. A larger information board near the memorial shows how the battle unfolded, although anyone with that level of interest would be better advised to read Edouard Lapène’s, ‘Evènements Militaires devant Toulouse en 1814’ which can be viewed for free on Google Books, or my book ‘Lauragais: Steeped in History, Soaked in Blood’. A royalist welcome for Wellington The next day, Marshal Soult and his army slipped out of town along the Canal du Midi. On 12 April, Wellington and his troops entered the city to cries of ‘Vivent les anglais!’, ‘Vive Louis XVIII!’ and ‘Vivent les Bourbons!’ In the Place du Capitole the crowds tore down the bust of Napoleon and dragged it towards the river. Ladies distributed white royalist cockades from their baskets, and inside the Capitole building even the city officials wore the royalist symbol when they welcomed the allied commander-in-chief. Inside the Salle des Illustres, Wellington was visibly perturbed. He warned the assembled dignitaries that their royalist zeal was premature, and perhaps dangerous to their persons; he was still waiting for news from Paris, and a peace treaty with Napoleon remained a possibility; the return of the king was by no means certain. Late news or fake news? Within a few hours, Wellington learned the truth: he had fought an unnecessary battle. Two colonels – one English and one French – brought him dispatches and newspapers from Paris: Napoleon had abdicated unconditionally on 6 April, Louis XVIII had been declared king, and the provisional government had ordered all the armies of France to suspend hostilities. The messengers had left Paris on 7 April, but they reached Toulouse too late to prevent the battle. It took another week to convince Marshal Soult that the news from Paris was genuine, a long week during which several bloody skirmishes took place in the fields of the Lauragais. On 19 and 20 April, copies of an armistice were shuttled back and forth along the Canal du Midi between Toulouse and Narbonne for signature by Wellington, Soult, and Marshal Suchet who commanded the French army in Catalonia. Both sides claim victory When the Napoleonic Wars were finally over, some French officers began to question who had really won the Battle of Toulouse. This dispute reached its height in 1837 when a French military engineer, Pierre-Marie Théodore Choumara, wrote a book in which he argued that because the allies lost more men, and because Soult remained in control of Toulouse and merely lost some defensive positions outside the city before choosing to withdraw, the French army was victorious. When Wellington was shown the book, he predictably wrote a long and indignant rebuttal. Given that the battle had served no purpose, it is reasonable to wonder why anyone cared. The explanation lies, perhaps, in the broader historical context. Ever since the Norman Conquest of 1066, the kingdoms of England and France had usually been at war, and occasionally in a state of uneasy peace. The 26 years between the start of the French Revolution and the downfall of Napoleon was one of the most intense periods of this long conflict.
On safari at the bison farm At the farm, I soon forget what continent I am on. Our safari bus is a rickety trailer pulled along in bottom gear by a Massey-Ferguson tractor. We crawl past African Watusi cattle, their heads weighed down by horns a metre long, and a herd of Père David’s deer from China which eye us nervously from a shrinking waterhole. We rattle over a cattle grid and grind our way through a section of sparse oak woodland. The trees stop abruptly and the Pyrenees shimmer in the distance. Something catches my eye to the left, three silhouettes in a line where emerald green grass meets faultless blue sky. There is no mistaking the identity of this beast. The line of its back rises towards bulging shoulders and a massive horned head. For an instant, I forget the sunshine and think of the dark caves where I have seen this exact profile drawn or etched on the walls. Hunted for half-a-million years We inch our way forward and more bison come into view. In the wild, the sight of a human would send them galloping away into the distance, un understandable reaction when you remember that Tautavel Man was hunting them half-a-million years ago, and that our more recent ancestors drove them to the verge of extinction in both Europe and North America during the 20th century. Humans have long been the bison’s principal predator, but the bison was rarely man’s principal prehistoric prey. Through all the different strata of the Caune de l’Arago, bison bones represent at most 10% of prey animals. They are far outnumbered by – depending on the strata – horse, deer, muskox, reindeer or wild sheep. Tough characters Based on observations of wild bison in North America where they face predators such as grizzly bears and wolves, we know that these animals stand firm in a group and face their enemy, horns at the ready. But should they choose to run, the bison is as fast as a horse and it can maintain a top speed of around 60 kilometres per hour for much longer than an equine. Despite weighing up to a tonne, it can do a standing jump higher than my head, pirouette on the spot and swim across raging torrents. Seen in the wintry landscapes of the last Ice Age with their hot breath steaming in the bitter air, they must have inspired a mixture of fear and esteem, or even veneration, emotions which were subsequently expressed on the walls of many a prehistoric cave.
Occitanie has played a central role in our understanding of prehistory, and Ariège boasts more prehistoric caves than any other department in France. Over a period of several months last year, I visited several of the ones that are open to the public. The prehistorians who were involved in the discovery or interpretation of these grottes were in many cases the same internationally renowned experts who explored even more famous caves which lie just outside my region (Lascaux, Les Eyzies and the Grotte de Chauvet, for example). They included people like Émile Cartailhac who, in 1882, took up a post at the faculty of science in Toulouse and became the first academic in France to teach prehistoric archaeology. And a young priest called Henri Breuil who, over the next 60 years, would become even more influential than Cartailhac. And more recently, Jean Clottes, the man who was called upon to assess the Grotte de Chauvet when it was rediscovered in 1994. Caune de l’Arago and the Tautavel museum of prehistory The village of Tautavel is a mere 20 minutes inland from the A9 just north of Perpignan. The museum is highly informative, although some visitors may find it rather dated. As for the cave, the Caune de l’Arago is the one exception on my list: you cannot go inside unless you are accepted to participate in the summer dig, an annual event which started in 1964. To reach the cave, drive a couple of kilometres north of Tautavel to Les Gorges du Gouleyrous. Here, the Verdouble emerges from limestone cliffs a hundred metres high and forms a shallow pool roughly the size of a football pitch. This is an idyllic and popular spot for a swim (in principle this is prohibited, thus making the presence of an obligatory car park with a ticket collector rather unexpected). The Caune de l’Arago is a couple of hundred metres above the river, and although you cannot go inside, most of the cave is visible through the iron bars that protect it between each season’s dig. Just inside the bars, a diagram shows the cave in cross-section and explains why it is of such exceptional scientific interest. The hillside curves over a lip at the cave entrance, and then the floor slopes down towards the interior before rising up again to create a bowl. This underground hollow has acted as a time trap. Over a period of 600,000 years (from 700,000 to 100,000 years ago), it captured 16 metres of sediment, and contained within the different layers are human remains, the bones of the animals they hunted and ate, the tools they made, and pollen and seeds that blew in with the wind or were carried in by humans and other creatures. Five metres of sediment remain to be excavated. Five-hundred-and-sixty thousand years ago, a child died in this cave. In 2018, one of its milk teeth was unearthed by archaeologists, and this tooth is the oldest human remain yet found in France. But the cave owes most of its fame to Tautavel Man, the hunter in his early 20s who spent time here with his family 450,000 years ago, and parts of whose skull was dug up in 1971. A copy of the front of his skull is displayed in the museum and the original is the oldest human face discovered in Europe. More recently, objects a mere 5,000 years old have been discovered outside the entrance. Both Tautavel Man and the child belonged to the species homo erectus which arrived in this area around a million years ago. Although they walked upright and had an anatomy not dissimilar to our own, they are not thought to be our direct ancestors. Instead, homo erectus evolved into Neanderthal man who, in Europe, became extinct after having lived alongside our own species, homo sapiens, for several thousand years. Both species lived at the Caune de l’Arago, although perhaps not at the same time because the sedimentary layers include long periods with no trace of human activity. FOLLOW THESE LINKS TO READ OTHER SECTIONS OF THIS POST:
Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 1: Grotte d’Aurignac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 2: Grotte de Niaux Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 3: Grotte de Bédeilhac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 4: Grotte de Gargas Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 5: Grotte de Mas d’Azil Occitanie has played a central role in our understanding of prehistory, and Ariège boasts more prehistoric caves than any other department in France. Over a period of several months last year, I visited several of the ones that are open to the public. The prehistorians who were involved in the discovery or interpretation of these grottes were in many cases the same internationally renowned experts who explored even more famous caves which lie just outside my region (Lascaux, Les Eyzies and the Grotte de Chauvet, for example). They included people like Émile Cartailhac who, in 1882, took up a post at the faculty of science in Toulouse and became the first academic in France to teach prehistoric archaeology. And a young priest called Henri Breuil who, over the next 60 years, would become even more influential than Cartailhac. And more recently, Jean Clottes, the man who was called upon to assess the Grotte de Chauvet when it was rediscovered in 1994. Grotte de Mas d’Azil Lost in gentle hills to the west of Pamiers. the most astonishing aspect of the Grotte de Mas d’Azil is that you can drive right through it on the D119. For a more relaxed visit, leave your vehicle in the car park just beyond the upstream entrance, maybe pause at the café for a refreshment and then stroll underground alongside the river until you reach the ticket office and entrance to the prehistoric section. Although the road seems out of place, its construction in the 1850s was the first step towards the discovery of the cavern’s archaeological importance. That first road was swept away by a flood in 1875, so it was rebuilt higher up. This second tranche of works unearthed prehistoric objects such as bones, tools and weapons, and given the site’s easy access, it is perhaps unsurprising that it soon attracted private collectors as well as geologists and archaeologists. In 1902 Henri Breuil discovered the first cave paintings. More rock art has been discovered since – both painted and engraved – but at Mas d’Azil, the greatest interest lies in the objects. Among the most intriguing finds is a tooth carved with an ibex on each side. A fine piece of work, no doubt, but it was the tooth itself that caught the eye of the archaeologists: it belonged to a sperm whale. Now, even in prehistoric times there were no sperm whales anywhere near Mas d’Azil. The presence of this tooth, and the wide range of materials, styles and techniques used to make many of the other objects found here suggest that Mas d’Azil was an important trading centre, or at least a communications hub through which Stone Age traders passed regularly. Many of the other objects found in this cave (or in some cases, copies) are on display at the Museum of Prehistory in the village of Le Mas d’Azil a couple of kilometres downstream. FOLLOW THESE LINKS TO READ OTHER SECTIONS OF THIS POST:
Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 1: Grotte d’Aurignac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 2: Grotte de Niaux Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 3: Grotte de Bédeilhac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 4: Grotte de Gargas Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 6: Caune de l’Arago and the Tautavel museum of prehistory Occitanie has played a central role in our understanding of prehistory, and Ariège boasts more prehistoric caves than any other department in France. Over a period of several months last year, I visited several of the ones that are open to the public. The prehistorians who were involved in the discovery or interpretation of these grottes were in many cases the same internationally renowned experts who explored even more famous caves which lie just outside my region (Lascaux, Les Eyzies and the Grotte de Chauvet, for example). They included people like Émile Cartailhac who, in 1882, took up a post at the faculty of science in Toulouse and became the first academic in France to teach prehistoric archaeology. And a young priest called Henri Breuil who, over the next 60 years, would become even more influential than Cartailhac. And more recently, Jean Clottes, the man who was called upon to assess the Grotte de Chauvet when it was rediscovered in 1994. Grotte de Gargas The Grotte de Gargas lies in the foothills of the central Pyrenees south of the A64 between Saint-Gaudens and Lannemezan. When humans lived here between 28,000 and 24,000 years ago, there were two separate caves, each with its own small entrance. In the 19th century, someone decided to connect them by a tunnel for reasons of tourism. Today, visitors come in through the upper cave and exit via the lower entrance. Both caves contain paintings, but only the lower one has handprints. With a total of 231 handprints, the Grotte de Gargas contains 30% of all known handprints in Europe, and on a single wall near what is today the exit, archaeologists have counted 137, one yellow, the rest black or red. Inevitably, Breuil and Cartailhac were the first people to carry out a detailed inspection. In a report written after their second visit in 1907, they noted a peculiarity that has continued to generate hypotheses ever since: many of these handprints are missing a couple of phalanges from a finger or two, or sometimes all the hand’s fingers were mutilated in this way. As with all works of prehistoric cave art, other mysteries include who produced them and why. The second of these questions is still in search of a plausible and generally accepted answer. As for the first, research in the last decade has come up with some curious findings. The crucial difference between a handprint and, say, a painting of a bison is that one can deduce the gender and age of the artist. For example, modern men tend to have longer ring fingers than index fingers, while the opposite is true for women. This variation was more pronounced among our prehistoric ancestors, and a ten year research programme of handprints around the world concluded that around three-quarters of them belonged to females. And then in 2022, a Spanish study found that most of the artists had held their hands a short distance away from the wall, a technique that creates a slightly three-dimensional effect and enlarges the hand. As a result, they concluded that around a quarter were produced by children between the ages of two and twelve. Talking of children, Gargas divides its visitors into groups of 25 and I was tagged onto the second half a busload of eight-year-olds. I have never before seen children so captivated by works of art. FOLLOW THESE LINKS TO READ OTHER SECTIONS OF THIS POST:
Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 1: Grotte d’Aurignac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 2: Grotte de Niaux Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 3: Grotte de Bédeilhac Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 5: Grotte de Mas d’Azil Prehistoric caves of Occitanie 6: Caune de l’Arago and the Tautavel museum of prehistory |
Colin Duncan Taylor"I have been living in the south of France for 20 years, and through my books and my blog, I endeavour to share my love for the history and gastronomy of Occitanie and the Pyrenees." |