Ancient

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Geo: 44.8913, 1.21502

Hard-boiled eggs at breakfast this morning!

Our first stop this morning was at the Grotte de Rouffignac (grotte is French for cave). Around 14,000 years ago, the cave was inhabited successively by cave bears and then Cro-Magnon man. Around 13,000 years ago, Cro-Magnon man seems to have taken over the cave network.

(Technically, our first stop was a few hundred yards before the cave. We got out of the coach to have a look at some foie gras on the hoof. Gosh, geese are noisy!)

Because we went very deep into the cave we had to take a small train. Our guide, Elisabeth, showed us all the art left behind by our early ancestors. There were carved mammoth figures as well as painted, and painted woolly rhinoceroses, horses, bison and ibex. There were also plenty of instances of scratch marks made by the bears, though not as deep inside the cave. Even the bears' individual "nesting" spots remain obvious.

One room -- where we were able to get out of the train -- has an amazing swirl of animals painted on the ceiling. The horses are incredibly detailed and even correctly proportionate, as are the ibex and the mammoths. The cave is sometimes referred to as the "100 mammoths cave" because out of all the prehistoric caves in Europe, about a third of the mammoth representations are in Rouffignac. The truly amazing thing is that, while the ceiling was ten feet above us, we were on a false floor. The floor during Cro-Magnon's time was only two or three feet high, which means that the artists were painting on their backs and wouldn't have been able to see the entirety of their paintings: they couldn't stand back to have a look at how things were progressing. And archeologists believe that there were only five artists painting at Rouffignac because the styles are so cohesive.

The cave has been known about for several centuries. There is even graffiti from 1776 on the walls and ceilings inside. In fact, when the cave was rediscovered in the late 19th century, the ceiling with all the animals had been nearly obliterated by graffiti. So how do archeologists know that the animal paintings are 13,000 years old and not graffiti from mere centuries ago? Get this: Archeologists had always been a bit puzzled by a dark area consistently painted under the tail of the mammoths. In modern times, a perfectly preserved mammoth was removed from the permafrost in Siberia. Scientists then discovered on this mammoth a flap of skin that covered its anus, presumably to keep it from freezing. No one prior to this discovery knew about the anal flap. No one, that is, except for the prehistoric artists who painted what they saw around them. Since scientists knew when woolly mammoths roamed the earth, and since they knew that Cro-Magnon man and mammoths were contemporaries, they were able to determine that the cave paintings were around 13,000 years old. Pretty amazing, no? The fact that the paintings have survived for so many centuries is simply incredible.

After the cave, we stopped for lunch in the little town of Les Eyzies. Sandwiched between a limestone cliff and the river Vézère, the first Cro-Magnon man was unearthed in Les Eyzies in 1870. I walked up the hill to the visitor center to find out more about prehistoric man (I was meowed at by a small cat along the way). The center was well done for something that's not supposed to be comprehensive. There were some super-lifelike statues of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man, as well as 3D reconstructions of pre-historic faces that followed you as you walked by. I walked back down to the main road and got a baguette with chicken, tomatoes and cheese for lunch. It hit the spot and then we were on the road again.

The cave had been quite cold; I even wore my undershirt this morning. By the time we got back down the hill, the sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was warming up. It was shaping up to be an absolutely beautiful, picture-perfect day.

We drove to the village of Cénac, got out of our perfectly comfortable coach, and got into canoes. I hadn't been canoeing since summer camp in the early 1980s! Fortunately, Carrie sat in the back; we had learned earlier that she won a silver medal for rowing at college, so at least she knew what she was doing. Apart from the fact that I got a little sunburned, we had a fabulous time on the river. We barely had to work at all (which is a good thing because I'm not sure I've used those paddling muscles in a decade or so -- going to be sore tomorrow!), and for the most part were able to just relax and float downstream. Every now and then there would be a wake from a tour boat, or a little bit of whitewater when we went under a bridge, but it was mostly calm and lovely.

We paddled past the town of La Roque-Gageac, which is one of the most picturesque places I've ever seen (in fact, we got out across the river from La Roque-Gageac for a photo op), and also by Castelnaud, a fortress-castle built in the 1200s and famous for having been in English hands during the Hundred Years War. The castle at Beynac, just a little farther down the river, was in Castelnaud's line of sight and was in French hands during the war. The two castles constantly kept an eye on each other.

We were on the river for about two hours before finally exiting. I was dry (yay!), but my hands were black from the paddle. And, of course, there was no soap or hot water in the bathrooms at the canoe stop. Even Purell didn't really shift the dirt. It was maddening!

We went into Beynac, and Gilles (Have I mentioned our driver, Gilles? Probably, but I can't remember) drove us up, up, up the hill, where we had spectacular views over the Dordogne valley and could clearly see Castelnaud and where we beached the canoes. (We also passed by a white cat who was snoozing in the sun. She meowed when I went over to peek at her, but she didn't seem to mind a little pet.) In a field at the top, Virginie decided to see if we had all been paying attention to her historical talks on the coach. We had covered kings and queens and other important figures starting with Clovis in the 6th century and ending with Napoleon III in the 19th century. Each time she stopped for the day, she would review the people we had just learned about and ask us, "Who wants to be Charles VIII? Who wants to be Catherine de Medici?" None of us could quite figure out where all this was leading, but she insisted that we all had to be somebody. I was Eleanor of Aquitaine. So in this field, Virginie reminded us each of who we were, and we had to try to line up according to our spot in history. We actually did pretty well, surprisingly. There were a couple of times where two people standing next to each other merely had to switch places, and one guy who really had no idea at all where he should be, but it wasn't too bad. And it was actually kind of fun to see our line-up of history, especially when we realized that we covered 1300 years in less than a week.

Some people went back down the hill on the bus, and some of us walked down. Down, down, down, steep, steep, steep. It was a very picturesque walk, but my knees were dying by the time we reached the bottom!

We came back to Sarlat just before 6:00 p.m., and I rushed upstairs and back down again to make sure my laundry order was in on time. As I was dealing with that, Carrie walked by and mentioned that she was going shopping for conditioner. I needed conditioner too, and an ATM, so I got her to wait for a few minutes and then went with her. We found a BNP Paribas cash machine fairly close to the hotel, but then the little shop where Virginie thought we would be able to buy conditioner was closed. We missed it by four minutes. Carrie said she thought she saw a grocery story when we drove into town, so we turned around and walked toward it. "It's just around the corner." Hmmm, no, that's a flower shop. "It's just around the next corner." Nope: Nissan dealer. "It must be around the next corner." And it was. I got conditioner, and Carrie got conditioner and candy. When we got back to the hotel, I realized that we'd probably done nearly a mile of walking. Phew!

I went out with Carrie, Gerry, Christine, Pete and Joyce to find dinner. The place they chose was a little pricy and featured duck and goose, so I begged off and found a place to have a crepe and a glass of cider. Much cheaper, much quicker, and, to my palate, much tastier.

I'm sitting up in bed right now being happy about the fact that tomorrow is our day off, so I don't have to get up early!

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Photos

Down, down, down in Beynac
This photo does NOT capture just how steep the lanes were!

Comments

[Mary]

Meow

[Aunt Marianne]

You covered a lot of ground today it sounds like. I don't know how you remember it all.