We
woke up to a yellow-orange sky on the morning of Saturday, February 6.
It was an intriguing, apocalyptic kind of light. The Sirocco had
arrived.
This
peculiar light even sprinkled tiny particles of sand to create an eerie
contrast to the white basilica of Lyon as well as on the snow in areas
along the Swiss border near Geneva, as the following 1:23-minute video
shows.
The
Sirocco is a phenomenon where the wind blows sand from the Sahara
Desert in North Africa onto parts of Europe. Such an event usually
occurs five to six times a year, but it usually covers the central
southeastern part of France (Haute Savoie and Savoie) and not the middle
of the country in areas like Le Puy.
As the day continued, the sky became milky because the dust was
gradually moving away from France and over the Alps to Italy. We caught a
picture of it here where the sun was uncharacteristically magnified and
left silhouettes of the mountainous landscapes surrounding Le Puy.
The
sirocco arises from a warm, dry, tropical air mass that is pulled
northward by low-pressure cells moving eastward across the Mediterranean
Sea. The wind originates in the Sahara desert, and the hotter, drier
continental air mixes with the cooler, wetter sea air to propel a
counter-clockwise circulation of the mixed air across southern Europe.
Sometimes when the Sirocco passes over the Mediterranean Sea, it picks
up moisture that results in rainfall in southern Italy known locally as
"blood rain" due to the red sand mixed with the falling rain.
The Sirocco is commonly perceived as disturbing to some people. Many attribute their health problems to the wind either
because of the heat and dust brought in from African coastal regions or
because of the cool dampness further north in Europe. The dust within
the Sirocco winds can get lodged in mechanical devices and
penetrate buildings.
Sirocco
winds commonly occur during autumn and spring when it is very hot, and
they can reach hurricane speeds of up to 100 km/h (62 mph).
This
wind also has an impact on fishing. For example, the anchovies caught
in the Gulf of Trieste near Barcola, Italy, which are a delicacy, are
only caught during the Sirocco. When the cold winds return, the fish
disappears into the vastness of the Adriatic.
For
me, living in France after three-and-a-half years, it is still riveting
to see weather maps of North Africa on the evening news. Riding a camel
and spending two days camping in a tent in the Moroccan part of the
Sahara in 2013 was a mystical experience. Today, realizing that those
same desert sands were raining down on France was surreal, and I am
grateful for the experience.
In 1669, when Fr. Medaille was ill and fragile, he was transferred to Billom where he lived in a senior care home for sick and elderly priests. He continued his ministry, however, by hearing confessions of the people in the town. He died on December 30, 1669, at the age of 59. Presumably he was buried in the cemetery next to the school but during the French Revolution, the cemetery was destroyed. There is no trace of Fr. Medaille's grave or remains, but the Jesuits do have a record of his death certificate.
Billom is under 120 kilometers northwest of Le Puy. Fr. Medaille, the itinerant preacher, traversed the many miles of the Avergne region on horseback.
Fr. Medaille was
known to live his life of mission with such a reputation of holiness
that people often called him a saint. He was also known to be
appreciated by the wealthy, the poor, and the bishops in dioceses where
he worked.
The open space next to the school may have been the site of the cemetery where Fr. Medaille was buried. The feeling of being there was desolate and a little sad, perhaps as a result of its history. Places sometimes retain sentiments of their past.
The
Jesuits operated a school in Billom. In 1764, during the
expulsion of Jesuits in France, the school was abandoned. From 1886-1963 the
school became a military prep school for young people. Today, the building
stands empty with some painted windows that look like a school project attempting to beautify the building. A newer lycée (high school) was built
across the courtyard from the old building.
The new lycée across the courtyard from the former Jesuit school.
Remnants from another time, a lion crest with a sword is displayed at the entrance to the school campus.
The Jesuit Expulsion
The Jesuit movement was founded by Ignatius de Loyola in August 1534. Under
his charismatic leadership, the Society of Jesus grew quickly. The Jesuits’ ministries
in education and charitable works spread all over the world during Ignatius’ lifetime,
and eventually to the new European colonies in the Americas in the 17th
century. The Jesuits played an important role in the Counter-Reformation in
Europe and won back many people who had been lost to Protestantism. They also succeeded in converting millions of people around the world to
Catholicism.
However, with the rise of nationalism in the 18th century the
European monarchs felt threatened by the religious order. They began to
suppress the Jesuits in what is known as the “Jesuit expulsion” from the Portuguese
Empire (1759), France (1764), the Two Sicilies, Malta, Parma, the Spanish
Empire (1767) and Austria and Hungary (1782). These moves were ultimately,
albeit reluctantly, approved by The Holy See in 1773.
The Jesuit suppression was largely political in nature. As part of their
mission and purpose, the Jesuits were closely aligned with the papacy as
protectors, however, they were considered too autonomous for the monarchs
who were trying to centralize and secularize their political power. Some historians also view the suppression as motivated by
economics because by the mid-18th century, the Jesuits had acquired a reputation
in Europe for their monetary successes. Monarchs in many European states saw the
Jesuits as foreign entities encroaching upon their sovereignty.
In 1814, Pope Pius VII restored the Society of Jesus to its previous
provinces, and Jesuits resumed their ministries in those countries.
The Medieval
Town of Billom
Fr. Medaille would have been familiar with the old town of Billom that had been built in the Middle Ages. The narrow cobblestone streets, half-timbered buildings, sculpted doorways, and public squares are a common sight in French Medieval towns. People still reside in these towns although their buildings have been significantly updated with modern conveniences.
The Angaud River runs through Billom.
Interesting stone portals of houses.
Stone sculptures rest high above the street. Many were used as directional street signs for the people who lived in the town and were vastly illiterate. They oriented themselves on the street by turning to the left or right of a sculpture.
The people usually washed their clothes in a river or in a fountain like this one. Small towns in the southern half of France typically have such fountains.
Troughs provided water for the horses. Today, they stand as decorative vessels on their own or with flowers planted inside of them. It is interesting that a commonly-used utility sports such intricate carvings.
This half-timbered house was the former home of a prominent, rich family as indicated by the crest (see close-up below) etched onto the center of the house. The juxtaposition of this medieval house with modern cars is striking.
Here is another crest over the door of a home
Signs outside doorways used to indicate artisanal shops. Today, they are more decorative, but just as engaging.
Narrow
cobblestone streets make-up the intricate, winding network of the town. Many
streets have been adapted to accommodate cars while others continue to
be pedestrian pathways.
A variety of houses adjacent to each other line the town's streets.
City squares were gathering places for markets, festivals, and milling about. A tower gives the town some height and prestige. This one has a clock attached to it.
Imagine putting together a time capsule and having it discovered 35,000 years later. What would the items inside say about you and your life, your culture and society?
That is what researchers have been trying to learn about the Aurignacians, a hunter-gatherer culture that lived 36,000 to 12,000 years ago in southeastern France by studying their artwork left on cave walls. Three French speleogists (cave explorers) discovered one of their caves on December 18, 1994. Known as the Grotte Chauvet, it is the site of
the earliest-known Paleolithic artworks going back 35,000 years.
Jean-Marie Chauvet is from the Cévennes Region, He is an explorer and an expert
in speleological diving, a dangerous discipline. As a photographer and
filmmaker, he took an active part in sharing speleological knowledge.
Christian Hillaire fell in love with speleology while still a teenager. In 1985, he took
part in the discovery of the grotte des Deux-Ouvertures, an exceptional
archaeological site in Ardèche classified as Historical Monument. He
met Eliette Brunel that same year.
Eliette Brunel is a native of Saint-Remèze (Ardèche), right along the Ardèche
Gorges. Passionate about speleology, she has discovered a hundred of
archaelogical sites in Ardèche.
Grotte Chauvet is located in the Department of Ardèche in
southeastern France, 75
miles and about 2 hours southeast of Le Puy-en-Velay.
Grotte Chauvet is on a cliff. The entrance to the cave was blocked 20,000 years ago by a
cliff collapse. This helped to preserve the cave until it was discovered by the three French speleogists.
The cave is near the Vallon-Pont-d'Arc along the Ardèche River. The Aurignacians tended to designate such caves near prominent topographical markers like this arched bridge.
Entrance
to the cave is not open to the public, and it is highly restricted to authorized persons only. Researchers enter the cave only at certain times of the year for only a couple hours at a time because
toxic gases poison the cave's air supply.
A replica of the cave has been made for the public. Click here to learn more about the replica.
The Aurignacians were a hunter-gatherer culture that lived
during the glacial period in the southwestern Europe between 36,000 to 12,000
years ago. They include the caves at Chauvet (36,000 years ago), Lascaux
(21,000 years ago), Altamira in northwestern Spain (20,000 years ago).
The Aurignacians appear to exhibit one
of the first mythological and religious systems that expresses their conception
of the world through art. Their dark and silent caves were located apart from
living areas and they contain both the people’s imaginations and sacred myths
in the form of wall drawings and paintings, sculpted objects, geometric shapes,
signs, and bone collections. Animals are depicted almost exclusively with only
an occasional and partial representation of humans. When they do occur, they
are mixed in with the animals like a man with a bird’s head (Lascaux) or a
women’s lower body overlaid on a bison’s torso and the head of a lioness.
Plants were not included in this menagerie of drawings. Click here to learn more about the art of the caves.
The cave drawings were made with charcoal, torch marks, and red ochre. Through carbon dating analysis, scientists have determined the the first and most numerous cave paintings at Grotte Chauvet were done 35,000-36,000 years ago and the second 29,999 to 30,000 years ago.
Upon seeing the "first message of our ancestors" in the cave, Eliette, the sole woman explorer said: "They were here."
Click on to this VIDEO to learn more about the Grotte Chauvet discovery. It is in French, but you don't have to understand the language in order to witness the speleologists' reactions.
To enter this video, which was produced by Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (2015), touch the screen with your cursor and click on the arrow at the bottom of your screen. Then click on to the box on the right that says "Vidéo -- 18 décembre 1994".
Famed German film director, screenwriter, and actor Werner Herzog produced the first and one of the few films on the cave in April 2011 entitled Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It is available for sale or rental on Amazon but here is a 2:30-minute preview.
Here's a 6-minute review of the film by Scientific American, which includes an interview with Herzog.
Here are 7 minutes of excerpts from the film.
Other Sources
Claude Pommereau, ed. Grotte Chauvet 2--Ardèche. Beaux Arts and Cie Éditions, Paris.
In France, one readily encounters the remnants of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the early modern era through its churches, towns, and buildings with many of these places still being used. Roman art and architecture have also been left behind, albeit in ruins. The Grotte Chauvet, however, provides the earliest-known human artworks going back 35,000 years--and they are in pristine condition thanks to a cave-in that shut off access 20,000 years ago!
The cave art of the Paleolithic period was an especially creative time in western Europe, as shown by the above map. There were actually about 280 sites of cave art locations in this region, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry.
People
tend to view Stone Age art as primitive with the idea that artists became more
advanced and sophisticated over the centuries. Actually, the concept of
art did not exist before the 15th
century, and there was no word for it in ancient Greek and Roman times let
alone Paleolithic times. Consequently, the cave painters' purpose was
not about decoration or even depicting the beauty that they saw around them. Cave
painting in France and Spain has led anthropologists and archeologists
to speculate that the images of animals, symbols, pictographs,
engravings, and human hand prints were connected to some sort of ritual
and/or belief system. They consider this a giant leap in the development
of the modern human mind as illustrated by the differences between Neanderthal man and modern man.
Neanderthal
man lived 315,000 to 800,000 years ago in Eurasia. They became extinct
about 40,000 years ago when early modern man
emerged from Africa around 300,000 years ago. The Neanderthal brain indicates development in the sensory centers, especially vision and motor, located primarily in the
rear half of the brain. Homo sapiens, which include the Aurignacians who lived 43,000 to 33,000 years ago, show brain development primarily in the
frontal lobes, which are the higher thinking centers of the brain and show ability
in speech, imagination, sociality, culture, religion, and ethics through social learning. Neanderthals most likely went extinct due to competition with, or extermination by early modern man through climate change, disease,or a combination of these factors.
The paintings in France and Spain illustrate differences in
development and style of representation, too. For example, the Lascaux paintings depict strange beasts, some of which are half-human and half-bird and others that are half-human and half-lion. The Niaux cave in the southeastern Pyrenees displays a
huge frieze of bison, deer, ibex, and horse; carvings of salmon or trout; and bears claws. Grotte Chauvet, however, distinguishes itself with paintings of the more dangerous animals--lions, mammoths, and rhinoceroses--covering over 63% of the walls. Reindeer, horses, bison, aurochs,
and ibex--likely food sources--are also present. There is very little representation of humans and none at all of plants. What is most interesting about all of these paintings is their
spiritual quality. Although it is difficult to separate art from the spiritual, this article will focus on the art of Grotte Chauvet as discussed primarily by paleolithic art historian Diana McDonald
of Boston University in her 32-minute video that follows.
Quality of the art
From an artistic point of view, the Grotte Chauvet artists applied sophisticated techniques of drawing, shading, perspective, and
composition on their murals. They used charcoal to produce black and gray colors and red ochre. Sometimes they prepared their "canvases" by scraping surfaces and painting on them. They also engraved softer stone with their fingers, a rock, or a bone, as shown with this owl figure. (Note that the owl is pictured from the back with its head turned 180 degrees.)
Grotte
Chauvet is between 100-130 feet high and covered with stone columns,
stalagmites, stalactites, and many other rock formations. The striking feature typical of this cave and many of the European cave paintings are the large caverns that could emit certain sound qualities. Since
flutes and drums go back 42-40,000 years, singing
and music were probably also a part of the cave experience.
Grotte Chauvet is composed of a series of chambers or galleries which get darker and darker as one penetrates the cave. This lack of light also leads researchers to believe that no one lived in the cave but rather that the people used it for spiritual purposes.
Cave bears hibernated in the cave as evidenced by the bones, claw scratchings, and impressions of their bodies left on the cave floor. Handprints in red ochre tend to be closest to the entrance of the cave while more interesting figures are in the deepest parts of the cave--including an altar with a bear skull on top of it. The figures seem to be consciously grouped although it is not always evident as to the logic behind these groupings. The painters also used various rock formations and the cracks in the rock to make the animals appear to be alive and emerging from the rock, as with this rhino (above photo).
There is also some evidence to
suggest that a significant quantity of the charcoal drawings were painted by a
single master artist although scientists have determined through carbon dating of the charcoal, torch marks, and the drawings themselves that the first and most
numerous cave paintings at Grotte Chauvet were done 35,000-36,000 years ago and
the second 29,000-30,000 years ago.
The 1000+ paintings and engravings seem to exhibit some kind of theme. For example, in the most accessible part of the cave, most images are drawn in red ochre, like this bison made with palm prints, while only a few are in black. In the deeper galleries of the cave, the animals are mostly drawn and/or shaded in blacks and grays, with far
fewer rock engravings and red figures.
Animals are also grouped into specific panels like the Horse Panel and the Panel of Lions
and Rhinoceroses. What makes Chauvet such an important example of cave art
is the sophistication of its
paintings. No other Aurignacian cave contains compositions with the same
degree of realism, naturalism and complexity.
On the Horse Panel, Paleolithic scientist Jean
Clottes noted that the images were intended to be experienced in the same way we
view movies, theater, or even religious ceremonies today—as a powerful, shared
experience. Flickering lights from the artists' torches--and today's flashlights--make the figures appear to move.
The people lived near these dark and silent caves,
not in them. Researchers believe that their art contains
both their imaginations and their sacred myths in the form of
wall drawings, sculpted objects, geometric shapes, signs, and bone
collections.
Plants were not included in this menagerie of
drawings. However, what is unique to Grotte
Chauvet from other Paleolithic caves are the depictions of carnivorous
animals who once roamed the Earth thousands of years ago. Most other
cave paintings feature sedentary animals. Only
occasionally are humans represented and these are mostly in partial
forms like hands, palms, and finger prints.
The rhinos were feared and admired for their skin, horns, menacing appearance,
and wild behaviors. There are 17 rhinos in the end chamber.
This painting has the rhinos' swooping horns in repetition of several overlapping horns. The Egyptians and Mesopotamians used this technique to show
multiples of animals. The artists here used it to show movement.
The artists were remarkably skilled and sophisticated as their paintings reveal a sureness of
sinous outline, the beauty of shading, and a realistic feel of the animals. They obviously put a lot of forethought into their paintings and were close observers of the animals’ behavior and their relationships with each other. These rhinos crash into each other as their front legs are splayed. Quick brush strokes further illustrate their ferocious action.
The Horses Panel below illustrates the artists' appreciation for the horses' beauty and agility. A different species from today, they had short heads, small eyes, and a brush-like mane. They were hunted for their meat and not tamed or domesticated.
Mammoths (lower left) were huge animals and too dangerous to hunt. The horse and reindeer were the prey of choice. There are not many mammoths on the cave walls but when they appear, they are usually in charcoal or engraved in clay. They exhibit a lumbering movement due to their size.
Lions, however, seemed to hold a particular fascination for the artists. (Visitors to the cave seem equally fascinated by them.)
They are located primarily in the last chamber where a painting shows a whole pride closing in on a bison. This stunningly dramatic panel was prepared by
scraping the background rock, which again indicates careful thought and planning before painting the figures. The lions have gaping
mouths, erect ears, sharp eyes, stretched out bodies but no manes as today's male lions do. The lions work together as a team to attack and subdue their kill successfully. This is regarded as a lesson to humans who must cooperate with each other in order to survive.
The end chamber, the darkest and most remote of all the chambers takes advantage of the pendulum rock to illustrate attention to procreation and fertility. A woman's vagina is overlayed with the head of a bison and a lion, the most dangerous parts of those animals. Procreation and fertility seem to be a perpetual theme not only with Paleolithic man but among the ancient civilizations. Women and goddesses were often paired with dangerous and virile animals.
The cave paintings found in Grotte Chauvet provide insight into the Paleolithic Mind and its capabilities. These people closely observed the fauna around
them and accurately depicted them and their behaviors from memory.
As the day continued, the sky became milky because the dust was
gradually moving away from France and over the Alps to Italy. We caught a
picture of it here where the sun was uncharacteristically magnified and
left silhouettes of the mountainous landscapes surrounding Le Puy.
The
sirocco arises from a warm, dry, tropical air mass that is pulled
northward by low-pressure cells moving eastward across the Mediterranean
Sea. The wind originates in the Sahara desert, and the hotter, drier
continental air mixes with the cooler, wetter sea air to propel a
counter-clockwise circulation of the mixed air across southern Europe.
