The cave of Mas d'Azil
Michel Begon December 1992
One of the earliest memories I have of Ariege and one of the most expensive is our arrival Paris, summer 1943, my mother, my brothers and I, Mas d'Azil. Ernest Laborde had come to pick us up with Comrade cart. The cave was completely dark because of power restrictions. Motor vehicles did not circulate well, serving only to fuel the war. The night and the freshness we suddenly fell over after the warm light of day. Under the high arches of flights of crows screaming and rang the hoofs of the mare. "You see these cavities" said my mother "that is inhabited by prehistoric man."
Then I wanted to learn more. But to tell the story of the cave of Mas d'Azil, we must go even higher than in prehistoric times.
The folding of the Tertiary Pyrenean tipped geological strata as a layer cake on a slope, then an erosion surface has sectioned horizontally to land, but wedge in their thickness, so qu'affleurent north-south strata increasingly older. The hills of St. Croix in the sandstone are Pamiers tertiary chain Plantaurel is a Cretaceous limestone mountain range. South Massat, primary and metamorphic rocks form the high granite mountains. The Plantaurel comes from a sea sediment ago some seventy million years, when I was a kid, I was amazed to find five hundred meters above sea shells molded well and sometimes even colored yet more beautiful than the beaches of the Atlantic and whose grandfather was collection.
From block limestone origins, it only remains, however, that the base, the top was leveled by erosion, so the cave of Mas d'Azil is curiously headed a perched syncline, sombrero-shaped Mexican whose edges fall. Now this block, even truncated, was able to stop the flowing of Arize Sérou and contain in a natural lake on its southwestern flank. As the limestone is porous than hard waters have infiltrated it, here are several million years, and dug the huge tunnel five hundred meters, to be poured in resurgence, on the northern flank chain. If the roof had fallen in this mammoth site, we would have a gorge, a gorge or canyon, as further north, towards Sabarat, but the thick calcrete has fared better here than elsewhere.
During the long glacial Würm period, between 35,000 and 10,000 years before our era, was the vast natural shelter for hunters Cro Magnon ideal shelter against the cold and snow, in an atmosphere close to the tundra Siberian. Some tools show traces of human occupation as early as the Aurignacian period (- 30,000).
At this time began the great cave art, cave in Cosquer Calanques of Cassis is the oldest decoration in France and it seems even the world, to 25,000. But it is much later than the Ariege aesthetic climbs to the summits, with the famous caves of Niaux, Three Brothers, from Portel, Cow, Tuc of Audoubert and Mas d'Azil, to time called Magdalenian, around 10,000. This list is not exhaustive, moreover, my cousins have discovered on another site Plantaurel decorated modest indeed, as prehistorians have decided to keep secret the scientists of the future (so I've silent).
In painted images, the site of Mas d'Azil is not the richest, just a few representations of cattle, and carnivorous fish, it does not even show to visitors because of the narrow cavities. But his sculptures are famous: the horse neighing and propellants decorated deer bone, on which the National Museum of Saint Germain en Laye raided, but we still see fine prints at the Museum of Mas d'Azil devoted to prehistory.
Not more than elsewhere in the Pyrenees and Cantabrian zone, we have found human burial, while the Périgord Quercy in several dénombrent. Are we to believe only 300 kilometers away, the burial methods differ so much? It is thus unclear what the Ariégeois this high time of Cro Magnon course, but their stature and skin color escape us.
When the ice age ended around - 9.000, the Pyrenees glaciers melted in a few centuries, the beech forests covered the Ariege, mammoths and bison flowed back to the north and wall art suddenly disappeared . It is unknown if the same people stayed behind. However, this was the greatest time for the cave, which gave the name to the entire era "Azilian" of
- 9,000 - 6,000. Hunter-gatherers of that time have left piles of snail shells, which no doubt they made their delight, and especially evidence of a great technological advance, as they say today. The progressive miniaturization of tools and weapons is so remarkable, with arrowheads no bigger than fingernails, as the specialists denominate "the azilianisation. It was also found in the sands of Arize hundreds of pebbles painted with symbols, indecipherable so far, passing for the oldest form of writing in the world. The search services Electricite de France are to be interested in this mystery of prehistory with all mathematical means of artificial intelligence. We wish them every success.
Then came the Middle East cereal agriculture, which occupied preferably limestone plateaus, easier to work with hoe or plow the mud alluvial valleys. Between - 4.000 and - 2.000, civilization called "megalithic", the alignments of Carnac, put the value erosion surfaces that truncate the Plantaurel ago and we left the dolmens, including Cape del Pouech is the greatest. But the rain soon made to strip the thin layer of humus on the plateaus, where nothing grows now almost rocks.
Afterwards, channels Plantaurel remained so little conducive to agriculture, except perhaps to sheep and forestry, he survived only a few clearings for cultivation here and there pierce the huge forest. Few were the Gallo-Roman settlements, including one just on the roof of the cave. It is in this wooded and secluded that settled in 807, Benedictine abbey which has left its name or manse mas asylum hamlet of refuge, misspelled with a "z" by the cartographers of Louis XIV. With less than a kilometer from the shrine, the edge of the cave, gushing white water and fresh wind, she looked good to some monks or something sacred spring mouth that "blew" the mind?
The shores of Arize were cleared by the plows, but the calcareous crusts limiting the extension of fields and meadows, the population growth was only possible with the export of handicrafts. Over the stream falling from the cave on mills settled, and the village of Mas d'Azil industrializing by collecting Catalan forges, wool carders, drapers, manufacturers of articles made of bone, carpenters, glaziers ....
However, the religious reformation of the 16th century found its audience in rural handicrafts, while Catholicism remained attached to the land rent, as indicated by political historians Michel Chaunu Protestants. Not far from the cave - oh the power of myth! - You can see under the oaks and in a sort of adventure, the rock of slender called "Calvin's chair". It is doubtful that the preacher of Noyon had ever been in Ariege, but the site is typically that of a "Assembly of the Desert".
Built in Protestant stronghold after the destruction of the abbey, the Mas d'Azil successfully defended the seat placed on ridge Plantaurel Thémines by Marshal in 1625 and this was the ultimate military success the Huguenot army against the Catholic and royal. The cave was also fortified, and its cavities arranged in arsenals or magazines, so that after the Peace of Alès, Cardinal Richelieu ordered him to undermine him and jump inside. What prehistoric remains were destroyed as well, we never know!
People of the 17th century did not suspect either. For them, prehistory could not exist, the memoirs of the Bible have begun to write history from the creation of Adam and Eve, 6000 years before present, they felt. It took Lamarck and Lyell to give a little more time on evolution and Boucher de Perthes to imagine in 1850 the Stone Age.
In 1879 alone, Piette began archaeological excavations in the cave, followed by the Abbe Breuil. They were finished by Mandement husband, who made me, for the first time, visit the cavities around 1950, and I always remember a couple austere and passionate.
products excavations are exhibited in two museums Azilian of prehistory. One, in the recesses of the cave shows the fossil bones of animals that are found. The other, housed in a 18th century building on the square, presents the major pieces of the collection Péquart including Protome Horse and Fawn birds, two splendid sculptures Magdalenian antler, as well as copies of most beautiful parts of the collection Piette, registered at the Museum of National Antiquities in Saint Germain en Laye. Add that prehistory Azilian and Ariege in general is very strongly represented in the Paris museum, which is one of the finest.
Today, the municipality of Le Mas d'Azil sees the future with tourism and caress the project to reconstruct the lake Arize, to install the tent camps and caravans at the edges. Tomorrow we will visit Does the cave of Mas a pedalo? So farewell to my beautiful childhood memories!
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