![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2019\/03\/53906714_10157109253077938_4605107180796903424_n.jpg\")
<\/a>medicin to Louis XV, a 16th<\/sup> century home restored as a ten-room hotel.\u00a0 As I looked out the window on the town, I saw looming over us a 14th<\/sup> century castle, one that defended the town in days of yore. I felt younger.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThen, in comparison with the rest of the day, \u00a0I was even younger\u2014because much of this region, P\u00e9rigord, has been settled by homo sapiens for about as long as there have been homo sapiens\u2014about 40,000 years\u2014and the relics of humans (and predecessors–Neanderthals and Cro Magnons) abound.\u00a0 In fact, the caves at Lascaux (pronounced Lascow, a spelling adopted for a local beer), with its extensive art were one of the reasons Carolyn designed this trip\u2014an opportunity to cross off one of the highest-ranking items on her bucket list.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The caves were rediscovered in September 1940 when four lads chased a dog into a hole that appeared when a tree toppled, re-exposing the entrance to the cave.\u00a0 For about 25 years, the cave owners and the state welcomed visitors\u2014almost 1 million\u2014until someone realized that the number of humans who visited reduced the possibility that the cave art would last.\u00a0 About 20 years later, the French government opened a meticulous recreation of about half the cave; five years ago, Lascaux IV opened, with about 95% of the cave reproduced in detail, in a setting cave-like, but one that will preserve the art in the original cave. The paintings are stunning.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The National Museum of Prehistory, about 25 miles away, had to be our second stop.\u00a0 It predates the discovery of the Lascaux caves by over 30 years, and was started because a number of the \u201cfinds\u201d in the area were winding up in Berlin.\u00a0 In fact, the Kaiser himself bought something\u2014which led to a patriotic (French) outcry and a new museum.\u00a0 Once housed in a local chateau, it\u2019s now in a new building of its own.\u00a0\u00a0 There were over 400,000 items in the collection, most of them from the local area, but some reproductions (Lucy from Ethiopia, the first upright walking fossil\u2014I saw the original in Addis Ababa), and some from elsewhere in Europe, including Bulgaria. Many of the items are flakes, but making tools was one of the first \u201ctechnological\u201d breakthroughs of modern man.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n When we got back, I felt much younger.\u00a0 How often does that happen?<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" March 12, 2019 When I woke up yesterday in Montignac and looked in the mirror, I thought, \u201cOld.\u201d\u00a0 Then I realized where I was\u2014in the former home of Dr. Bouilhac, medicin to Louis XV, a 16th century home restored as a ten-room hotel.\u00a0 As I looked out the window on the town, I saw looming … Continue reading “Old? I used to think I was”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe-2019"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1707"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8409,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1707\/revisions\/8409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a> <\/a>The caves (new and old) are probably a mile long, with the best-known art in prehistory.\u00a0 I discovered there\u2019s a lot of caves in the area, and a lot more art, but the Lascaux Caves are the best preserved and the best known.\u00a0 The humans who lived in the cave did so about 20,000 years ago, on the edge of carbon 14 dating, and painted what they knew: bison, cows, and horses, and some animals that no longer exist, like cave bears and mammoths.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n