Page 45 - DIVA_No.18_2005

the Salève, the whole rock face been called Magdalenians; this flint, and reindeer bones and ilization.
collapsed in the region of name is based on the village of horns. This situation must have If you want to look for the rock
Veyrier/Pas de l'Echelle—of La Madeleine in the Dordogne continued for some 2,500 years shelters at Pas de I Echelle
which, more later. region of France where many (i.e. more than 100 genera- where the Magdalenian hunter
By 14,000 years before the artefacts have been found. At tions), by which time the rock lived you will be disappointed
present time the glaciers were Veyrier/Pas de l'Echelle they shelters were well filled with Most of the shelters lay within a
only found in mountain valleys. found the loosely piled slabs of debris. But the vegetation of the few hundred metres of the pres
However, as it retreated the rock resulting from the collapse Geneva basin had now evolved ent cable car station slightly to
Rhone Glacier left behind a of the façade of the Salêve and into a dense birch and pine for- the left as you face the Saleve
colossal mass of ice in the underneath them they estab- est. Reindeer eat lichen, grass Quarrying Ion ago destroyed
Geneva basin that must have lished their shelters. Mammoths and saplings and like wide-open nearly all of them and the rest
taken hundreds if not thousands were now gone from the spaces, so they migrated further were swept aside by the
of years to melt. Geneva area, being found only north to find the conditions that Autoroute blanche According
Needless to say, no animals on the top of the Jura—before suited them. The hunters fol- to the experts we are in an
could live on the ice, least of all dying out altogether. In these lowed them and disappeared interglacial period If the gla-
man. In these harsh conditions rock shelters the hunters left the from our region. The Ice Age, ciers started to melt about-
bout
man too had to adapt to survive. bones of what they ate, which marked by numerous minor 20000 years ago the warm
20,000
It seems that at least two or were above all the grouse-like advances and retreats, could be period reached its peak about
three thousand years elapsed bird called ptarmigan and rein- said to be over by about 10.000 6,000 years ago (that is to sayqp

between the retreat of the gla- deer of course, but also wild years ago. The present climate 4,000 BC) and—despite global
ciers from the Geneva basin and horse, marmots and hares. had arrived and the birch and warming, the greenhouse effect
the first timid arrival of Other animals that were hunted pine trees had to share their and all evidence to the con
mankind. Tribes of hunters to a lesser extent include the environment with oak, beech, trary we are now gently but
existed in the Burgundy region ibex, red deer, fox, chamois, walnut and hazel. Sometime irrevocably in a cooling phase
of (what is now) France and wild boar and at least one after the Magdalenian hunters The next Ice Age my he
about 12,500 years ago they aurochs. At one site a seriously had gone, new peoples penetrat- expected to show its teeth in
were drawn to the Lake of injured hunter survived for ed through the forests and about 10,000 years time Long
Geneva by the animal life, prin- some time on frogs! Their hunt- established numerous lake-side long after we are all gone
cipally reindeer. They have ing tools were largely made of civ- HAYWARD BEY WOOD1

1.2005 Diva 47