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migrated north and the hunters
went with them.

While great civilizations flourished
in Mesopotamia, Egypt and China,
a few poor isolated tribes had
penetrated the forests and construc-
ted the first villages on piles on
the marshy shores of the Lake of
Geneva. At this time, lakes and
rivers provided the easiest mode of
travelling. These people had to share
their environment with aurochs,
wolves and bears. But there was also
an abundance of small game to eat,
not to mention fish.

With the passage of centuries and
Sediments from the bottom of the thick, collided with the Jura Moun- generations, the hunters and fishers
former Tethys Ocean, once stretching tains and split into two streams, one learned to chop down the trees and
600 or 700 kilometres, are now turning south-west towards Geneva plant crops -- they became far-
squeezed into a space barely 100 and spreading out in a vast icy delta mers. Some of the settlements be-
kilometres across. reaching as far as Lyon, the other came villages of considerable size
finally petering out at Solothurn. Ice and different trades began to assert
During this same period, and due once covered the Salève. themselves: the potter, the baker,
to the same pressures, the Pyrenees the weaver, the carpenter, the that-
were formed, as well as mountain When the last glacial era came to an cher. Thus, the foundations were
ranges all round the Mediterranean end about 20,000 years ago, it left set for the community we find living
Basin. Between 15 and 10 million us the Lake of Geneva as we find it round the lake today.
years ago, the same relentless pres- today. In the tundra-like conditions
sure from the south caused the Jura mammoths, reindeer and musk ox Despite global warming, there is
Mountains to rise where, unlike the grazed alongside Arctic hares and every reason to believe that we are
turmoil caused in the Alps, the layers snowy owls. But eventually tem- in one of the Earth's cyclical inter-
of rock slipped over each easily to perate vegetation returned and, glacial periods. Rather, we are
form neat folds. This is because at under balmy skies, covered the hills already past the warm peak and
the base they lie on top of salt pans. and plains. unavoidably sliding towards another
Millimetre by millimetre, Africa and
Europe are still moving closer even
day-- as testified by earthquakes in
Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, Italy,
Algeria, Morocco. Some tens of mil-
lions of years hence the Alps and
the Mediterranean will have disap-
peared and their place will be taken
by a chain of mountains higher and
longer than the Alps after the final
cataclysmic collision between Africa
and Europe.

Even as the Alps were rising, erosion
began to carry them away. But a se-
ries of events was to accelerate this
attrition— the major glaciations.
The most recent episodes in this
saga were the successive waves of And finally man appeared on the ice age in some 10,000 years. Thus,
glaciation that have marked the last scene. He lit fires in the entrances long before the Mediterranean
2.5 million years. It is difficult to as- to caves on the Salève; he armed becomes a mountain range, the
certain the actual number of waves his weapons with flints; he wore giant glaciers will have returned to
since each event tended to oblite- primitive jewellery; he drew the gnaw at the granite of Mont Blanc
rate what had gone before. During silhouettes of animals in char- and will have reduced it to a rocky
each period, the Aar, Rhone and coal and blood. But principally he stump.
Arve Glaciers came spilling out of hunted the reindeer. However, as
their valleys a kilometre and a half the climate warmed up, the reindeer HAYWARD BEYWOOD

136 Geneva