We have been psyching ourselves up for a change in tempo... away from adrenaline pumping mountains... away from scenes where dramatic world events occurred 2000 years ago... into the serene, beautiful, restful scenes of canals, avenues of poplars, Rapunzel Castles with romantic turrets.
The morning drive delivered countryside befitting expectations. We left the flat delta area of the Rhone... and headed into the rolling hills of the Languedoc-Roussillon region. We followed the Canal de Midi up to Beziers... we were becoming more languid with each turn in the road... in keeping with the vibes radiating from the countryside. We stopped at Beziers... took the compulsory snaps of boats navigating the locks on the Canal du Medi... enjoying the predictability of our day. At that point, things became less predictable.
We wanted coffee... and rather than fight the traffic in Beziers, we instructed 'Peggy' to take us to a nearby village. At the outskirts of the village, we saw a small signposting for ruins. We thought we would do a drive-through 'squizzy' before we had our coffee. It turns out, we had stumbled upon Ensérune... a major neolithic sites in France. The site was continually occupied from the 6th century BC to the 1st century AD... so there was a lot of history to untangle. In the second phase of its occupation (from the 5th to the 3rd centuries BC), it was a prosperous trading centre. This is a time well before Rome got its act together. Ensérune offered security (a fortified hill community), currency, written records, great storage for grains, close to the Mediterranean and some major road routes.
What amazed us was their ceramics. Being a trading centre, you are never sure what was locally produced... and what was imported. However, the quality... the thinness... the decoration... and the durability of the colour were remarkable. Being a hilltop community, they cremated their dead... and stored the ashes in vases... and over the centuries, the cemeteries became filled with thousands upon thousands of vases... not all of the finest quality... but better than most other civilisations produced at that time.
We accept Greece and Rome as the two defining civilisations of the bronze/iron ages. But here is Ensérune... leading the world in many aspects of civilisation... in its day. What circumstances stopped its continuing growth? Why didn't it build an empire?
We are in Carcassonne for the next 3 days... hopefully, after that we can once more go in search for languidity in the back roads of south-west France.
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