Why be discipline’s slave?
Snapping the golden chain.
Step boldly toward the sunset!
Gasan Jōseki (峨山 韶碩), 1275–1366
Sunset over the Juras
4
The language of mountains and rivers
Mont Blanc seen from the west (Mégeve) in March 2014
“They passed aeons living alone in the mountains and forests;
only then did they unite with the Way and use mountains and rivers for words,
raise the wind and rain for a tongue, and explain the great void.”
Dogen Zenji (1200-1253), Shobogenzo
Maternal ancestors: Bronze age, iron age, Roman Britain
This post has been superceded by a new post my-maternal-ancestors-from-eve-via-ice-age-europe-to-victorian-england which contains latest information from a recent more detailed analysis of my mtDNA together with revised and updated dates and locations of haplogroup founders.
This is the last of a series of posts on my deep maternal ancestors, identified through analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which is passed only from the mother to the child and so provides a trail of maternal ancestors identifiable through the mutations accumulated in the mtDNA. In this post I summarize the “recent” maternal ancestors who lived through the beginnings of agriculture in Britain, the British bronze age, the British iron age, the Roman occupation, and post-Roman Britain.
Grand Montets: high mountain skiing
Les Grands Montets rises above the village of Argentiere near Chamonix in the French Alps. With exceptional vertical drops and tough terrain, about half the runs are black. I dropped the boys at school and in about an hour was in Argentiere. After another hour (mainly waiting in queues) and two telecabine rides I was on top of Grand Montets at 3300 m, with a spectacular view of Mont Blanc and clear blue skies. Chamonix is visible in the valley below.
Mont Blanc seen from Aiguille des Grands Montets
Cathar castles: Montréal de Sos and the Grail Cave
Further up the Vicdessos valley from the ice age paintings of Niaux ( https://mountainsrivers.com/2014/02/23/the-ice-age-paintings-of-the-grotte-de-niaux/) is one of the less well known Cathar castles, known as Montréal de Sos. It sits on a rocky outcrop, the Vic de Sos, from which the valley gets its name. Occupied since the Bronze age, this was the site of an Iron Age oppidum, a Carolingian fortress, and during the Cathar period one of the most powerful castles of the Foix region, Montréal-de-Sos. Under the castle remains is a cave with two exits – or an entrance and a different exit. Such caves were used for initiation rituals in Cathar times.
The Vic de Sos, 2011. On top is Montréal de Sos, entrances to the Grail Cave below.
Two brand new uncles, a new aunt, and a flock of cousins in a pear tree
What did I give Mum for Christmas 2013? Two brand new uncles, a new aunt, and a flock of cousins in a pear tree!
Mum never knew her maternal grandfather as he disappeared from the scene after the birth of his last child in 1905, and the family has never known what happened to him. He was an American born in Boston and in the early 2000s I hired a researcher in Boston who found almost no information except some indication that his mother existed and was a widow in Boston around 1905.
Last Christmas while visiting Mum and my sister, I decided to spend a little time searching the web yet again for some clues about him. And I was stunned to discover a marriage certificate for him in Sydney to another woman and then to discover he had a daughter and two sons who in turn had children, my Mum’s new cousins. And they seemed to have lived in the same suburb of Sydney as my Mum’s parents. So my grandmother may easily have bumped into her half-brothers and sisters in the shops. What’s more, he described himself as a bachelor on his second marriage certificate, so he was almost certainly a bigamist. My sister found this quite entertaining http://irenewaters19.com/2014/01/18/weekly-photo-challenge-families/.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: White
Silent, white, skiing off-piste in the Val d’Anniviers, Swiss Alps
Change of theme
I was using the Twenty Ten theme and decided I wanted my category pages to show the full post, not just the first few lines (and without any images). So I changed to Twenty Eleven today. Not sure I like it as much, the pages seem narrower, though I did a comparison and the amount of text on a line was the same. A small bonus is that the header image is a bit deeper, so the cropping is not as extreme as in Twenty Ten. Gives more flexibility in using photos for headers.
Wordless Wednesday – 26 February 2014
Easter skiing, Les Houches, France, 2013
The ice age paintings of the Grotte de Niaux
One of my deep maternal ancestors, Una, probably lived in the Basque region or perhaps a little further north around 12,000 years ago, which would make her my great*780th grandmother (give or take a few generations). She may well have been part of the Magdalenian culture in the foothills of the Pyrenees who produced the stunning cave paintings at sites such as Roc-de Sers, Lascaux, and Niaux. I have visited the Grotte de Niaux twice, once in 1992 and again in 2011. It is one of the few caves with Paleolithic paintings that can still be visited.
Mountains and rivers 