Last Ape Standing Dispatch #10: France

This post was originally published on November 15, 2019 on a previous version of ChipWalter.com.

Returned last week after three weeks in France on assignment for National Geographic Magazine (this was spring 2013) … That makes me still a Last Ape Standing :-). Unbelievable trip! It’s been busy and deadlines loom on various projects so time is in short supply. Pardon my ragged and disjointed dispatch…

A sliver of Paris’s Latin Quarter

Arrived in Paris mid September direct from Pittsburgh. How nice was that! No hopping from city to city to get to the final destination exhausted and cramped. Jet lagged, yes, but then, jet lagged in Paris…hotel room not yet ready on arrival … walk down the streets of the Latin Quarter (Paris’s oldest neighborhood after the Île de la Cité and Saint Michel) and grab a bite to eat in a little bistro

Proof that Heinz is everywhere…

Later a meeting down the street from the hotel in the oldest square in Paris…just on the corner Victor Hugo’s old garret…the one where he wrote Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame! Think about that...th

Directly across the park, Victor Hugo wrote two of his greatest works.

Eleanor of Acquitaine, one of the great women of any time or place, walked up this street 900 years ago.

Little time for sight-seeing and after some meetings the next day we head to mountain…Eleanor of Aquitaine walked the main street here 900 years ago, up to the Basilica where St. Bernard gave the sermon that launched the Second Crusade, which, by the way, was led by Eleanor’s oldest son Richard the Lionheart…if that hadn’t happened there would be no Robin Hood legends…nor a Magna Carta (which changed the course of western history and is one of the foundations of the United States Constitution).

Prince/King John, Richard’s younger brother signed the Magna Carta because his brother was absent and on the crusades and eventually died (that’s another story)…

But I am here because there are also very ancient cave paintings nearby in a place named Arcy sur Cure, some approaching 40,000 years old. We have chosen this place (with Count Vezelay’s permission-he owns the caves) to explore that ancient art, some of which may have been created by Neanderthals. It was primal and beautiful and haunting.

Next…onto Toulouse and Montignac, the land of still more ancient caves. Stay tuned…

St. Bernard gave his sermon here and launched the Second Crusade, which in a strange way helped make the U.S. Constitution the fine document it is.

The chamber in the caves at Arcy sur Cur where we staged the “Paleo-Concert” using ancient instruments. It was quite an experience.