Above Calanque Port-Pin looking back to the Cap Canaille near Cassis.
I’m in the south of France on the first leg of a holiday that combines a few days in Cassis, a seven day walk through the villages of Provence and then some travelling and visiting of places like Arles, Avignon and elsewhere in the region. While we are in Cassis we have been hiking on the sea cliffs, which is my very favourite form of walking. Around here the cliffs are limestone escarpments that rise up out of the Mediterranean to heights of almost 400 meters. The Cap Canaille that I’m looking at now is considered the highest sea cliff on the French coast.
Last year we visited the west coast of Italy and although I have been to the Mediterranean several times, each time I visit I am more struck and more taken with the history of these waters. Of course its all around you, in the architecture, the most notable of which is the defence constructions because this place has long been the sight of conflict, war, invasion and piracy, and those things last.
But especially here in The Calanques, a set of limestone inlets that serrate the coast east of Marseille, the more ancient history is at play. Geologically, the Mediterranean is interesting becasue it has experienced cataclymisc floods and events for millions of years. There were times it was cut off from the Atlantic, giving rise to what is know as the Messinian salinity crisis . This was followed by the Zanclean deluge when the Atlantic Ocean rushed in and filled the basin in a mega flooding event that are almost unimaginable at scale.
And there were ice ages that lowered the sea level by hundreds of meters.
Now the coolest thing I thing I have learned on this trip so far has to do with the rising and falling sea levels induced by the ice ages and the nature of the limestone all around. Limestone of course is porus and highly soluble, and when water drips through it from the surface it can carve out vast cave complexes. All over this region are caves which have been used as hermitages, wine cellars, protection and food storage up to the present day. Some of these caves were formed when the sea level was much lower, and now that it has risen again, these underwater caves are incredible grottos for divers to explore.
There is a cave not too far from here that was discovered 37 meters below the surface of the sea, at the base of a cliff by a diving guide called Henri Cosquer. He discovered the cave which now bears his name through a series of solo dives. The cave has a small opening and is big and long, and extends for 175 meters, slightly upward until you come to the surface of the water, which forms a small lake inside a cavernous hall. Cosquer spent many years following the cave to this lake, nearly dying a few times. Mostly he did this solo and kept the location a secret. When he finally found the chamber he was amazed by the limestone formations inside. There were the usual stalictites and stalagmites that one associates with limestone caves. There were mushroom shaped rocks and all kinds of interesting features. Cosquer and his friends kept exploring the cave and enjoying these sights privately.
One day in 1991, accompanied by his niece and two members of the local diving club, he was exploring the cave when they found a stencilled hand print on the cave wall. This moment, when they realized that they were not the first people to have been here must have been absolutely hair raising. Here is a cave millions of years old, submerged beneath 37 meters of water on a rough part of the coast, requiring a treacherous and technical swim into the dry gallery and here was evidence that a person had been here already. I keep thinking about what the feeling must have been like. Words cannot describe it.
It turns out that the handprint they found was not singular. This cave was ornately and liberally decorated with hundreds of prehistoric drawings dating back to between 19,000 and 27,000 years ago. There are 65 hand stencils, and 177 animal drawings all made when the sea level was lower and access to the cave was easily made one dry land. There are remnants of fires built for illumination and warmth and there are tools sitting where they were placed by the artists that carved and drew on the wall. Cosquer reported the find to the government and from that point on it was protected, studied and recognized as an archeological marvel.
All of this is captured in a museum in Marseille we visited that offers a kind of kitschy amusement park ride through a simulation of the cave. The story of Cosquer’s rediscovery of the cave though is incredibly compelling and I simply can’t shake the feeling that he must have had upon seeing that first hand print in the dark. Terror, awe, confusion, reverence…all of it probably. There is something about connecting beyond massive epochs and moments of history and geology that, as these most intimate scales, seems so profoundly deep.