ABSTRACT
Clovis's kingdom became the ancestor of the modern French state, making France "the oldest nation of Europe". The political entity Clovis had created never disappeared, however, and its core always remained the territories along the Seine and Loire rivers that had been the center of the original kingdom. The flat or rolling countryside one finds around Paris and in the southwest lies above softer sedimentary rock, deposited in geological eras when the part of Europe was under the oceans; the areas include France's richest agricultural regions. The Brittany peninsula makes the trip from the mouth of the Seine to the mouth of the Loire a long and difficult voyage. The flat lands of northern France form part of the north European plain that sweeps across Germany and Poland into Russia, but the Ardennes, Vosges, and Jura mountain chains separate French territory from neighboring regions.
