ABSTRACT
On the domed ceiling of the municipal library in Carcassonne is a painting that I noticed for the first time in the summer of 1969. It struck me not only for its beauty but also for what it instantly told me about the history of Mediterranean France, and now much later about the history of the world. In the foreground crouches a primitive man clad in animal skins; concealed behind bushes at the top of a forested cliff, he stares in astonishment at what appears to be a Mycenaean ship moored just offshore. On the beach below a few men dressed in Mycenaean warriors’ costume are at work loading cargo—barrels, newly killed game—evidently having stopped in this cove to take on provisions. The artist evidently knew the prehistory of the region, for early Greek and Phoenician voyagers have left ample archaeological evidence of their presence in these waters of western Languedoc and Roussillon, where the Corbieres and Pyrenees mountains run down to the sea. In the Mycenaean age the western Mediterranean was a frontier into which civilization advanced gradually over the next five centuries. By the beginning of the seventh century civilization had reached the Atlantic coast of North America. Now the advancing Europeans carried different weapons, dressed differently, and spoke different languages. Yet they still arrived at the frontier by ship; first the Mediterranean, then the Atlantic became accessible waterways carrying civilized humanity to new and abundant resources.
