Mont Bégo

Mont Bégo, in the foreground rock art in Fontanalba

The 2872 meter high Mont Bégo (including Monte Bego ) in the Alpes Maritimes ( Maritime Alps or Alpes Maritimes ) at Saint Dalmas- de -Tende is a mountain near the Italian border in France. With about 35,000 individual images, the region that surrounds him, next to the Valcamonica in Italy, the largest enclosed archaeological site of rock art in the southern half of Europe.

He is an excellent vantage point from its summit one can see the mountains of Corsica on a clear day across the Mediterranean through its exposed position.

History of Mont- Bégo region

Main article: Vallée des Merveilles

The Mont Bégo been climbed since the Bronze Age of people who BC punzten pictures from around 2000 in the rock, which are now of the highest scientific importance. The images come from a time in which the people had gone over to agriculture and livestock for thousands of years. You will find yourself at an altitude 2300-2500 meters on the banks of Lac Long Supérieur. Due to the weather conditions they are eight months buried under snow in the year.

That it is in the area around a region that has long been fraught with many myths, show names like Val d' Enfer (Valley of the Inferno ), Cime du Diable ( Devil's Peak ), Vallée des Merveilles (Valley of Wonders) or la Valmasque ( valley of the sorceress and the Valley of the witch from the Provencal la Masca ). The inhabitants of southern France and northern Italy, which have left drawings on Mont Bégo, Herodotus called the Ligurians. Their inscriptions were also found on the mountain. Later Christian characters were placed next to the anthropomorphic representations of the Bronze Age.

Between 1927 and 1942 mapped and cataloged Carlo Conti of the Archaeological Service of the Piedmont (the mountain belonged until 1947 to Italy) the petroglyphs. In addition, he found in Gia del Ciar ( sheepfold mice) ceramics from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. The images that have their own style, show, among other things:

• Anthropomorphic figures - adorierend or symbols holding up, plowing (partly ithyphallic )
• Equipment - halberds ( halberds ), yokes, crooks, plows, sickles, car
• Houses or fields, net-like structure
• Symbols - Eyes motifs, concentric circles, Radsymbole, spirals, Stiergehörne
• Animals - oxen before the plow, as single, double or quadruple teams ( usually shown from above) goat or ibex
• Weapons - knives

Since 1967, especially the team of Professor Henry de Lumley explores the same time scientific director of the Musée des Merveilles in Tende, the finds.

The sites of rock art and the valley Fontanalba ( White source ) are the inner, highly protected zone of the Mercantour National Park. The petroglyphs are protected by national park rangers. For the public, only certain routes are in the Vallée des Merveilles and Fontanalba freely available, others can be visited as part of guided tours.