The Rocks of Galta

You walk past a little building that used to house the roadmender’s tools. The path you take is the former King’s road between St-Germain-de-Calberte and Barre-des-Cévennes, which was rebuilt in the early 17th century on the orders of the Intendant of Languedoc, tasked with repressing the Camisard uprising. The King’s roads allowed royal troops to penetrate into areas where movement was very difficult. This road is built on supporting walls and, in some sections, carved into the rock.

At the pass is a standing stone or menhir, a schist slab 1 ½ m high and 80 cm wide, which has circular depressions known as cup marks and carved rods. Many vestiges attest to the presence of humans in the schist valleys of the Cevennes as of 3,000 BC: tombs, menhirs, carved marks. Some 15 menhirs have been inventoried in the Gardon valleys. They are not grouped together but located on ridges or at passes. Their meaning remains very unclear: landmarks for orientation, symbols linked to worship, territorial markers, etc.?

The name Galta is believed to come from the Indo-European root Kar, gal, meaning rock, stone. Schists are former sediments stemming from the erosion of mountains. In the Cevennes, these sediments are about 500 million years old and were probably deposited on the edges of a former ocean that separated the north and south of what is now France. About 350 million years ago, these sediments were buried at depth and subjected to high pressure and temperatures of around 500° C. This turned them into schists, made up of new minerals: feldspaths, micas and quartz. This transformation is associated with deformation and called metamorphism. Water has run off the impermeable schist bedrock and carved out deep furrows, creating one of France’s most rugged regions. The ridges are orientated along a northwest-southeast axis.