today: a trip to the bluest pond of Germany. which is called, following the blue logic: "Blautopf" - "Bluepot". it's a place that doesn't like to be photographed. it's not a large lake, either. but a deep one, with legends attached to it. the lake, it has an open ground, with a spring at its bottom that leads into a cave system. that's why the water is so blue: "The water's blue color is the result of chemical properties of limestone densely distributed in the water."
there’s a walkway around it, and the light and blue shifts with the angle you look at it. it’s a small place of many views. if you walked around it in a medium pace, it might take you 5 minutes. but this place isn't made for medium. it invites to slow down, to sit on a bench, to watch the surface that looks so still, while all the time, water is pouring from it, and flowing into the stream called "Blau".
if you follow that stream, you are lead to a labyrinth of sub-streams that run past houses. there's a wooden bridge here, an old mill there - the oldest building of the town, and maybe the starting place of what later became this town. there are walkways, tiny bridges, doors that open to water. and there's the place where the streams come together again: a pair of swans nests there, in between all.
the pictures are missing something, of course: the sound of water, the flow of it. here's a water video:
The Neolithic Venus of Blaubeuren
all that is only half of the story - it was here, in this valley, that some tiny remains of another time were found: flutes, 2 lion men, and just recently: a venus figure. made of the ivory of mammoths. which gives an idea of how old those memories of a time gone are: about 35.000 to 40.000 years. i still have to wrap my head around this. just last week, i was in a place that reached back to Celtic times, and i felt: that was a long time to imagine already: 2200 years ago, near here.
and compared to that, the Venus is 20 times older. how to capture that? but so interesting, this reaching into the past. and it most probably was the very same water source that brought those very early settlements there. the same blue. only that back then, it was mammoths instead of swans (well.)
the discovery is a recent one, though: it was about 4 years ago that archeologists found the venus figurine the, the "Venus of Hohle Fels". the town is still reshaping its museum, here's a photo from the current exhbition, with a collection of other female figurines from long past:
At the exhibition, they also showcased some books that related to the theme, one is written by a historian and a literary professor, both from the university in Tübingen, it's titled: "Die Venus aus dem Eis - Wie vor 40.000 Jahren unsere Kultur entstand" - "The Venus from the Ice - How 40.000 year ago, our culture developed", which has the venus on its cover
The known and the unknown
The university takes care of the scientific studies that relate to the area of Blaubeuren, the original venus is in their labs. And it seems, the scientists there arrived at the same question: how to capture this time, and how to deal with the mix of facts and theories?
There are so many facts that were found and explored in the last years there, but also so much unknown about that time, they tried to make the knowledge accesible in a science-novel: based on what they know, but adding a narrative and also additional parts with scientific notes. I knew i just had to read the book. And it’s well written, and very interesting and illustrative, with the narrative and with additional chapters that include explanations, notes and diagrams, like this one that sums up the keys to life on earth in the last 250.000 years:
And there is an English wiki page of Venus figurines, and of the Venus of the Hohle Fels.
It seems like magic that those figurines survived through time. They feel like stories from the past, materialized in our modern world.
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and as all those home road trips start to connect more and more, here the links to the previous regional road trips:
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| celtic memorial site |
- a-day road trip along Roman roads and home rivers
- into the past: a Celtic settlement from 2200 years ago
- our local ex-vulcano: Randecker Maar / Swabian Jura
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