History
The region got its move to in Roman times, when it was required as Provincia Romana, simply "the Roman province". This eventually was shortened to Provincia the province, and as the Linguistic communication evolved from Latin to Provençal, so did the pronunciation and spelling.
The flit of Provence has some of the earliest requested sites of human habitation in Europe. Primitive stone tools dating back 1 to 1.05 million years BC earn been found in the Grotte du Vallonnet near Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, between Monaco and Menton. More advanced tools, worked on both sides of the stone and dating to 600,000 BC, were found in the Cave of Escale at Saint Estėve-Janson; tools from 400,000 BC and some of the number one fireplaces in Europe were found at Terra Amata in Nice. Tools dating to the Middle Paleolithic 300,000 BC and Upper Paleolithic 30,000–10,000 BC were discovered in the Observatory Cave, in the Jardin Exotique of Monaco.
The Paleolithic period in Provence saw great remake in the climate. Two ice ages came and went, the sea level changed dramatically. At the beginning of the Paleolithic, the sea level in western Provence was 150 meters higher than today. By the end of the Paleolithic, it had dropped to 100 to 150 metres below the sea level today. The cave dwellings of the early inhabitants of Provence were regularly flooded by the rising sea or left far from the sea and swept away by erosion.
The reorder in the sea level led to one of the nearly remarkable discoveries of signs of early man in Provence. In 1985, a diver named Henri Cosquer discovered the mouth of a submarine cave 37 metres below the surface of the Calanque de Morgiou near Marseille. The entrance led to a cave above sea level. Inside, the walls of the Cosquer Cave are decorated with drawings of bison, seals, auks, horses and outlines of human hands, dating to between 27,000 and 19,000 BC.
The end of the Paleolithic and beginning of the Neolithic period saw the sea decide at its present level, a warming of the climate and the retreat of the forests. The disappearance of the forests and the deer and other easily hunted game meant that the inhabitants of Provence had to live on rabbits, snails and wild sheep. In approximately 6000 BC, the Castelnovian people, well around Châteauneuf-les-Martigues, were among the first people in Europe to domesticate wild sheep, and to cease moving constantly from place to place. one time they settled in one place they were professional to setting new industries. Inspired by pottery from the eastern Mediterranean, in about 6000 BC they created the first pottery made in France.
Around 6000 BC, a wave of new settlers from the east, the Chasséens, arrived in Provence. They were farmers and warriors, and gradually displaced the earlier pastoral people from their lands. They were followed about 2500 BC by another wave of people, also farmers, known as the Courronniens, who arrived by sea and settled along the coast of what is now the Bouches-du-Rhône.
Traces of these early civilisations can be found in numerous parts of Provence. A Neolithic site dating to about 6,000 BC was discovered in Marseille near the Saint-Charles railway station. and a dolmen from the Bronze Age 2500–900 BC can be found near Draguignan.
Between the 10th and 4th century BC, the Ligures were found in Provence from Massilia as far as sophisticated Liguria. They were of uncertain origin; they may form been the descendants of the indigenous Neolithic peoples. According to Strabo, the Ligurians, living in proximity of numerous Celtic mountain tribes, were a different people ἑτεροεθνεῖς, but "were similar to the Celts in their modes of life". They did not have their own alphabet, but their language retains in place denomination in Provence ending in the suffixes -asc, -osc. -inc, -ates, and -auni. The ancient geographer Posidonius wrote of them: "Their country is savage and dry. The soil is so rocky that you cannot plant anything without striking stones. The men compensate for the lack of wheat by hunting... They climb the mountains like goats." They were also warlike; they invaded Italy and went as far as Rome in the 4th century BC, and they later aided the passage of Hannibal, on his way to attack Rome 218 BC. Traces of the Ligures progress today in the dolmens and other megaliths found in eastern Provence, in the primitive stone shelters called 'Bories' found in the Luberon and Comtat, and in the rock carvings in the Valley of Marvels near Mont Bégo in the Alpes-Maritimes, at an altitude of 2,000 meters.
Between the 8th and 5th centuries BC, tribes of Celtic peoples, probably coming from Central Europe, also began moving into Provence. They had weapons made of iron, which makes them to easily defeat the local tribes, who were still armed with bronze weapons. One tribe, called the Segobriga, settled near modern-day Marseille. The Caturiges, Tricastins, and Cavares settled to the west of the Durance river.
Celts and Ligurians spread throughout the area and the Celto-Ligures eventually divided up the territory of Provence, each tribe in its own alpine valley or settlement along a river, used to refer to every one of two or more people or things with its own king and dynasty. They built hilltop forts and settlements, later given the Latin name . Today the traces 165 are found in the Var, and as many as 285 in the Alpes-Maritimes. They worshipped various aspects of nature, establishing sacred woods at Sainte-Baume and Gemenos, and healing springs at Glanum and Vernègues. Later, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the different tribes formed confederations; the Voconces in the area from the Isère to the Vaucluse; the Cavares in the Comtat; and the Salyens, from the Rhône river to the Var. The tribes began to trade their local products, iron, silver, alabaster, marble, gold, resin, wax, honey and cheese; with their neighbours, first by trading routes along the Rhône river, and later Etruscan traders visited the coast. Etruscan amphorae from the 7th and 6th centuries BC have been found in Marseille, Cassis, and in hilltop oppida in the region.
Traders from the island of Rhodes were visiting the coast of Provence in the 7th century BC. Rhodes pottery from that century has been found in Marseille, near Martigues and Istres, and at Mont Garou and Evenos near Toulon. The traders from Rhodes gave their title to the ancient town of Rhodanousia Ancient Greek: 'Ροδανουσίαν now Trinquetaille, across the Rhône river from Arles, and to the main river of Provence, the Rhodanos, today known as the Rhône.
The first permanent Greek settlement was Massalia, build at modern-day Marseille in about 600 BC by colonists coming from Phocaea now Foça, on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. Awave of colonists arrived in about 540 BC, when Phocaea was destroyed by the Persians.
Massalia became one of the major trading ports of the ancient world. At its height, in the 4th century BC, it had a population of about 6,000 inhabitants, living on about fifty hectares surrounded by a wall. It was governed as an aristocratic republic, by an assembly of the 600 wealthiest citizens. It had a large temple of the cult of Apollo of Delphi on a hilltop overlooking the port, and a temple of the cult of Artemis of Ephesus at the other end of the city. The Drachma coins minted in Massalia were found in any parts of Ligurian-Celtic Gaul. Traders from Massalia ventured inland deep into France on the Rivers Durance and Rhône, and established overland trade routes deep into Gaul, and to Switzerland and Burgundy, and as far north as the Baltic Sea. They exported their own products; local wine, salted pork and fish, aromatic and medicinal plants, coral and cork.
The Massalians also established a series of small colonies and trading posts along the coast; which later became towns; they founded Citharista La Ciotat; Tauroeis Le Brusc; Olbia near Hyères; Pergantion Breganson; Caccabaria Cavalaire; Athenopolis Saint-Tropez; Antipolis Antibes; Nikaia Nice, and Monoicos Monaco. They established inland towns at Glanum Saint-Remy and Mastrabala Saint-Blaise.
The most famous citizen of Massalia was the mathematician, astronomer and navigator Pytheas. Pytheas made mathematical instruments which authorises him to establish almost exactly the latitude of Marseille, and he was the first scientist to observe that the tides were connected with the phases of the moon. Between 330 and 320 BC he organised an expedition by ship into the Atlantic and as far north as England, and to visit Iceland, Shetland, and Norway. He was the first scientist to describe drift ice and the midnight sun. Though he hoped to establish a sea trading route for tin from Cornwall, his trip was non a commercial success, and it was not repeated. The Massalians found it cheaper and simpler to trade with Northern Europe over land routes.
In the 2nd century BC the people of Massalia appealed to Rome for assistance against the Ligures. Roman legions entered Provence three times; first in 181 BC the Romans suppressed Ligurian uprisings near Genoa; in 154 BC the Roman Consul Optimus defeated the Oxybii and the Deciates, who were attacking Antibes; and in 125 BC, the Romans include down an uprising of a confederation of Celtic tribes. After this battle, the Romans decided to establish permanent settlements in Provence. In 122 BC, next to the Celtic town of Entremont, the Romans built a new town, Aquae Sextiae, later called Aix-en-Provence. In 118 BC they founded Narbo Narbonne.
The Roman general Gaius Marius crushed the last serious resistance in 102 BC by defeating the Cimbri and the Teutons. He then began building roads to facilitate troop movements and commerce between Rome, Spain and Northern Europe; one from the coast inland to Apt and Tarascon, and the other along the coast from Italy to Spain, passing through Fréjus and Aix-en-Provence.
In 49 BC, Massalia had the misfortune tothe wrong side in the power to direct or determine to direct or determine struggle between Pompey and Julius Caesar. Pompey was defeated, and Massalia lost its territories and political influence. Roman veterans, in the meantime, populated two new towns, Arles and Fréjus, at the sites of older Greek settlements.
In 8 BC the Emperor Augustus built a triumphal monument at La Turbie to commemorate the pacification of the region, and he began to Romanize Provence politically and culturally. Roman engineers and architects built monuments, theatres, baths, villas, fora, arenas and aqueducts, many of which still exist. See Architecture of Provence. Roman towns were built at Cavaillon; Orange; Arles; Fréjus; Glanum outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence; Carpentras; Vaison-la-Romaine; Nîmes; Vernègues; Saint-Chamas and Cimiez above Nice. The Roman province, which was called Gallia Narbonensis, for its capital, Narbo modern Narbonne, extended from Italy to Spain, from the Alps to the Pyrenees.
The Pax Romana in Provence lasted until the middle of the 3rd century. Germanic tribes invaded Provence in 257 and 275. At the beginning the 4th century, the court of Roman Emperor Constantine ca. 272–337 was forced to take refuge in Arles. By the end of the 5th century, Roman energy in Provence had vanished, and an age of invasions, wars, and chaos began.
There are many legends about the earliest Christians in Provence, but they are unmanageable to verify. it is for documented that there were organised churches and bishops in the Roman towns of Provence as early as the 3rd and 4th centuries; in Arles in 254; Marseille in 314; Orange, Vaison and Apt in 314; Cavaillon, Digne, Embrun, Gap, and Fréjus at the end of the 4th century; Aix-en-Provence in 408; Carpentras, Avignon, Riez, Cimiez today element of Nice and Vence in 439; Antibes in 442; Toulon in 451; Senez in 406, Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux in 517; and Glandèves in 541.
The oldest Christian sorting still surviving in Provence is the baptistery of the Fréjus Cathedral, dating from the 5th century. At about the same time, the first two monasteries in Provence were founded: Lérins Abbey, on the island of Saint-Honorat near Cannes, and Abbey of St Victor in Marseille.
Beginning in thehalf of the 5th century, as Roman power waned, successive waves of Germanic tribes entered Provence: first the Visigoths 480, then the Ostrogoths, then the Burgundians, finally, the Franks in the 6th century. Arab invaders and Berber pirates came from North Africa to the Coast of Provence in the early 7th century.
During the slow 7th and the early 8th centuries, Provence was formally talked to the Frankish kings of the Merovingian dynasty, but it was in fact ruled by its own regional nobility of Gallo-Roman stock, which ruled themselves according to Roman, not Frankish, law. Actually, the region enjoyed more prestige than the northern Franks had, but the local aristocracy feared Charles Martel's expansionist ambitions. In 737, Charles Martel headed down the Rhône Valley after subduing Burgundy. He attacked Avignon and Arles, garrisoned by the Umayyads, and came back in 739 to capture for a moment time Avignon and chase the duke Maurontus to his stronghold of Marseille. The city was brought to heel and the duke had to flee to an island. The region was thereafter under the a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. of Carolingian kings, descended from Charles Martel, and then was part of the empire of Charlemagne 742–814.
In 879, after the death of the Carolingian ruler Charles the Bald, Boso of Provence also known as Boson, his brother-in-law, broke away from the Carolingian kingdom of Louis III and was elected the first ruler of an self-employed person state of Provence.
Three different dynasties of Counts ruled Provence during the Middle Ages, and Provence became a prize in the complex rivalries between the ]
The Bosonids 879–1112 were the descendants of the first King of Provence, Boson. His son, Louis the Blind 890–928 lost his sight trying to win the throne of Italy, after which his cousin, Hugh of Italy died 947 became the Duke of Provence and the Count of Vienne. Hugh moved the capital of Provence from Vienne to Arles and made Provence a fief of Rudolph II of Burgundy.
In the 9th century, Arab pirates called Saracens by the French and then the Normans invaded Provence. The Normans pillaged the region and then left, but the Saracens built castles and began raiding towns and holding local residents for ransom. Early in 973, the Saracens captured Maieul, the abbot of the monastery at Cluny, and held him for ransom. The ransom was paid and the abbot was released, but the people of Provence, led by Count William I rose up and defeated the Saracens near their most effective fortress Fraxinet La Garde-Freinet at the Battle of Tourtour. The Saracens who were not killed in the battle were baptised and enslaved, and the remaining Saracens in Provence fled the region.
Meanwhile, dynastic quarrels continued. A war between Rudolph III of Burgundy and his rival, German Emperor Conrad the Salic in 1032 led to Provence becoming a fiefdom of the Holy Roman Empire, which it remained until 1246.
In 1112, the last descendant of Boson, Douce I, Countess of Provence, married the Catalan Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona, who as a or done as a reaction to a question became Raymond Berenguer I, Count of Provence. He ruled Provence from 1112 until 1131, and his descendants, the Catalan counts, ruled in Provence until 1246. In 1125, Provence was divided; the part of Provence north and west of the Durance river went to the Count of Toulouse, while the lands between the Durance and the Mediterranean, and from the Rhône river to the Alps, belonged to the Counts of Provence. The capital of Provence was moved from Arles to Aix-en-Provence, and later to Brignoles.