Glozel: What happened?

Le Glozel is a hamlet in the Allier department of France. In the last century many inscribed objects were discovered there.

The script on the objects resembles Cave Script. My hypothesis is that the script is a member of the Cave Script family.

Image: Salomon Reinach
Image: Salomon Reinach

Le Glozel would appear to be the last resting place of the victims of a natural disaster. Many of the objects carry inscriptions describing the disaster, and the loss of life. For me, the most moving example is the image above. The image is engraved on a stone pebble.

Image: Salomon Reinach
Image: Salomon Reinach

To decipher the image, we need to put ourselves in the position of the narrator. That is the reindeer stood on higher ground. The reindeer has smaller antlers than the reindeer lying below. Thus we can determine that our narrator is female. She has her eyes closed, because she is trying to shut out the scene below.

In the valley below, we see the river, with the body of a male reindeer. We see that next to the body is the Chinese radical bāo 勹, meaning envelop. If we turn the pebble clockwise, the next thing that we come to is the river. The reindeer was enveloped by the river and drowned, but reindeer are good swimmers, so why did he die?

For the answer, we look at the granulite ring below. It was found at neighbouring Moulin Piat in a bend of the River Sichon, and carries two words.

Image: Musée de Glozel
Image: Musée de Glozel

From looking at the scripts from Le Glozel, I have concluded that the earthquake unleashed a devastating series of events. The natural dam wall of a crater lake collapsed. The resulting flash flood killed fishermen from the lake and the people and animals in its path through the valleys below.

The burial site is just above the Vareille River on high ground between the Vareille Valley and the Sichon Valley. East of Le Glozel and north east of Moulin Piat is a place called Puy Ravel. A puy is a volcanic hill. It may well be that there was a lake at Puy Ravel. It is possible that the water and debris from the dam burst affected both the Vareille and Sichon valleys. Perhaps the ring was buried as a memorial to people who lost their lives at the water mill.

Image: Salomon Reinach
Image: Salomon Reinach

If we continue to turn the pebble. It brings us to the character shí 十 or wǔ X. It is an ideograph of four points and the centre, in other words everywhere. Next we have the Chinese radical gōng 工. It is a simple flow diagram: input; process; output. In the case of a river, it can be translated as flow. Then we have Shuowen Jiezi radical number 52 Jiū 丩, meaning to entangle.

Image: Salomon Reinach
Image: Salomon Reinach

Turning the pebble again, the story continues with a pictograph of a tomb. Then we have mì 冖, meaning to cover. Next is yī 一, meaning alone. I haven’t found a definite match for the last character. However, I think that it is probably a form of tǔ 土, meaning earth (four points, the centre and the ground beneath). It is possible that the narrator was referring to herself saying that she was alone on Earth.

Author's Note

Before anyone spends vast amounts of time deciphering the script, we need a geologist to verify the context. My interpretation of the pictographs is a crater lake. Was there a crater lake? If so, did the dam fail? Where was the lake? Was it at Puy Ravel? If not, where did the water come from?

References

Image Credits:

Renne mort: Salomon Reinach, 1928: Éphémérides de Glozel, Glozel Planche VII, p. 299, fig. 2: Simon Kra, Paris: Source: gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k205173m: Accessed: 29 December 2012

Anneau de granulite: Musée de Glozel: Source: http://www.museedeglozel.com/MoulPiat.htm: Accessed: 29 December 2012