Solid mass of Garlaban

The massive of Garlaban overhangs the city and the plain of Aubagne. It is a calcareous solid mass dating from the end of the secondary era. Its formation is allotted to folds dating from the Crétacé superior. It contains tops like Red Tête (thus called because of its form and its ocher color given by the Bauxite), Taoumé (where the cave of Grosibou is, celebrates cave of the novels the Glory of my father and the Castle of my mother of Pagnol).

It is also the name of one of its higher tops, Garlaban, which culminates to 714 m of altitude. The culminating point of the solid mass is the Hillock of Pinsots (729 m), located behind of Garlaban, and this not very visible fact. Garlaban is visible in most of the south of the department of the Rhone delta. Of Marseilles to the valley of the Huveaune, highway of Toulon to that of Aix-en-Provence, the rock is essential on the glance. It was formerly the reference mark for the sailors sailing in bay of Marseilles.

Known since Antiquity, the caves of the solid mass of Garlaban sheltered sedentary tribes living of hunting in the large forests which recovered it then and perhaps fishing, because it is not interdict to think only its large small valleys (Passetemps, Escaouprès) which furrows it were not, one day, of the affluents of the Huveaune.

Origins of the name

The name of Garlaban seems to find its origin in the direction of the two words which compose it: gardia (watchtower, observation post, place of guard) to indicate the watchtower which would have existed at the top of Garlaban; laban (cave into of Provence).

But in its dictionary Lou treasure of the félibrige , Frederic Mistral gives another definition. It would come from the association of the words gar or guer (top out of Basque and Arabic) and laban (white in Hebrew) and would have been used for the first time by navigators phenicians.

Ecology

There are a few tens of years, the solid mass of Garlaban was a large forest. Now, the Scrubland reign everywhere where fire passed, because this solid mass was crossed and devastated many times by fire. However one can appoint 5 dates of large fires in the solid mass: 1918,1942,1979 (more than 3000 hectares), 1983 (more than 1500 hectares), 1997 (the large fire of Marseilles devastated more than 3000 hectares of forest of which a part in Garlaban).

One can all the same find some remainders of forest in the solid mass, with four species: the Pine of Alep, majority, and the woodland Pine, the Holm oak and the pubescent Oak (or white Oak).

See too

References

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