Des pieds-bots dans la vallée des Merveilles (Alpes-Maritimes) ?

Abstract

The high valleys of the Mount Bego region, in the Southern Alps, shelter a very important corpus of rock art from Recent Prehistory (IV-II millennium B.C.). Among these thousands of engravings, at least four anthropomorphic figures, attributed to the Final Neolithic, share a singularity: their feet are turned inward. The anatomical anomaly evokes the pathology of the bilateral clubfoot. If the identification hypothesis is correct, and knowing the context that accompanies these representations – namely the achievement of copper metallurgy in Northern Italy and in the Southern Alps –, maybe we should see there the oldest manifestations of the orthopedic affections from which, by nature, the mythological blacksmiths suffer.

Keywords

• engravings
• Alps
• Neolithic
• metallurgy
• clubfoot
• disability