Timeline by Michael Crichton Page A

the usual questions, the ones tourists always asked: What’s so special about that place? How do you know where to dig? How do you know what to look for? How deep do you dig and how do you know when to stop?
    “Why are you working there? What’s so special about that place, anyway?” one of the women asked.
    “The site is very typical for the period,” Kate said, “with two opposing castles. But what makes it a real find is that it has been a neglected site, never previously excavated.”
    “That’s good? That it was neglected?” The woman was frowning; she came from a world where neglect was bad.
    “It’s very desirable,” Marek said. “In our work, the real opportunities arise only when the world passes an area by. Like Sarlat, for instance. This town.”
    “It’s very sweet here,” one of the women said. The men stepped away to talk on their phones.
    “But the point,” Kate said, “is that it’s an accident that this old town exists at all. Originally, Sarlat was a pilgrimage town that grew up around a monastery with relics; eventually it got so big that the monastery left, looking for peace and quiet elsewhere. Sarlat continued as a prosperous market center for the Dordogne region. But its importance diminished steadily over the years, and in the twentieth century, the world passed Sarlat by. It was so unimportant and poor that the town didn’t have the money to rebuild its old sections. The old buildings just remained standing, with no modern plumbing and electricity. A lot of them were abandoned.”
    Kate explained that in the 1950s, the city was finally going to tear the old quarter down and put up modern housing. “André Malraux stopped it. He convinced the French government to put aside funds for restoration. People thought he was crazy. Now, Sarlat’s the most accurate medieval town in France, and one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country.”
    “It’s nice,” the woman said, vaguely. Suddenly, both men returned to the table together, sat down, and put their phones in their pockets with an air of finality.
    “What happened?” Kate said.
    “Market closed,” one explained. “So. You were saying about Castelgard. What’s so special about it?”
    Marek said, “We were discussing the fact that it’s never been excavated before. But it’s also important to us because Castelgard is a typical fourteenth-century walled town. The town is older than that, but between 1300 and 1400 most of its structures were built, or modified, for greater defense: thicker walls, concentric walls, more complicated moats and gates.”
    “This is when? The Dark Ages?” one of the men said, pouring wine.
    “No,” Marek said. “Technically, it’s the High Middle Ages.”
    “Not as high as I’m going to be,” the man said. “So what comes before that, the Low Middle Ages?”
    “That’s right,” Marek said.
    “Hey,” the man said, raising his wineglass. “Right the first time!”
    :
    Starting around 40 B.C., Europe had been ruled by Rome. The region of France where they now were, Aquitaine, was originally the Roman colony of Aquitania. All across Europe, the Romans built roads, supervised trade, and maintained law and order. Europe prospered.
    Then, around A.D. 400, Rome began to withdraw its soldiers and abandon its garrisons. After the empire collapsed, Europe sank into lawlessness, which lasted for the next five hundred years. Population fell, trade died, towns shrank. The countryside was invaded by barbarian hordes: Goths and Vandals, Huns and Vikings. That dark period was the Low Middle Ages.
    “But toward the last millennium — I mean A.D. 1000 — things began to get better,” Marek said. “A new organization coalesced that we call the feudal system — although back then, people never used that word.”
    Under feudalism, powerful lords provided local order. The new system worked. Agriculture improved. Trade and cities flourished. By A.D. 1200, Europe was thriving again, with