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The Lake Paladru: 5th more natural big lake of France - the “Blue Lake”.

Exceptional by the beauty of its environment and its crystalline water, the Lake Paladru offers a space of relaxation and leisures multiple to you.

The Lake Paladru was modelled, at the time glacial, by the powerful glacier of the Rhone. Its extent makes of it the 5th more natural big lake of France. Located at the hollow of the hills voironnaises to 500m of altitude, it posts an ideal temperature of its water with 25° in full summer.

The banks of the lake accomodated one of the first human communities of Isere 2700 years front J.C. (Neolithic village of the Bathers). Later, they are the “country knights of the Year Millet” who are established on the site of Colletière. The lake thus constitutes a high place of subaqueous archaeology, where systematic excavations since 30 years. The House of Country with Charavines presents the many found vestiges.

Several spaces are classified “protected natural zones”, which the roselière of Colletière or that of the “Large Reeds” at the northern end of the lake. They constitute the privlégié place of nesting of the birds (mallards, swans, foulques or grèbes crested) and of the abrasion of the fish (carps, tenches…) and thus remain inaccessible.

On southern bank of the Lake Paladru a village at the wood houses is installed in 2669 av. J. - C. and farmers clear the forest in the neighbourhoods, at the time of the final Neolithic era. The analyses of wood (dendrochronology) allowed following the evolutions because it is increased and repaired several times during 20 to 22 years, then the peasants leave to build a new village in the surroundings because the arable lands are exhausted. They return 40 years later and rebuild the village at the same place where they remain still 20 years. Then water of the lake submerges the site definitively, which allowed the exceptional conservation of the vegetable matter vestiges: wood, handles of tools, textiles, cords, strings, seeds, breads, etc in addition to the imputrescibles elements like flint, terra cotta vases. These villages comprised with the maximum five family home with about fifty people which one found the remainder of the domestic activities, artisanal, food and the impact which they had on the environment. You can find there traces of the exchanges with nearby villages but also of the exchanges with long distance like the amber of the Baltic, the flint of Touraine or the copper of Languedoc. They benefitted from one century of dryness to occupy a beach released by a fall of water, period when one could follow the variations fast and important of the climate by very precise analyses. This site Neolithic, of European fame by the quality of the subaqueous excavations and the extraordinary left vestiges (like flint daggers having preserved their handle out of wooden), was exploited of 1972 to 1986 by a team of voluntary Grenoble-native archaeologists under the direction of Aime Bocquet and was the subject of very many publications so much on the material than on the daily life and the activities of the inhabitants. Unfortunately, these archaeological richnesses given to the Conservation of the Inheritance of Isere, are not shown with the public, are put aside a small exposure of mouldings in the buildings of the town hall of Charavines (to be however visited…).