Carnac

A village in western France near the Atlantic coast that is the site of more than 3,000 prehistoric stone monuments of the alignment type. These menhirs are arranged in three groups of 10-13 parallel rows, which ended at semicircles or rectangles of standing stones. The single stone menhirs and multistone dolmens were made from local granite and are worn by time and weather and covered in white lichen. The area also has a series of long cairns of mid-Neolithic to Early Bronze Age which covers funerary chambers and secondary cists. The grave goods included polished axes of rare stones such as jadeite and fibrolite, stone boxes containing charcoal, cattle bones, and pottery. The area was clearly an important ritual center, venerated by the Bretons until fairly recent times, and adopted by the Romans for religious purposes. Christians added crosses and other symbols to the stones. In 1874, James Miln uncovered the remains of a Gallo-Roman villa one mile east of the village. The Musée Miln-Le Rouzic in Carnac has an important collection of artifacts.

A region of south Brittany, northern France, famous for its stone alignments. Each group consists of 10-13 parallel rows several kilometres long, some ending in semicircular or rectangular enclosures. The stones, nearly 3000 in number, were chosen carefully and planned so that they decreased steadily in size along the lines. The area was clearly an important ritual centre, as there are megalithic tombs nearby and stone boxes containing charcoal, cattle bones, polished axes and pottery. One suggestion is that the area was a lunar observatory. The largest stone — the Grand Menhir Brisé — weighed 345 tonnes; it is now recumbent, broken into three pieces and may in fact have fallen when the Neolithic builders first tried to erect it.