The Megaliths of Carnac

Just outside the small town of Carnac, on the south coast of Brittany, France, one can find a bizarre sight. A series of fields filled with row upon row of standing stones. The main alignments by themselves stretch for nearly 4 kilometers, but the area as a whole contains over 2700 stones, covering ground 15 kilometers across. As well as the long alignments of standing stones, one can also find 50 dolmens and a number of burial chambers. Claims vary about the exact age of the site, but it is believed to originate from around 3300 BC, making the Carnac alignments older than Stonehenge or the Pyramids.

In terms of mystery and sheer wonder, Carnac is easily on a par with Stonehenge and Avebury. As an avid fan of prehistoric megaliths, I find that each of those three great sites has their own particular appeal. Stonehenge leaves the visitor awed by the enormous size of the triptychs, and the technological achievement that must have been required to raise them. Avebury enchants the visitor with its huge circle, and the great earth banks that surround it. Carnac, on the other hand, impresses you with the huge amount of ground that the site covers, and the rows upon rows of stones that seem to go on forever.

As with Stonehenge and Avebury, we can only speculate as to the purpose of the site. In the 19th Century the French writer Gustave Flaubert (yes, the one who wrote Madame Bovary) visited the area, and collected some of the theories. He noted that local legend said that Saint Cornille had turned an army of pursuing soldiers to stone, while others claimed that it was a giant cemetery, and the stones marked the graves of soldiers. Some, noticing that there was a Karnak in Egypt, suggested that this was an Egyptian colony, while yet more declared them to be the pillars of Hercules. Others saw the signs of the zodiac within the alignments.

Flaubert himself, after reviewing these wide and varied theories, acerbically commented, “This is my opinion: the stones of Carnac are simply large stones!”

Some of the theories put forward since Flaubert's time have been equally colourful. A number of theorists have pointed to possible astronomical uses of the alignments, but the most original suggestion of all must be that by Pierre Mereux, who argued that the stones were a primitive seismograph, intended to give early warning of earthquakes. An interesting hypothesis, but as Flaubert pointed out, “Carnac has more pages of rubbish written about it than it has standing stones.” Some things clearly don't change.

As well as outlandish theories, Carnac shares something else in common with Stonehenge; long, protracted political arguments between those who want to conserve the stones for future generations, those who want to market the site to tourists, and those who want to use it for spiritual purposes. In 1991, concerned at the soil and vegetation erosion caused by the feet of thousands of tourists, the authorities took the decision to fence off the main alignments. Despite years of consultations – and the occasional invasion of the site by protesters – the stones remain “temporarily” fenced off 15 years later. The only way to walk among the stones is to go as part of an organised group, or to visit during the winter.

Carnac is by no means the only place in Brittany where you can find megaliths – the region is littered with stones, making Brittany one of the most archaeologically rich (at least where megaliths are concerned) areas in the world. If, like me, you grew up on the Asterix comic books, you'll recognise menhirs (single vertical standing stones) and dolmens (two or more vertical stones holding up a horizontal slab). You can also find cairns (dolmens with piles of stones built up around them) and tumuli (dolmens buried under a mound of earth) as well as allées couvertes (extended dolmens where a series of slabs are propped up to create a stone corridor). A great deal of folklore has developed around the stones. Menhirs were often symbols of fertility – a man could have his lost fertility restored by hugging a menhir, and crops were believed to grow better in a field with a menhir in it. Some dolmens were reputed to help a woman find a husband, and at Halloween, the dolmens would become the haunts of the Korrigans, the female fairies of Breton folklore. Naturally such beliefs were repeatedly condemned by the Catholic Church, but despite this they managed to persist for centuries.

As you travel around the region, you may notice that rural Brittany has become rather, well, Britain-y. With young Bretons increasingly abandoning the countryside for the cities, the low property prices and large numbers of abandoned housing has attracted an armada of well-heeled British retirees and second-homers, buying up homes and turning almost entire villages into little outposts of Surrey among the artichoke fields and woodlands of Brittany. This can have advantages, such as the opportunity to speak to familiar faces, and excellent local English language publications such as the Central Brittany Journal. But there may come a point at which you find yourself stuck in a British restaurant (combining the British and French eating experience! Bad food and slow service!) while Gerald and Nigella from Southampton talk at you ad nauseam about French lessons, car boot sales and the lovely new patio they're building on the side of their cottage, until your patience finally snaps and you're forced to beat them to death with a rolled-up copy of the Daily Telegraph.

The British invasion of recent years is one of the latest trends in a ongoing theme of recent decades; the massive social and economic changes that have led to the decline of the traditional rural Breton way of life. It is this decline, not the condemnations of the clergy, that has finally succeeded in stripping the Breton megaliths of their mystique and folklore. Sadly, a third of the stones have been uprooted in the past century, and those that remain have become little more than tourist attractions for visitors to gawp at. This is a great shame, and one must hope that these enigmatic stones never completely lose the aura of mystery and majesty that surrounds them.