One of the alignments of standing stones at Carnac in Brittany, France, in 1975…
This self-indulgent trip down memory lane has been prompted by two things. It was the midsummer solstice on Friday and the Le Mans 24-hour car race took place at the weekend. Bringing these together, here are my very faded images from an archaeology field trip to see the megaliths (“huge stones”) of Brittany (including Le Mans) in 1975.
It was my first trip abroad. I was at university in Cambridge, studying prehistoric archaeology, and the previous year our trip had been to Stonehenge (see my Stonehenge picture blog here).
A clear modern digital image of the Kermario alignment, Carnac – click on the image to go to the source on Wikimedia Commons…
I must admit that I can’t now remember where some of these pictures were taken, but I have tracked down modern images of the same places where I can. Please click on the new images to see the sources on Wikimedia and Wikipedia.
The rows of standing stones at Carnac pictured above are easy to recognise. However, there are three main alignments and I am not sure which one I photographed. The three are Kermario (pictured above – which looks a lot like my picture), Menec and Kerlescan. I love the Breton names as they are closely related to Welsh and Cornish words, all coming from the same group of ancient Celtic languages, known as Brythonic.
The alignment at Menec today…
The alignment at Kerlescan today…
When I visited all those years ago it was Easter and the land was covered in tough yellow gorse (Ulex europaeus)…
Gorse in Brittany, 1975…
The rows of stones at Carnac are wonderful – and mysterious. There are maybe 3,000 standing stones in the immediate area, erected by our Neolithic (“new stone age”) ancestors around 3,300 BC. Many other megalithic monuments in Brittany date back to 1,000 years earlier than that. It’s amazing how any of the stones survive, as so many have been removed by farmers for other uses.
Inevitably the alignments have led to several myths. A Christian version suggests the stones were pagan warriors in pursuit of Pope Cornelius, who turned them to stone. Meanwhile the Breton/Arthurian version is that they are a Roman legion turned to stone by the wizard Merlin.
But the real purpose of the stones? One popular theory is that they were used for solar or astronomical observations, like Stonehenge. More fancifully they could have been a racetrack.
I do have a bit of a theory of my own, since watching a recent BBC TV series called Lost Kingdoms of South America, presented by archaeologist Jago Cooper. There was one episode about Tiwanaku (I always knew the place as Tiahuanaco) on the Altiplano of Bolivia.
Ancient stones of Tiwanaku, Bolivia…
Here a ritual celebration took place at the start of spring, where everyone came together and got drunk to bond before the new growing season. Most fascinating was the idea that individual families erected their own upright stones and visited them every year as part of the celebration. Has anyone suggested this as a purpose for the Carnac stones?
The rows of stones at Carnac aren’t the only megaliths in the Morbihan area of Brittany. There are also many single standing stones (menhirs). In Breton (and Welsh) the name means “long stone”. These may have been markers of territory or may have had some ceremonial use.
Then there are megalithic graves – stone chamber tombs (dolmens) and earthen mounds or barrows (tumuli). The origins of the word “dolmen” are said to be confused, but in Welsh it would easily translate as “ring stone”. It’s generally thought that a dolmen was once a tumulus but the earth covering has disappeared.
Here are some of the dolmens I visited in 1975…
Dolmen in Brittany, 1975…
The standard dolmen has one cap stone on top of three or four upright stones, but where the dolmen is extended into a longer corridor it is called a gallery grave, or in French allée couverte. We saw several of these.
Allée couverte in Brittany, 1975…
Another allée couverte in Brittany, 1975…
This is the entrance to another gallery grave or allée couverte…
I’m afraid I can’t associate any of the above images with sites I know we went to, but these are some of the places today…
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This is the entrance to the Dolmen des Pierres Plates in Morbihan today…
Somewhere near this was a beach of pale, soft sand, and we built our own mini dolmen from pebbles…
Miniature dolmen on a Breton beach, 1975…
At Locmariaquer we visited an amazing thing – Le Grand Menhir Brisé or Er Grah. This is the largest known single block of stone to have been transported and erected by Neolithic man. Wikipedia says it was erected in 4,700 BC and broke around 4,000 BC, although in my day most experts said it could not possibly have been erected as it would have broken under its own weight.
In one piece it would have been 67.6 ft (20.60 metres) long with a weight of 280 tonnes. This is comparable with the pair of “Cleopatra’s needles” now standing in London and New York but originally erected in Heliopolis, Egypt, around 1,450 BC.
Somehow the Er Grah menhir was carried several miles from a rocky outcrop in Locmariaquer. This feat has always astounded me, although the great stone doesn’t look that impressive now, in four pieces on the ground…
Er Grah, Le Grand Menhir Brisé, today – image by S Moeller…
We also took a little fishing boat from Larmor-Baden to an island called Gavrinis in the Gulf of Morbihan. This has a Neolithic passage grave which was difficult to photograph in 1975, so I snapped some lichen instead…
Yellow lichen on the island of Gavrinis in 1975
According to Wikipedia some restoration work has been done on the tomb since then – in the 1980s – and it seems to look quite splendid today…
The entrance to the passage grave on the island of Gavrinis today…
A replica of the Neolithic carvings inside the Gavrinis passage grave…
I took this picture on the way back from Gavrinis in 1975, but I don’t think it is Gavrinis itself. It may be an island or a headland – it has lots of standing stones, though…
The trip wasn’t ALL megaliths. I also ate a lot of seafood for the first time in my life – notably the freshly caught crabs and spider crabs brought ashore in the area daily. Using crackers and picks it was a learning curve. I also experienced French unisex loos for the first time – when I walked in on my archaeology professor in a café toilet.
Here are a few more snapshots of Brittany…
French architecture and a field of chrome-yellow oil-seed rape…
Beautiful windows – possibly in Le Mans or Vannes…
This statue was definitely in Le Mans, near St Julian’s cathedral…
And we haven’t quite seen all the standing stones yet…
This menhir was moved to the corner of the cathedral in 1778 when the dolmen it had belonged to was demolished. It looks like a man in a cloak and is known as St Julian’s stone…
A Palais de Justice in Brittany – but no idea where…
And finally…
A very poor picture taken at the university where we had a lecture on prehistoric Brittany. Vannes, perhaps?
That’s enough of the bad pictures for now – they all seemed so lovely when I first took them! Isn’t digital wonderful?
The Squirrelbasket 
LOVE the theory on the family bringing their own stone and you know, that works, doesn’t it!
Well I think at works as well as any other theory. In the case of South America there are still descendants doing a similar sort of thing, whereas unfortunately we have lost all our family connections to the people who put up the megaliths…
Best wishes – and thanks for the tweet, too 🙂
I’m no archaeologist but am fascinated by standing stones and the like. I watched that Jago Cooper series, found him a tad irritating, don’t know why, enjoyed the content though. Did you see the prog about Stonehenge where they concluded it had been the congregating place for anyone and everyone at solstice times? I like those kind of thoughts about the purposes of places. Sounds like you need a return road trip to Brittany..!
I know what you mean about the Jago Cooper thing. I found the content so good, and some of it new to me. But his presentation style WAS irritating! I think it was the squinting into the sun and waving his arms around and being so VERY earnest. Oh yes, and doing a lot of walking around manfully and posing for the camera. But good on him for choosing such an interesting subject.
I lose track of what they say Stonehenge is for! It seems to me a new theory comes up every year.
Annoyingly I have never taken any pictures of megaliths since I had a digital camera. Must persuade the husband to transport me there…
All the best – loving your nature walks and tweeting them 🙂