The Carnac stones

OVERVIEW

The Carnac stones are an exceptionally dense collection of megalithic sites near the south coast of Brittany — stone alignments, dolmens, tumuli and single menhirs. More than three thousand prehistoric standing stones were cut from local granite and put up by the pre-Celtic people of Brittany between about 4500 and 3300 BC.

HISTORY

The stones are four thousand years older than anything in the stories told about them, which is itself the point. A Christian legend held that they were pagan soldiers pursuing Pope Cornelius, who turned them to stone. Local tradition gives the same explanation for why they stand in such perfectly straight lines: they are a Roman legion, petrified. The tumulus of Tumiac at Arzon, on the Rhuys peninsula, is called Caesar's Mound because local legend has it serving as Julius Caesar's observatory during the war against the Veneti in 56 BC.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Carnac is here as folklore attached to a landscape, not as a haunting. The interest is in what people did with an inheritance they could not explain: a line of stones becomes a marching column, and a burial mound becomes a general's viewpoint. Brittany also has its own local versions of the Arthurian cycle laid over the same ground.

VISITING

The main alignments — Ménec, Kermario, Kerlescan — are fenced to protect the ground, with guided walks among the stones in summer and free viewing from the paths. The Musée de Préhistoire in Carnac holds the finds.