Carnac

Sunday we drove half an hour and went back 5000 years.

The town of Carnac has the largest set of megaliths in the world (a megalith is a large stone embedded upright in the ground by human activity). The megaliths of Carnac are in alignments: long rows of megaliths. Carnac has three main alignments; the largest is ten rows of menhirs, each row with over one hundred stones, stretching over three-quarters of a mile. The second is eleven rows, again almost three-quarters of a mile long; and the third is thirteen lines, about half a mile long. In all the alignments, stones start small at the east end and increase in size, to where the western-most stones are ten-twelve feet high and weigh many tons.

Why do these alignments fascinate us? As Laurie says, “It’s nice that there are still mysteries in this world.” The menhir alignments of Carnac were likely created around 3,300 BC – almost 5,000 years ago; more than a thousand years before the first pyramids were built in Egypt. No one knows why they were created, what they signified to their builders or how they were created (how did fairly primitive cultures quarry, move and erect stones weighing so much?). But here’s an interesting clue: remember the menhirs I showed that are in Saint-Pierre-Quiberon? These menhirs are about 40 miles from Carnac, across open water, but they seem to align with some of the Carnac menhirs to mark the location of the moon at a certain point in its cycle. Other menhirs around southern Brittany mark other points in the lunar cycle. Just saying…

Anyway, we love the Carnac alignments. Here is a how the largest field looks from an observation tower:

The longest alignment, seen from an observation tower. This shows half the field; the other half extends behind the camera.

And some more views of the Carnac alignments: