A must-see
article | Reading time4 min
A stone giant broken into four pieces!
A stone colossus
The largest stele ever erected by man
Imagine a landscape very different from the Gulf of Morbihan today, with a lower sea level.
At every high point in the landscape, impressive architectural structures mark a territory 6,000 years ago, close to an ocean yet to be discovered...
A people of builders: the Great Broken Menhir is one of the most striking megalithic monuments. Archaeologists have even compared these Neolithic builders to architects and engineers - that's saying something! Visible from several kilometres away, particularly from the sea, these standing stones were part of a landscape shaped by the first farming populations.
DR, Centre des monuments nationaux
Vestige of a vanished alignment
The sites of the stelae once erected near the Grand Menhir are now marked on the ground by circular stones. Their presence suggests that they were part of a substantial alignment.
The setting pits in which the stones were placed have enabled archaeologists to observe an arrangement in descending order, with very distinct materials of more or less distant origins.
The nearby Carnac alignments: this architecture is not unlike that of the Carnac alignments, some ten kilometres away.
The erection of these monumental stones marks a landscape and defines a territory that archaeologists have been trying to understand over the years: a barrier? A passage? A boundary?
4 vents, Centre des monuments nationaux
