The Megaliths Of Brittany
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Archeological evidence suggests that late Stone Age settlements existed along the Breton coast by around 6000 BC. Soon afterwards, the culture responsible either evolved to become the megalith builders, or was displaced by megalith-building newcomers. Dated at 5700 BC, the tumulus of Kercado at Carnac, appears to be the earliest stone construction in Europe.

Each megalithic centre had its own distinct styles and traditions. Brittany has relatively few stone circles, and a greater proportion of free-standing stones; fewer burials, and more evidence of ritual fires; different styles of carving; and, uniquely, the sheer complexity of the Carnac alignments.

Little is known of the people who erected the megaliths. Only rarely have skeletons been found in the graves, but what few there have been seem to indicate a short, dark, hairy race with a life expectancy of no more than the mid-30s. What is certain is that the civilization was a long-lasting one; the earliest and the latest constructions at Carnac are over five thousand years apart.

As for the actual purpose of the megaliths, the most fashionable theory these days sees them as part of a vast system of astronomical measurement, record-keeping, and prediction. In Brittany, the argument goes, the now fallen Grand Menhir of Locmariaquer served as a "universal lunar foresight", its alignments with eight other sites corresponding to the eight extreme points of the rising and setting of the moon during its 18.61-year cycle. The Golfe de Morbihan made an ideal location for such a marking stone, set on a lagoon surrounded by low peninsulas. Once the need for the Grand Menhir was decided upon, it would have taken hundreds of years of careful observation of the moon to fix the exact spot for it. It's thought that this was done by lighting fires on the top of high poles at trial points on the crucial nights every nine years. The alignments of Carnac are thus explained as the graph paper, on which the lunar movements were plotted.

However, this has been hotly disputed. Controversy rages as to whether the Grand Menhir ever stood at all, or, even if it did, whether it fell or was broken up before the eight supposedly associated sites came into being, and the measurements are accused of ignoring the fact that the sea level in southern Brittany 6600 years ago was 10m lower than it is today.

In any case, the stones at Carnac have been so greatly eroded that perhaps it's little more than wishful thinking to imagine that their original size, shape and orientation can be accurately determined. They have been knocked down by farmers seeking to cultivate the land; quarried for use in making roads; removed by landowners angry at the trespass of tourists and scientists; and shifted and re-erected by nineteenth-century pseudo-scientists.

An alternative approach places greater emphasis on sociological factors. This argues that the stones date from the period of transition when humankind was changing from a predatory role to a productive one, and that they can only have been put in place by the co-ordinated efforts of a large and stable community. It's possible that the megaliths were erected by Neolithic settlers, who generation by generation advanced across Europe from the east bringing advances in agriculture. As they came into conflict with existing Stone Age groups, they may have set up menhirs as territorial markers.

It also makes sense to imagine setting up a menhir as serving a valuable social purpose, both as an achievement in its own right and as a celebration of some other event. The annual or occasional setting-up of a new stone is easier to envisage than the vast effort required to erect them all at once – in which case the fact that they were arranged in lines, mounds and circles might have been of peripheral importance.