Tourists heave menhirs in France to solve ancient mystery
In the Asterix comic books you only had to drink a magic potion to be able to lift a menhir. But in reality you need vast quantities of muscle power and lots of patience. That is what a group of 30 holiday-makers found out when they heaved on a rope to move a 4... continues...
18th - 22nd June 2009 - Stones, Snakes and Sun....
A unique chance to approach the mysterious megaliths of Carnac ! Talks, sunrise and sunset observations, visits on foot, by boat and by helicopter, workshops, exhibitions, films, story telling, music...5 incredible days of wonder and discovery... continues...
In the Cornouaille district of Brittany, where pagan ceremonies still linger in most force, there is a custom which Villemarque believes to be Druidical. In June the youths and maidens above sixteen years of age assemble at some lichen-clad dolmen, the young men wearing green ears of corn in their hats, and the girls having flowers of flax in their bosoms. The flowers are deposited on the dolmen, and from the manner in which they remain or wither the young lovers believe they can divine the constancy of their selected partner. The whole party then dance round the dolmen, and at sunset return to their villages, each young man holding his partner by the tip of the little finger. At whatever time this practice originated, it may be presumed the dolmen was not then considered a sepulchre, as we cannot suppose the youthful population of a district assembled to deposit the offerings of love on a tomb, or to disturb the dwellings of the dead with their joyous revelry.
Mentioned in "The early races of Scotland and their monuments" by Lieut.-Col. Forbes Leslie (1866).
The writer is contemplating how stone axeheads might have been used, and concludes from their variety of sizes that they were tools (or the larger ones being weapons).
.. the large celt appears to have been fixed in a cleft stick, or enclosed within the folds of a tough, slender branch [..] It is said that when the Breton peasant finds a celt, called in most countries on the Continent a "thunderstone," he places it in the cleft of a growing branch or sapling, and leaves it there until the wood has formed and hardened round it; but this must have taken a great length of time. We do not, however, find the slightest trace or mark of such a handle on a single celt in this Collection [that of the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy].
From p46 in 'A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities ... in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy' by W R Wilde (1857) - on Google Books.
As of June 2022 there is an official notice asking people not to go inside the monument I only saw it after leaving because the sign is several metres away and opposite the direction you arrive from the car park.
Howard Crowhurst gives us a first hand expert tour of a remarkable megalithic site: the Kercado Dolmen in the Carnac region in Brittany France. At least 6000 years old, this kind of structure is regarded by some as a passage grave, but Howard does not agree with this interpretation.
In any case, it raises a lot of interesting questions, not least being how primitive peoples could have constructed such a site. That top rock forming the roof of the chamber is not to be trifled with! In addition, the seeming coincidence of the distance from this site to the Manio Giant being exactly 10,000 megalithic yards, a fundamental measurement deduced by Prof Thom from numerous surveys, is intriguing.
For some reason, this idea of a dolmen seems to have been very wide spread. Not just in Europe, but into Asia as well --examples are even found in Korea. Why were ancient people so interested in this particular kind of construction?
Many thanks to Howard for presenting this fascinating material so well!
In this video and the following we introduce Howard Crowhurst's significant discoveries of two remarkable 3-4-5 triangles---the Life triangles--- at an area famous for the Manio Giant menhir at Carnac in Brittany. These are probably the first 3-4-5 triangles known in history, and Howard has discovered that these configurations bring together ancient astronomical alignments, geometry and the biology of conception and fertility.
Howard's remarkable analysis of this site deserves wider recognition and study. I am grateful to him for giving me a personal tour of the area and his fascinating explanation of it. It opens up a lot of questions about Neolithic thinking!
This video continues to describe Howard Crowhurst's remarkable discoveries in the Manio area of Carnac in Brittany of Neolithic geometry. Here he shows us a second 3-4-5 triangle adjacent to the Conception Triangle; this one is the Fertility Triangle and it is marked by another square stone at the perpendicular corner of this triangle.
The exact dimensions of this triangle are 30,40 and 50 megalithic yards, using the fundamental unit established by Prof Alexander Thom after his study of 600 megalithic sites across England, Scotland, Wales and France.
The hypotenuse of this Fertility Triangle is then the East-West line marked also by the Autumn Equinox, which is 9 months after the Winter Solstice when the shadow of the Manio Giant penetrates the two Portal stones. Do we have here Neolithic Family Planning? What other secrets could this site be holding?
As Howard comments, this area really deserves some serious attention from archeologists! It raises a lot of questions about our understanding of the level of mathematics and astronomy of Neolithic people.