CARNAC, BRITTANY, France – 39 standing stones, or menhirs, have been destroyed near Carnac, France, in order to make way for a building supplies store, reports Le Monde. There are around 3,000 such stones in the region, most of which are in protected areas that stretch over four miles, where they have stood for about 7,000 years.
The stones at the center of the current controversy were not held in a protected area, and the local government claims that their site held little historical importance. “Out of around forty blocks of stone,” said Isabelle Chardonnier, director of the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DRAC) for Brittany, to Le Parisien, “only four of them could suggest that they had archaeological value.
“This kind of controversy is quite exceptional,” she continued, “when we are doing a lot of work of dialogue on the value of heritage with the inhabitants and the public authorities in the region.”
Previous investigations had shown that the stones, which range from 20-4o inches in height, had been moved from their original locations, and no longer represented a historical arrangement, according to ArtNet News.
The famous neolithic menhirs near Carnac, Brittany, France [Karsten Wentink, Wikimedia Commons, CC 4.0]
Last year, Carnac’s mayor, Olivier Lepick, approved a building supply and DIY chain, Mr. Bricolage, to begin building a new store in the area. Lepick insists that the local government followed the law in allowing the construction to go forward, noting that previous investigations in the area had not determined that this site qualified for archeological protections.
Lepick stated that the site had “low archaeological value.” “It’s really not the kind of images described in certain media articles,” he said. “I feel like I have destroyed the Mona Lisa when I read certain articles.”
“Whether it’s little or not, [the site] has an archaeological value,” said local archeologist Christian Obeltz to BFMTV, a CNN affiliate. Obeltz published a blog post earlier in the month decrying the decision to move forward with construction at the cost of these standing stones. The blog post is the source of the claim that 39 menhirs were destroyed and further claimed that the site had been part of an application for UNESCO World Heritage Status in the process of being submitted.
“There weren’t archaeological excavations in order to know if the stones were menhirs or not,” said Obeltz. “The site has been destroyed.”
“There were never 39 menhirs in this place,” says Lepick.” The preventative excavations we carried out in 2015 clearly show this.” According to Lepick, the stones were located not in an untouched field, but in a commercial zone, near supermarkets and gas stations.
“There were not archaeological remains of sufficient value to reject planning permission,” said the mayor.
The Mr. Bricolage store said it regretted the situation, but noted that it had been authorized to move forward with its project. The DRAC confirmed that there was no evidence of wrongdoing from either the company or the local government, for its part, noting that it could find no evidence of damage to a site of archeological value.
Stones at Carnac in Brittany France that date from 3300 BCE to possibly as old as 4500 BCE – Image credit: Karsten Wentink – CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48218385
The situation has been seized upon by far-right politicians in France, including Marine le Pen, the perennial candidate for the French presidency from the right-wing National Rally party. In a tweet, she called the removal of the stones “deplorable” and said it proved the French state “protects neither our citizens or our heritage.”
Éric Zemmour, another far-right presidential candidate and conspiracy theorist, claimed to have visited the site. “While traveling in Brittany, I wanted to go to Carnac, where 7,500-year-old menhirs are being massacred,” he tweeted. “What this era destroys, we will rebuild.”
While these politicians may be using the current controversy as an opportunity to score points against their opponents in the government, the question of how best to preserve these ancient objects have been ongoing for years. The menhirs in the protected area, the Alignements de Carnac, are only freely accessible in the winter due to concerns about the preservation of the site.
As the BBC notes, some Carnac residents think even that approach is incorrect. “The campaigns to attract visitors focus on the dream, the mystery, the beauty of the site without visitors at sunrise or sunset,” said a spokesperson for The Menhirs Libres in 2022. “The photos and videos never show the reality of overcrowding in summer with traffic jams on the roads and cars parking anywhere possible.”
The balance of interests – determining which sites contain so much archeological value that they must be preserved even from the tourists most interested in seeing them, and which sites are marginal enough that they can be paved over for a DIY shop – continues to be difficult even with the best of intentions, and is likely to generate debate for as long as these ancient stones continue to stand.
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