Show M ak ma aada 1 air du dub a g 1 I al R W 4 some of tile the great stones near carnac barnac I 1 Prepa prepra reet by the th national Geo geography graph to society fio clety washington 0 a 0 VEN in a continent rich to repletion E EVEN iello n with interest BrIt brittany the spout of the french teapot Is remarkable tor for the m multiplicity of its appeal one trav eler may be engrossed la in its ethnol olt agy ogy another Is delt delighted ed by its to lecture a third Is charmed with its medieval and quaint costumes a fourth shuts himself up to dream over its hist history orya and n d roman romance c e while a fifth satisfies tits hla soul to t the h 0 full with ita 16 eminent printa ability in any of these seductions a oi course the province wily may be watched matched or outmatched by bi other countries but it stands unrivaled as the land of those strange megaliths the grandes grandea pierres or bonum monuments its ln in W which bach d a prehistoric race a people apparently ly of c considerable civilization nad d intense religious religion feeling I 1 seem to have striven toward self expression and to have left after all a great but almost unintelligible cry that perhaps Is akie har enduring emotion left latt with the visitor to the giant do dollens dolmens linens and the vast nasf alignments of Mor bilian these nere the work of men agonizing io to tile the end that they and their dead should never be ford for gotten and yet et jabo were they and what Is it they have tried so hard to say Assy assyria rin chronologically still more remote from our era Is as an open book through the almost mirac miraculous tilous ery cry of the key to the cuneiform tn inscriptions script ions but these herculean trolla of western europe transporting and rals raiding Iniz their huge boulder monuments an the wild dreton breton moors seem mere shadows in the nilar kisr unable because they left no written to speak to us across the centuries and yet through pat patience tence ln in in vesti gation and skill in interpretation amounting to genius a few eager workers especially the little group connected with the musee mused alln at cardac carnac 50 miles west ot of redon have begun to explain these monument builders to us nowhere in the world could aspel aspe have found greater wealthy wealth ol 01 04 this peculiar archeo logic ma material terl althan than lay around il Za charle le and the man to whom he be affectionately refers na its tits his regretted rug retted master mr 3 win in und and fina astere many monuments about carmac almost avery aery commune in brittany has one or two celtic monuments indeed they are found sometimes tn la very fine example throng throughout hout western france but grouped about car cac within a radius of seven miles there pre are nearly eyen even counting the hundreds of in each of the great alignments as a single unit results gail gathered acred in the museum bearing tits name have been and are still being continuously fx extended and enriched by y hla his successor and the following summary Is based largely on thor their deductions this region it appears was a sort of mecca or peculiarly holy ground to which the remains of heroes and leaders leade rii were brought for entombment to which the faithful flocked tn in pilgrimages grim gr i ages and in which 26 the great re care ceremonies gonles were held barnac carnac waa probably to the western continent of europe what stonehenge was to tte the british isles there Is at that place tn in tact fact a focus and con cent ration of the mog ulith le works left by the celtic forerunners in their prehistoric migration which starting tn in asia moved across no northern rubem africa over mediterranean wa waters into spain and alone along the shores of 1 the atlantic constantly striving waz westward t ward to find the resting place of their god the sun but ever bullied battled by the impassable ocean aud and so forced northward until the effort died put out tn in in their long sojourn near these shores covering nt at least enst 2000 years they became increasingly an agricultural the ve Ne apons and implements ts placed tn in the sepulchers chers loso lose their rough but serviceable character arid appear th lu polished but merely votive forms form often in soft or valuable stone A few attempts nt at carving 69 as in the dolmen of the table of tha merchants and the tumulus of ml maae aie er at bava satisfied the most careful hinves that use at least at 0 iron or at ai all events of metal had bad begun mot most important types nine types and several subtypes of these theme monuments have been defined Je fined of which the nilst mut important tre are the or long stones set on end the dalmen or hou hous elike structures with stone slabs 4 or brul boulders ders for or trails and roof and the tumulus cumulus or mound alignments are groups of arranged in line or in several parallel lines cromlechs Crom lecha are groups of men hirs standing in a circle or an ara am of a circle abre more rarely a square usually terminating nn in alignment oa 02 surrounding a tumulus the dimensions s are sometimes incredible the great near Loe locmaria maria quer now thrown down find and broken probably by an earthquake wits was nearly TO 70 feet high and weighed sonae some tons some of the dolmens dollens have a height of 18 to 20 feet with roof slabs blabs 20 by 35 feet in area and several feet thick baring gould indeed mentions one near nevez who choser se capstone measures 45 feet in length nud and 27 feet tn hi breadth and 6 feet thick the alignments of carnac barnac in 10 to 13 parallel rows stretch across the country for nearly five miles the tumulus of mo mont n t st looks jlko a natural knoll dwarfing dwar fing the modern chapel which crowns it it is hard to realize that it was heaped by human hands all men hirs cromlechs and alignments were from their beginning open to the sky shy dollens dolmens and similar constructions tiong were all originally covered by tumult tumuli since removed in many cases tn in the course of farming or building operations the tumuli were indeed simply tombs of which the dollens bolme ris and covered alleys were abe crypts in some the great quantity of skeletal remains earth burled or fir incinerated would indicate collective sepulture in other cases the greater or central dolmen has baa been found surrounded by smaller dolmens dollens or stone atone coffers conta containing the bones of animals tini and human beings the latter probably slaves or servitors all slain to accompany their master into another world indicating a definite beli efIn a future life with jhc thc these se have been found stone ston e implements celta celia or hatchets arrow points and tools of various kinds fragments of pottery y pendants pennants pend ants and bends of turquoise and other semiprecious stones and amulets of baked clay isolated have yielded little or nothing indicative of use as monuments for individual tombs they seem to have been generally commemorative indicators of roads and territorial ilal boundaries and symbolic of a an immortal god scheme of orientation the on the other hand appe appear arto to have been designed as open air temples each group with its cromlech placed always at the western end of at the lines having been erected on a single comprehensive plan and at ono one time they are the tha remains remain s of huge religious monuments ebeo the alloys alleys between the parallel flies files of stones being the aisles in which the devotees gathered and moved and tile the cromlech cromley the holy of holles holies in which the priests performed their rites they have a curious general characteristic act acte ristle in that the tallest are always placed nearest the cromlech the lines diminishing in height from west to east cast most interesting of all however la Is an apparently definite scheme of orientation which tends to prove that in addition to their ritual use or perhaps ns as part of it these impressive ales of monoliths served a peculiar purpose MM genrl de and 41 F gaillard Gall lard have po pointed lateLl out that in each group of alignments will be found a single very laric large the giant of the group so placed in one vt of the outer flies files that if one stands at a given alven point in the cromlech he will see the sun rise over the giant at a specific date in the astronomical year sear the orientation be it understood ignot ts not exact at the present date calculations culat cu lons made independently by two astronomers reach belich the same result that it was waa correct at a period about years before the beginning of the christian era this curious testimony to the age of the monuments agrees with conclusions reached on other grounds by SI 31 le rouzie placing only the earliest ol 01 the megalithic structures prior to B C the greatest development of dolmen build ilig ifs and the erection of the alignments and cromlechs crom lecha between 2000 B C anil and B C and the latest work expressed by small galleries and stone coffers in the first century ba toro fore the christian era i |