The Carnac Alignments

 Did I mention it was hot?  These three are relaxing in the shade before the Carnac professional (pictured below) tried to kill us through heat exhaustion.

These two were great listeners

The Carnac alignments are fenced in during high season, and you can only go inside the fence if you pay to listen to a guide.  Our guide let us in and then locked us in the enclosure.  She then told us EVERYTHING she knew about The Carnac Alignments.  Elderly people were looking for shade.  One woman sat down on her cane/stool behind the guide in the shade of a megalith.  She was yelled at and told that she wouldn't possibly be able to hear where she was.  The French really like to vocally joust, so this woman yelled right back that she could hear better from there.  After about an hour and a half, Sylvia and I saw another guide by the gate and bolted for it.  Lillian and Pierre followed about a half hour later and had to jump the fence to escape.  This guide really wanted to prove that she knew her stuff; she was unwilling to summarize, even to save lives.

The Carnac alignments were erected in the Neolithic era, between the fifth and third millenia B.C. by farming communities.  There are several groupings of menhirs along the road near the visitors center. 

According to the legend of Saint Cornely; the Carnac megaliths were Roman soliders turned to stone.  Over time, people began cutting up the stones to use as building material.  Starting in 1830 France began buying the land from individual land owners in order to better study the ruins and to preserve the area. 

The source of these stones is not nearby and even with modern tools, it takes a long time to cut a rock of this size.  Today's experts still don't know exactly how Neolithic man managed to create these alignments.

This is a ruin of a covered burial mound.  These are the things that I think look like stone tables.

Sylvia loves playing frisbee.  I am giving her the thumbs up for one-handed catch.  We are playing with one of our OgoSport disks.  These were a lot of fun in and out of the water and are also good frisbees for kids.  The owners of the gîte are turning part of the building behind us into their home.