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The people of that time will hardly have dealt with exactly this question. For one question is posed for the time being and that is: How far was their thinking developed? To what extent did their thinking differ from that of the animals, which also had to survive?
It is possible that the people of the Stone Age who lived in Brittany discovered that life rosed from the water. This clear formulation in this treatise is of course still lacking a firm foundation at the moment.
What was the difference between those people and animals in their thinking?
However, one must bear in mind the stage of development in which the people of that time lived. They knew neither copper nor iron. And it must even be assumed that people probably did not have any trained thinking in the sense of today. What made them different from animals in their thinking?
On the other hand, the science of prehistory has established that all life that comes from water has promoted the development of man. Salt, fish and shells made life on the northwestern tip of the continent much easier for humans. They found it easier to find food at the edge of the sea than the hunters, who hunted the game in the forests with great effort and a great deal of strength and cunning, and in doing so lost extraordinary energy.
Since immemorial time man has had fish traps. The person who did not go hunting saved a lot of time and energy with this tool and the collection of shells. According to scientists of the Mesolithic period, these two elements led to the fact that man of that time was able to express his feelings – or is it already appropriate to speak of thinking? – with large buildings.
A crazy idea, basically, to explain that the fish helped man to raise stones to form menhirs! A summary of these considerations and the research results, from which I have just reproduced set pieces, is provided by Wolfgang Korn in his book „Megalith Cultures in Europe“. The author also contributes valuable links and book references in the appendix, so that the reader can delve even deeper into the subject matter after finishing reading the book and this treatise with other specialist literature.
In those prehistoric times, humans were exposed to severe weather fluctuations and droughts.
One thing is certain, however: The man from the past recognized that what swam in the water and what he gained from it nourished him. It seems that the people on the seashore were less exposed to the rigors of the seasons than those who lived inland. In those primeval times, according to the researchers, people, that dwelled in the interior of the country, was strongly exposed to the weather fluctuations and the associated droughts and inundations.
The winter transformed the regions into areas with extremely harsh living conditions. The sea, however, offered fish and mussels. The latter did not despise the people at the seaside at all, as finds of in the stone age piled up mussel-mountains in coast-proximity prove. The easily graspable shellfish made survival easier, says Korn. For the fishermen the mussels were like grain for the farmer. With the difference that the sea creature was not subject to the laws of the seasons and its population proved to be more stable than what the earth gave.
In the area of today’s Carnac at the bay of Quiberon a significant population must have lived in the middle stone age. This is evidenced by the many buildings from the Mesolithic period: tumuli, dolmens, cairns and erect stones – these very menhirs, with their vertical posture. They form a clear contrast to the fish that swims through the water in a horizontal position.
The swimming position of the fish is the same as that of the dead.
The swimming position of the fishes corresponds with that of the dead. Also these lies in a horizontal position on the ground. The human being, as long as it lives, goes upright, rising to the sky, of its ways. Dead, it leaves its ancestral position. Lying down, he is laid in his grave.
Not far-fetched therefore seems the interpretation that the menhirs, as a rock that rises boldly, are a counterpart to the dead. Upright they stand above what passes away. Is this symbolic content correct for the menhirs? Or does it stand as a reminder of selected members of society in the area, of the heads of the hordes who inhabited the surrounding area. Princes, princesses, spiritual leaders, male healers, female healers? A figure of admiration frozen in stone? Menhir Gesicht
These attempts at interpretation, like those listed at the beginning of the tract concerning the lighthouse of Côtes d’armor, belong to the realm of fantasy, which comes along on wings but has no solid ground under its feet.
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