The thought

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Carnac is and remains a thought experiment. The considerations of planning with a general staff can be dropped due to the presumed level of organization of the people of that time. 6000 years ago, 2000 years before the first pyramids were built, the people of northern Europe invented a system of thought, that can in no way be equated with the thoroughly structured organizational order we know. The newly developed art of thinking laid the foundation for mental reflection, whose image are the silent alignments.

Mankind was at the beginning of a new push of further progress.

It must be assumed, that when the first stones were set up, the concluding, abstract thinking of people as a further development of instinctive action in the pack was in its infancy.

This is also how the emergence of the Alignements is to be understood. At that time mankind was at the beginning of a civilizing development, a new push of further progress. At that time, just as at the moment, when he the first time cultivated the fire, he realized a mental performance, which dominates today basically each school child and is therefore no longer worth mentioning or valued at all.

Nobody reached out his hand.

But then, however, the human being was faced with completely different challenges than the schoolchild of today, who is introduced to the knowledge of our time by adults and accompanied and supported on his learning path. The human being of the ancient time was left to his own devices and dealt with a goal to which nobody reached out his hand. He could only build on his own experiences and those of the tradition, he broke with to get Carnac up and running. He left the safety of the circle and set out on the path, which the straight line pointed out to him.

With the few tools available to him at that time, without iron and steel, dressed in primitive fabrics and furs, he set out on the Alignements and pulled them far out into the plain. And once again, we humans of today have no other choice but to stand in amazement before what people over twenty thousand generations before us, our ancestors, have created. We will never know, what their intention was in these works. From what we see today, however, some facts can certainly be deduced.

What brought about this change of heart?

The man of that time drove the menhir series forward. When you walk calmly over the fields today, past the erected stones, it is noticeable, that they do not run always in a straight line. If you enter the Alignements from the west, you will discover, that after a good kilometer, they turn slightly to the left in unison. What brought about this change of heart on the part of the Carnac builders? There was no need to place this striking bend in the course of the chain of colossuses. The topography would have allowed the straight line, once again, to be used.

Assuming that the work started in the west, the lines could have been drawn straight across the plain without difficulty. If the construction had started in the east, then the construction could have ended uniformly in the west.

Today one can assume, without being completely out of touch with the arguments, that the work began in the west, near the sea, which, as the researchers explain, provided the people in the area with most of their food and simply allowed them to gain a foothold in this area.

The sea shore forms a clear line that marks a separation, but also a beginning. 

In the west there are the largest stones and the larger number of lines. The eastern part of the Alignements is less impressive. Menhirs and rows run out in the plain, virtually dissolving. Different interpretations are possible.

One has to go back in time and forget all the libraries and schools that teach us the knowledge of today.

Man stood in front of an area which he had to provide for the menhir rows, to clear. Bushes and probably also trees had to be removed. When did the impetus come? When did the kick come, which led to the erection of a huge number of stones? What led to this? Did the man of that time stand, like the man of letters, before an empty sheet of paper, that had to be filled: no idea what he wanted to write; an idea what he wanted to write, but didn’t know, how to begin; an idea that only longed to be captured on the paper, so that the man of letters immediately began to write? How did the man of those old times stand before the field of Carnac?

One must think oneself into the banality, that when man set up the first menhir about 6,000 years ago, this man did not know, that the first would be followed by many others.

The man of that time did not lack intelligence, but he lacked trained intelligence, the same intelligence, that today is taught to schoolchildren and that sharpens the mind thanks to consistent learning in a process that takes some time.

The people started a great enterprise.

What do we know about the planning, with which the work of that time then was pushed forward? All that is left to us are the stone avenues, endless feasts for the eyes and stately wind catchers, which in all kinds of variations still characterize the view of the prehistoric site today.

The people of that time started a great enterprise. They laid up to nine rows of menhirs next to each other. Did this correspond to the original planning? It is pointless to ask about it.

The lines follow a strict direction at a clearly defined distance, shaping the plane in which they reached out and still do today. In purely practical terms, this was a much greater accomplishment than is given when only a single stone is moved, for example to cover a dolmen, after various other stones have been placed to hold the capstone.

Perhaps not. It is important for a coachman, to take the horses regularly by the reins, otherwise they will break through like badly controlled thoughts.

At a certain moment the idea must have been born.

At a certain moment, after a second menhir was placed next to the first menhir, the idea must have been born – or had it already been fermented before? – to let further ones follow the duplication that had been started. Did this idea originate in the imagination of a single person or was it conceived and developed by a group? 

At that time, people did not have the technical, motor-driven aids, that are now available to us and make life much easier. The work, the erecting of the stones, must have taken some time. It is not presumptuous to assume that the creation of the Alignements represents the achievement of a group with a significant number of members.

How many generations covered the period of construction?

The scientists say, that the life expectancy of the people of that time was much lower than in our century. The work on the Alignements will probably have dragged on for years. Do they represent the work of a generation? How many generations covered the period of construction until its completion, starting with the initial idea and the persuasion, that had to be done to convince the shepherds, fishermen, gatherers and hunters to devote a significant part of their force and resources to such an undertaking?

Even if a single person was in charge of the company and started and supervised it on his own, he must have transferred his persuasion to a team, that helped him. It took a high degree of organizational skills.

There are too many stones in Carnac.

If one single person initiated the alignations and pushed the project through, time worked against them. There are too many stones in Carnac. A generation of people from that time will hardly have been enough to build the Carnac, as we see it today.

The Alignements of Carnac alone count over two thousand stones. If you add those in the nearer surroundings, it is about three thousand stones.

It took a tremendous intellectual effort and a tremendous power of persuasion, in whatever form, to motivate the contemporaries in such a way, that they dared to initiate such an action.

At this point, it may be asked, whether the people from then, in contrast to their manual skills, already had the rhetorical tools at their disposal to do the persuasive work necessary to ensure a coordinated setting up of the alignements over a certain period of time?

The builders could not fall back on a general contractor.

The population had to be persuaded to make an effort, that in their eyes might have been unnecessary. Dolmens and cairs protected the dead from the wild animals. The Alignements on the other hand: What should they stand for? They were not even good for observing the stars, as their rows suddenly turned away from their original direction and even descended into a valley.

The builders of that time could not, like us today, fall back on a general contractor who, equipped with a lot of logistics, made sure that the stones were dragged in and set up according to a certain scheme given on paper, and this according to a strictly defined order.

And yet, even if it was a single entity that was responsible for the alignements and under whose aegis the Carnac marvel was created, the importance of the intellectual achievement of the makers of that time remains, which made it possible to have a second, a third, a fourth and so on follow the first menhir.

Behind the in itself foolhardy enterprise was a courageous consideration that broke away from the mere instinctive action that served only for daily survival in a sometimes inhospitable environment.

The violent storms that blow in from the Atlantic are sometimes very nasty. The long stone arrangements did not offer any protection from these weather monsters. Mockers would easily introduce at this point: The alignements were only suitable as wind tunnels.

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