The idea

^{Previous: The syntax}

–

The transport of the stones and their erection according to precise targets probably took all the forces of society at that time. The action must have exhaustively used the powers of reason. Presumably, the ideas of structure of that human species did not yet coincide at all with the forms of organization, which are regarded as the giving order at the time of the first advanced civilizations in the Mediterranean area and also for us today.

The whole undertaking was an experiment, but it was well thought out and planned.

One must always keep in mind, that what was created in Carnac, was formed for the first time. That people did not make a copy of something that already existed, and could not fall back on an example, as is the case with cave paintings.

Rather, the whole undertaking was an experiment, but it was well thought out and planned. As always, the question remains: To what extent did one plan and analyze or try something new?

Now the scoffers will jump up again and throw in, the stones that were used to build the alignments are similar to those that were used to make the dolmens and not to the even, large menhir of Locmariaquer. The rows of stones therefore meant nothing other than the opening of the dolmens. With the construction of the rows, the people of that time called the graves to go into the distance.

The Alignements represented, so the mockers, nothing else than fields of death, corresponded to galleries of the dead, stone-built museums, which were built in memory of the ancestors or – also a possibility of interpretation – simply formed a strand like the Milky Way, which symbolically points to heaven, to the beyond, that is to say to that time, which follows after death. The mighty Milky Way is reflected on the scraggy ground of Carnac, they taunt.

All those people who, within the framework of a candid tradition seek selected events as evidence of their truth, will bend Carnac to suit their purposes.

All those people who, within the framework of a candid tradition and its own tailor-made history, seek selected events as evidence of the truth they proclaimed and preached, will also interpret Carnac according to the maxim „The end justifies the means“ and bend Carnac to suit their purposes.

Certainly, the flat, apparently little hewn stones, placed close together, would be quite suitable for the erection of protective walls, just as every fortress has drawn them around itself as protection from the enemy. Carnac is very different!

For the construction of the Alignements, the same material was used as for protective walls in other places. To conclude from this that the extremely long stone arrangements correspond to the stocky dolmens, these protective, primeval stone formations, only because they consist of the same raw mass, is deeply fishing in the murky. The repeated use of the same simple, natural raw material does not mean that the fundamentally different structures served the same purpose.

A single mocker will now proclaim: The society of yesteryear was also administered with a supervision that consisted only of the appropriate bureaucratic formula to ensure that the business did not move too fast.

This is ahead of time. The individual mocker puts the thinking of Neolithic man into a context that corresponds to our ideas about how to think and argue. However, during his development, the human being went through a whole mass of schools: monarchies and theocracies. Communism, capitalism and the organizational form of democracy were also on the teaching program. Man in the Neolithic Age had no idea of all these organizational structures – or rather: we do not know in what form the people of that time organized themselves in their menhir quarter on the shores of the ocean.

The Carnac of the Neolithic Age revealed an enterprising clan.

That man was at the beginning of the intellectual development, intellectually in the sense we understand it today; in the intellectual birth phase, which over the millennia led us, the human being, to that immense structure of thought that we proudly and rightly call our culture. Six thousand years ago there was little or nothing about our way of life. 

The Carnac of the Neolithic Age revealed an enterprising clan, that plans something, puts it on its feet and depicts it with stone, and not an artistic genre that expresses the feelings and what is seen with naive art, such as stick figures or sophisticated pictures like painted Mammoths.

The Stone Age community in the upper left corner of Europe began deliberately to implement and shape their daring plans on a large scale. This sounds banal, but for the epoch at that time it meant a big step – if not a giant leap forward.

When did the inhabitants of the historic Carnac decide to set a first stone and let a second, a third and more follow? When did this species decide to place a second stone next to the first one at a certain distance and then others so that the rows of stones not only extended in length but also moved in width? Was this plan established from the beginning or did it emerge in the course of the work, gained from resulting considerations, conscientious discussions or critical rethinking of the original goal?

It was a gigantic task that almost deserves the name „enterprise“.

Is the expansion of the Alignements the result of a learning process based on a thorough analysis of what was already built? What reflections prompted the decision makers of that time to determine the direction of the menhir series? Not to the north, but to the east? Was the daring curiosity to discover really new and surprising connections the driving force behind their actions, so that the extensive rows of stone series spilled out both into the direction-giving length and into the equally impressive width?

In what form was the purposeful stone formation driven forward: into the irritating length or into the fixed width? Were the stones first placed next to each other or one after the other?

This renewed question, and the fact that so many questions can be asked, shows the size and significance of the undertaking that can be called „Raise stones“. A gigantic task that almost deserves the name „enterprise“. It may even be necessary to speak of a prehistoric „conglomerate“, the successful interplay of different areas of activity, which covered very different fields of activity and were brought together under one roof.

---

^{Next: The lane}

^{Back to Carnac}