Dampness fills my nostrils. I poke my nose out from under the warm protection of my thick sleeping bag and spot Sage huddled in a ball beside Remy’s feet. It must be early - 6am? Even the dog isn’t interested in rousing. The heavy rain and wind battered our camp zone all night. I caught little sleep worried about the kids’ leaky tent. Sure enough, I hear a zipper opening and closing again, and count the seconds before our tent zipper is being fondled by young hands. Hunter trudges in, announcing that his bed is, indeed, soaked. I’m surprised they both slept through such a sleep invasion. But this is exactly what I hope we get to experience each time we leave the comfort of our rental house for nomadic adventures: the full range of embodied experiences as we give ourselves to the wilds. I hear the rain taper.
We dash to the shower block then load up on breakfast. There’s no point trying to dry out the boys’ tent yet…the forecast is for no more rain, but I don’t trust it. If the sun comes out, we’ll dry their bedding later. Bellies filled, we all load into the car to make the 20-ish minute drive to Carnac for today’s cultural excursion.
The carpark is bustling when we arrive late morning, we’re not the only ones who waited for a weather window. I am excited as I load my trusty canvas backpack with water, dog pooh bags and sunscreen -those overcast days promise unpredictable UV strength. I bound into the tourist center to grab walking maps and brochures, hyper to be finally at a site that has caught my interest in recent years through my research of ancient memory places. It was Lynne Kelly’s work, The Memory Code: the traditional Aboriginal memory technique that unlocks the secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and ancient monuments the world over, that really whet my appetite for Carnac in the months leading to our visit. Kelly writes:
I was not prepared for the sheer scale of Neolithic Carnac in Brittany, a cultural region in the northwest of France. I had read the facts and figures and no photographs can do justice to an ancient landscape on such a grand scale.
I sense Remy and the kids are here because I’ve given them no choice; walking around huge 6,000-year-old standing rocks – known in French as menhirs - meticulously aligned in rows atop rural French fields might be an anti-climax for them after yesterday’s ocean adventures to an uninhabited island. So, I fill them with information from the brochure and compare this to the theories I’ve learned from Lynne Kelly’s work as we make off towards the beginning of the tourists’ walking track, eager to elevate their excitement.
“According to the brochure,” I begin, “the Carnac alignments were erected in the Neolithic era, between the fifth and third millennia B.C., be sedentarised farming communities. According to the legend of Saint Cornely, the Carnac megaliths were Roman legionaries turned to stone, while local belief held them to be magical stones. Scholars at the beginning of the nineteenth century believed them to be Celtic temples, but the real meaning of the alignments continue to represent a scientific challenge to archaeology. The idea of the ruined temple has gradually fallen from favour…a new idea that the monoliths represent a ‘site of passage’ has come to light. Within this concept, the alignments become a warning, delivering a message to anyone crossing this space.”
I fold the thin, English brochure and pop it into my backpack.
“So basically, no one knows what they were put here for,” Remy teases.
“Well, Lynne Kelly’s theory is that these kinds of ancient monuments were memory spaces. She believes that these places were built for non-literate communities to transfer the vast amounts of wisdom that our ancestors maintained within their memories. She writes in her book that the stone circles across Britain and northern Europe and other places in the world serve as one of the most effective memory systems ever invented by humans. It’s quite fascinating. Look at how heavy these stones are…they must have been incredibly important for the communities living or passing through here because you would have had to mobilize huge amounts of physical human labor to build these alignments over years, and at many of these sites there’s no sign that the labor was forced.”
We all fall silent as we begin walking around the pathway that fringes the first site, the Le Ménec Alignments. Located to the west of Carnac, this site has 1,050 epic stones standing in rows stretching 950 meters. What’s particularly marvelous about this site is that the local village is built within it. As we walk past the houses and make our way along the route past the stones, I’m captivated. I wonder if the villagers today have a particular bond with the stones, an ancestral connection that they’ve maintained through their relationship with the land. What wisdom lies across these fields? What important knowledge has our modern culture forgotten? It’s the possibility of remembering that I’m most interested in.
My mind drifts to Lynne Kelly’s pages:
Brittany is considered particularly valuable to archaeologists because monuments representing the transition from hunter-gathering cultures through to the Neolithic to permanent settlement can be seen in the same landscape, covering a time span of almost 3000 years. There were no individual burials with valuable grave goods in Neolithic Brittany. The leaders of the time maintained power through the control of knowledge. The monuments changed in tune with the elders’ need for memory spaces.
By 4000 BCE, much of the forest was cleared and cultivation practices well established. The Breton transition to settlement and farming predated that in Britain and Ireland by hundreds of years. Many archaeologists argue that the agricultural lifestyle, including domesticated animals and cultivated plants, came to Britain and Ireland from Western Europe through Brittany. The hunter-gathering Bretons would have required information to manage the dramatic changes in food production and lifestyle. Localized memory spaces would have been essential, so they built monuments.
In total, there are some 3,000 stones at Carnac, though it is believed many have been removed over the years, and the total site extends for some 4 kilometers. It is the sheer scale of this site that makes it one of the world’s most impressive. We continue our leisurely stroll through the different sites, passing over the main road, past Breton houses, and through forest, taking in the menhirs along the way, each pondering what they mean and how they really came about. The sun appears as the clouds part. Sweat beads drip off our brows. A couple of hours easily pass, and then hunger strikes. We’re out of water and the dog is panting. We decide to compromise and not visit the Tumulus Saint-Michel (to my disappointment), instead tracking back to the car.
The kids are content with having been outside moving their bodies. Remy seems impressed with the sites and disappears for a while in his philosophical mind. The dog, now drinking a fresh doggie water bag topped up from a public tap, is happy as she always is when out and about with her family. I am full of questions, curiosity, and a desire to remember the knowledge our ancestors valued so deeply. I’ve not inherited the wisdom that these stones stored but I can feel something profound just by being here in their presence. Perhaps it’s not only the wisdom that I’m searching for, but the ritual process of remembering, which demands slow, intentional presence.
Further Resources
Carnac Menhirs Tourism Website
Lynne Kelly’s book: The Memory Code: the traditional Aboriginal memory technique that unlocks the secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and ancient monuments the world over.
The Carnac Alignments, English translation, by Anne Belaud-de Saulce - I picked up this color photograph book from the tourist center at the site.
Sauvage Quiberon Campground - where we stayed and highly recommend. Aside from generous tent pitches, they have new, well equipped wood cabins if tent camping isn’t your thing, and are also RV - and DOG - friendly.
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