Tourists Heave Menhirs to Solve Ancient Mystery 22 July 2010, by Sophie Pons

Tourists heave menhirs to solve ancient mystery 22 July 2010, by Sophie Pons

tribes that settled 7,000 years ago on this stretch of the Atlantic coast transported and then erected the menhirs, dolmens and other huge stone steles that dot the Breton landscape.

Chaigneau's investigation focuses on the journey of a slab that makes up part of the dolmen on the island of Gavrinis, an engraved block of 17 tonnes that serves as the ceiling of a funeral monument

built in 3,600 BC. French archaeologist Cyril Chaigneau (2ndL) sets wooden logs before moving a stony block weighing 4.2 Work carried out by other archeologists has tonnes, on July 7, 2010, at the archeological site of Petit established that this slab was in fact a fragment of Mont in Arzon, western France. another dolmen five kilometres away.

That huge structure was erected a thousand years earlier and stood 25 metres tall (82 feet), was three In the Asterix comic books you only had to drink a metres wide and weighed around 300 tonnes. The magic potion to be able to lift a menhir. But in stone it was made of came from a quarry situated reality you need vast quantities of muscle power ten kilometres away. and lots of patience. "The goal is to reconstitute the journey by land and That is what a group of 30 holiday-makers found sea or river but also to help members of the public out when they heaved on a rope to move a get a practical understanding of prehistory, to 4.2-tonne stone block as part of an experiment engage the public in science in action," said Yves probing the mysterious history of megaliths in Belfenfant, the director of the sites of Gavrinis and France's northwestern Brittany region. Petit Mont.

"It's experimental archeology," explained Cyril Elisabeth, a banking executive from Versailles, was Chaigneau, an architect who runs a programme on one of the 30 people trying to move the massive the megalithic sites of Petit Mont and Gavrinis in stone. the Gulf of Morbihan. She said she and her husband and their five "We're trying to find out how men from the neolithic children liked "cultural" holidays and that was why period moved enormous blocks across distances they wanted to take part in this experiment. of 10 kilometres (six miles) or more," he said. "It's impressive to see this massive stone moving," In the Asterix series, the eponymous Gaul's she said. sidekick Obelix was a menhir delivery man in the Roman era of the first century BC, but in reality the The tourists managed to pull the stone 4.4 metres region's megaliths were carved much further back in about 12 minutes on their first stint, but by their in prehistory. fifth try their technique had improved and they pulled it 22 metres in 24 minutes. No-one today knows how or why the sedentary

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Jerome, a 36-year-old father, said he was taking part because he had "always wondered how the Egyptians built the pyramids."

"This is far better than school to help you understand," said nine-year-old Valentine, who was proud of her part in pulling the giant stone forward across logs laid on the ground.

"You don't need magic powers to move a block, you just need a lever," said Chaigneau, who has programmed several stone-pulling events for holiday-makers throughout the summer season.

The first such experiment in France was held in Bougon in western France in 1979, when 150 volunteers helped shift a block of 32 tonnes.

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