Prehistoric site in France makes Unesco world heritage list
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France's Carnac alignments have been added to Unesco's World Heritage List.
PHOTO: AFP
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- Unesco added the megaliths of Carnac and Morbihan to its World Heritage List on July 12.
- These Neolithic monuments cover 1,000 sq km, featuring over 550 structures, including the Carnac alignments.
- Inclusion on the list, with 300,000 annual visitors, may boost tourism and preservation funding, increasing French sites to 54.
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PARIS - The UN’s cultural organisation on July 12 included the megaliths of Carnac and the banks of Morbihan, a vast area including famous alignments of menhirs in western France, on its World Heritage List.
Erected over more than two millennia during the Neolithic period, they cover an area of 1,000 sq km with more than 550 monuments spread across the Morbihan region.
Among them are the Carnac alignments, with long straight avenues of menhirs – “long stones” in Breton – of different sizes, whose origin and purpose remain a mystery.
They are visited each year by close to 300,000 people.
These megaliths “constitute an exceptional testimony to the technical sophistication and skill of Neolithic communities, enabling them to extract, transport, and manipulate monumental stones and earth to create a complex symbolic space that reveals a specific relationship of populations with their environment,” Unesco said.
Carnac’s inclusion takes the total number of French sites on the heritage list to 54.
Making the Unesco’s heritage list often sparks a lucrative tourism drive, and can unlock funding for the preservation of sites. AFP
The purpose of the Carnac standing stones in France - a collection of Neolithic stones in the city of Carnac - remains a mystery.
PHOTO: AFP
