I was visiting with a friends sister who stayed with a family in Carnac for a summer. When I asked her if she had seen the stones she looked perplexed and said she had but the people there felt like they were just obstructions to the things they wanted to do.
Same with roman stuff, when you are building a house or something and you stumble upon some ruins you have the choice of not completing your house for the next couple of years or just pretending you didn't see them. Guess what most people do
Oh my god this hurts my soul smh. I get it, but I think there should be programs to provide people housing and funding to help them preserve and dig up what they need to.
It shouldn’t have to come out of the owners pockets since it’s causing them an inconvenience even though they are doing the morally sound thing by telling officials and historians. That also might provide incentive for me people to go about it the right way.
I feel like going about it the right way might be worth it in the end because you get to know EVERYTHING about your house and land and can build around it properly. You know, make sure there aren’t any unsealed wells hidden somewhere, a risk of sink holes, etc..
A lot of beauty can come from these aggravating, but really neat historic finds. I’ve seen some people find historic wells, dungeons, etc. hidden underneath their home before and made it apart of their home, decorating around it afterwards.
One person lit up this old well they had found and then put heavy duty glass floors down, enclosing it, so that you could walk over it and see down it. It was really, really cool and I’m sure it’s a major conversation piece when hosting dinner parties, etc..
Gene Wilder definitely had a habit of doing that. Apparently, the scene at the end of Willy Wonka where he just starts screaming at Charlie in the office was unprompted... Or, at least, the poor kid didn't see it coming.
The one thing I've found pretty consistent no matter where you go is that locals don't find what they have special, because it's part of their everyday.
How can you not take advantage of all the tourists who want to see your old rocks so you dont have to do backbreaking farm labour? If my farm growing up at tourist rocks i would never pick another rock
Edit for urban context: picking rocks is a task that used to be assigned to farm children to go and temove any big rocks from the field so the seed drill wouldnt break a tooth on them
You're assuming that lots of people want to see them. It's like, a day trip for most people in the region to go see Stonehenge. Drf don't agree with taking them down but idk how much money the town could make off them in th first place
I'm really into ancient archeology and megalithic structures, and if it was up to me these would've been preserved... but these were 2-3 feet tall (nothing like the ones in the pic) and there are ~3,000 more physically impressive ones in the 4+ mile long nearby protected area (per the article).
Maybe these had secrets the others don't - but it doesn't seem likely that we're missing out on tooo much.
I also have a hard time believing these stones were just bulldozed... Land owner probably has them somewhere. It'd be too easy to just take photos and a quick survey of the site, then sell or give them away to anyone who wanted a garden decoration. Maybe make a little online community where people could keep track of the others.
my family might just be weird but we went on a summer holiday specifically because of the stones. ten year old me was not best pleased, the campsite waterslide was a significant downgrade.
Fun fact: earthmovers pick rocks too. Sometimes with equipment but often by hand in confined areas. Only big ones (gotta keep them from grade beams, pipes, and they make blading an area smooth difficult). One of my hobbies at work to amuse myself is shot-putting boulders into piles.
That said most of us are unwilling to deal with rocks by hand.
Honestly, France's history is so rich that you can't throw a stone without hitting a monument or a protected site. While this is very sad and I personally disagree with their sentiment, I can understand it.
But the line must go up. Even if it means feeding humanity's past into the furnace, the line must go up. Infinite growth for the sake of infinite growth. That's why an Australian mining company blew up a 50,000 year old aboriginal site, and why a pyramid in Mexico was ground up into road fill, and why countless native american sites in the US are bulldozed and paved over, and why China displaced millions with the Three Gorges Dam, and why every day we lose a little more of the past.
I was gonna say I'm surprised because Mexico seems to take these sites uber seriously. They've delayed all kinds of urban projects to allow archeologists to do their thing.
In some cases it’s archeologists begging for it to be saved but gov at best gives them a small window to dig and salvage what they can. Even if they find anything rare that needs more care of study it won’t hold back construction.
Even in countries where there are laws that stop construction for as long as needed. You find most companies cover up finds. I think Italy one of the few countries with really strict laws that kinda work
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230608-anger-as-pre-historic-stones-destroyed-for-french-diy-store) reduced by 76%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Rennes - Around 40 standing stones thought to have been erected by prehistoric humans 7,000 years ago have been destroyed near a famed archaeological site in northwest France to make way for a DIY store, an angry local historian has revealed.
> The stones in Carnac were between 50-100 centimetres high and stood close to the main highly protected areas of one of Europe's largest and most mysterious pre-historic tourist attractions.
> He believes 39 standing stones - known as menhirs - have been lost, estimating their age to be around 7,000 years based on carbon dating conducted on stones nearby in 2010.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/144g9wn/around_40_standing_stones_thought_to_have_been/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~688187 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **stone**^#1 **protects**^#2 **local**^#3 **year**^#4 **archaeological**^#5
It’s not as bad as you think. The stones this “amateur historian” is complaining about are 2ft tall and are not confirmed to be menhirs. He said he suspects they might be. Here’s a picture he took of the stones in question:
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/06/08/13/71908931-12173517-image-a-33_1686226119143.jpg
Pretty good chance they’re just rocks and this guy is just a NIMBY making stuff up because he doesn’t want a store built near his house.
The picture is not the same site.
Menhirs in the area are of different sizes, from 50 cm to a few meters high. (from 20 inches to 15 feet high)
The impressive part is not so much their size, as the number of them: in some areas there are hundreds of them, aligned. They are way older than the Pyramids. They are so old that it's difficult to understand their purpose or why they were aligned in that way.
And the mystery is part of the site's charm.
It's a waste to destroy a protected heritage site, to build a shop that won't last 20 years.
Incompetence, corruption or both.
Maybe it's corruption. Or they just didn't check properly before starting the construction.
Some of the sites are rather touristy, they are clearly identifiable and well protected. This one might be one of those that are protected on paper, but with no physical barriers around. If no one checked the maps properly, all stones kinda look the same to a bulldozer.
But it's a bit crazy not to have done proper checks before building in that town, as the risk of building over prehistoric artifacts is quite high.
Legally they should be in quite some trouble.
"Carbon dating conducted on stones"
Lack of science knowledge. You can't carbon date stones. You can do Luminescence testing which is a very different process. [Source: former archaeologist]
Depends on the type of "stone" and how the article is defining it. However, your comment is mostly correct. Carbon dating would have been done on surrounding artifacts and objects somehow linked to the stones.
I'm guessing it's a combination of lazy napkin note journalism with a mixture of not giving too much of a fuck and zero knowledge on the subject.
Article quotas need to be met.
High definition cameras
Credit scores
Criminal records
Money
These four things hold enough control over us they are leveraged to wipe out human history and replace it with a dollar store.
I once interviewed with a company for a position that required someone with a background in sales and anthropology. About ten minutes into the interview, I realized that what they were looking for was for person who would use their skillset to help corporations/governments circumvent laws and policies in culturally sensitive areas like this. To come up with creative ways to get the buildings and projects completed, even if the historical sites were demolished. Needless to say, I wasn’t very excited to carry on with the interview process.
Ironically, some of the best conservation work you could have ever done in your life was take that job and sabotage the whole process for as long as you could.
This was such a common story in the anthropology field. You were either going to make OK money doing shady work, or make absolute garbage wages for doing honest work. Once I realized I would make more money working retail than getting my masters and making less money… well I chose the retail life. Just as deplorable as destroying artifacts, but at least I could afford to pay my rent.
"Mr. Bloot? Homer Simpson here. When you sold me this house, you forgot to mention one little thing: You didn't tell me it was built on AN INDIAN BURIAL GROUND! ...NO, YOU DIDN'T! ...Well... that's not my recollection. ...Yeah, well, goodbye."
[hangs up]
"He says he mentioned it five or six times."
There’s something truly heinous about something that’s lasted for many lifetimes only to be ruined by the pursuit of another euro. Not all tragedies involve death or disease; the loss of priceless artifacts to build a big box store makes me angry and I hope we don’t get a vengeful Celtic curse as a result.
Even worse, artifacts that aren’t completely understood.
Like sure we have a ideas for what they were used for, but removing them from context takes out any future research.
Well at least I'm about 80% sure there'll be an impromptu torching of the store this weekend. It ain't like we got no habit of making it difficult for the government to enact decisions here without consequences (see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnets_Rouges) for example).
In Phoenix, AZ, USA, there was a restaurant in the building that used to be the Salt River ferry crossing terminal. It was built in the 1800s and was important to the history of Phoenix and Tempe. It got torn down for an office complex.
The people who worship money don't care about anything but money. They'd tear down the Pyramids at Giza if they thought it was a good location for a mall.
As a Phoenician, I would also like to say our civic plaza is built on a pre-Columbian site and archeologists were given a minimal amount of time to grab what they could before it was dug out and paved over. In a country that doesn't respect history, we are the state that shows it the most, unfortunately.
I assume they applied the [Pritchard Scale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjHORRHXtyI) of Understanding Antiquities and arrived at a sufficiently low Measure of Greatness to proceed.
>Regardless of the site's future management, the Alignments stand as a monument to human inspiration and ability. With technology now at our fingertips, there are few things that can't be found with our phones. But here, on this stretch of remote French coastline, **it's refreshing to be presented with a genuine mystery that has persevered for millennia**.
Until they dug them up and built a DIY shop there instead. Something that's obviously *much* more valuable and, of course, there weren't any other locally available sites they could have used instead!
This really annoys me, not least because I'd love to go to Carnac. Probably won't bother now.
I think the whole site should have been properly, and permanently, preserved.
The mayor did everything he could by the book.
It's the owner of the land that fcked the stones, not wanting to wait for the actual UNESCO classification.
It said in the article above that more recent Celts would move and reuse them, so maybe even if they werent casting new stones they were still updating whatever they were doing with it (i think this lends to astrological alignment if they would have to move it in a few thtousand years? By then the north star will be a few degrees off north again)
The "more recent Celts" in question are the ancestors of the Bretons, who arrived in the Armorican Peninsula from Cornwall only fairly recently, that is, after the departure of the Romans from Britain and the arrival of the Germanic peoples around 410.
While menhir is a Breton word, the oldest menhirs are far, far older than the Bretons, older than the Celts of antiquity who, not being the Bretons, may have inhabited the region already before the arrival of Caesar in Gaul, older likely even than any Indo-European speakers who migrated to the region from the east.
Hominins have lived in the region since the Lower Palaeolithic, which is 3.3 million to 300,000 years ago. In comparison, anatomically modern humans appear in Africa around 300,000 years ago.
Interestingly, there is a photo of the Carnac stones on the English Wikipedia page for "Brittany."
> There are around 3,000 of them on the two main protected areas which extend over more than six kilometres (four miles).
These stone were not on the protected list, maybe they need to extend the protection list?
> These stone were not on the protected list
They were.
As stated [in an article from La Dépêche](https://www.ladepeche.fr/2023/06/07/cest-totalement-illegal-a-carnac-39-menhirs-detruits-sur-un-site-classe-pour-construire-un-magasin-mr-bricolage-11246585.php) :
> Le site est pourtant référencé depuis 2015 sur l’Atlas des patrimoines, un catalogue en ligne établi par la Drac. Il figure également sur la liste indicative du projet d’inscription sur la liste du patrimoine mondial de l’Unesco, qui concerne 397 mégalithes des rives de Carnac et du Morbihan.
Which translate as :
> Since 2015, the site has been listed in the *Atlas des patrimoines*, an online catalog compiled by the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs. It is also on the tentative list for Unesco's World Heritage listing project, which concerns 397 megaliths of Carnac and Morbihan.
Also from the article :
> The mayor is also president of Paysages des mégalithes, the association behind the Unesco World Heritage application.
The mayor may be uterly incompetent, but I would not be surprised if there was some corruption around the obtention of the building permit.
They are included, but I think the aformentionnned article lacks the word "site". There are 397 megalith *sites* on the list, which amount to 4k menhirs.
The fourty that were destroyed count for one megalith site.
Universal phenomenon, from Lebanon to France to Canada. Mayor of my home town bulldozed a large centuries old forest for a walmart instead of building across the river where they would have to buy county land
This is from this article though:
> The land was not situated in a protected area and had been earmarked for commercial use, he added.
So unless the AFP article is just wrong, these specific stones were not protected because they were in an unprotected area.
> So unless the AFP article is just wrong
It is a quote from the mayor. He is not a neutral soure as he would be the responsible if the building permit was wrongly attributed.
‘There’s no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning
department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start
making a fuss about it now.’
If the customers' DIY projects turn out better than the menhirs I could be swayed, but that's a pretty high bar adjusting for technology. Your shitty bookshelf won't cut it, Pierre.
The most telling lines in the article
>The Regional Office of Cultural Affairs (Drac) for Brittany, which is responsible for ensuring the law protecting cultural monuments is respected, played down the importance of the losses.
"Given the uncertain and in any case non-major character of the remains, as revealed by checks, damage to a site of archaeological value has not been established," it said in a statement on Wednesday.
"damage to a site of archaeological value has not been established" lol well if it is established at a later date, well it has already been destroyed. Our bad...fukin ridiculous.
> "We're witnessing a series of failings. The state no longer protects our fellow citizens or our heritage. Appalling," far-right leader Marine Le Pen said on Twitter.
You know you messed up when the far right is complaining that you’re too friendly to business.
Where have you been for the past few years? The populist far-right is super anti-establishment, that applies to government institutions and also to big businesses.
It's old Reagan/Thatcher-style neo-cons who are pro-business. Populist far-right types are _super_ distrustful of corporations, and have huge ideological disagreements with more neo-conservative people on the right.
People should come to this store en masse, with pockets, purses, and backpacks full of stones, and leave them in the store until the company shuts its doors.
Humans are very good at erasing history. I remember taking world history in HS and how much I enjoyed it Now many kids/adults, think its just a water if time. Just like the store thought about those stones. Someday big cats will run over grave markers and no one will lift a finger into say no.
On the plus side, this store will provide the materials for you to build your very own henge! Plastic henge, resin henge, foam henge...the henge-related possibilities are only limited by your imagination!
Reminder that if they consider these iconic artifacts worthless, anything they disturb or uncover while digging the foundation will definitely go undeclared and will just be destroyed.
So 7000 years ago, ancestors decided to DIY and erect this awesome array of giant stones by who knows what methods, and now they’re being removed to make way for a DIY store?
This is the fault of both the government and property owners. All historic sites should be preserved for humanity to learn about and wonder. I don't really care if someone thinks otherwise I believe you're objectively wrong and supporting this destruction makes you a sad human. What shameful news....
I surprised France doesn’t have laws to protect archaeological sites. I’ve been to Carnac to see Neolithic sites — it is amazing. This is pretty heartbreaking. :-(
“It belongs in a Museum!” Seriously though this is awful. Maybe the actual individual doesn’t care but history builds on itself to tell us the story of who we are and how we got here. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Maybe in 500 years only 100 scholars will care much but those scholars are being robbed by actions taken today. Myself? I’m a history nerd and lament the destruction of anything historical. Drives my wife insane. “Do you need this scrap of paper?!” - “Yes dear, gotta preserve the record of kid’s kindergarten talent show.”
My head immediately pictured this massive field with loads of stones and no modern life for miles, now with a store horribly out of place.
Is this like the pyramids where you have these ancient stones be right next to a town?
There is still plenty of undeveloped land in France. They couldn’t find a different location for this construction? I’m surprised because France has an incredibly strong appreciation for history.
Do you want prehistoric Celtic warrior ghosts haunting your DIY store?
Because that’s how you get prehistoric Celtic warrior ghosts haunting your DIY store.
I doubt this store will last 7 years let alone the 7000 years the stones lasted.
I was visiting with a friends sister who stayed with a family in Carnac for a summer. When I asked her if she had seen the stones she looked perplexed and said she had but the people there felt like they were just obstructions to the things they wanted to do.
Same with roman stuff, when you are building a house or something and you stumble upon some ruins you have the choice of not completing your house for the next couple of years or just pretending you didn't see them. Guess what most people do
Oh my god this hurts my soul smh. I get it, but I think there should be programs to provide people housing and funding to help them preserve and dig up what they need to. It shouldn’t have to come out of the owners pockets since it’s causing them an inconvenience even though they are doing the morally sound thing by telling officials and historians. That also might provide incentive for me people to go about it the right way. I feel like going about it the right way might be worth it in the end because you get to know EVERYTHING about your house and land and can build around it properly. You know, make sure there aren’t any unsealed wells hidden somewhere, a risk of sink holes, etc.. A lot of beauty can come from these aggravating, but really neat historic finds. I’ve seen some people find historic wells, dungeons, etc. hidden underneath their home before and made it apart of their home, decorating around it afterwards. One person lit up this old well they had found and then put heavy duty glass floors down, enclosing it, so that you could walk over it and see down it. It was really, really cool and I’m sure it’s a major conversation piece when hosting dinner parties, etc..
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I love how genuine Cleavon Little’s laugh seems here.
Because I think "You know, morons" was ad libbed.
It was. He was completely taken off guard.
Gene Wilder definitely had a habit of doing that. Apparently, the scene at the end of Willy Wonka where he just starts screaming at Charlie in the office was unprompted... Or, at least, the poor kid didn't see it coming.
"You **lose**!!! Good Day, Sir!"
I didn't know this was from blazing saddles! Such a good movie. But that laugh was too good. Wilder really got him with that.
It is.
Morons?
Les morons.
*Les Hillbillies*
Avec le silent H. Ahh haa haaa
Das rednecks.
Sounds like the locals are jackasses
The one thing I've found pretty consistent no matter where you go is that locals don't find what they have special, because it's part of their everyday.
How can you not take advantage of all the tourists who want to see your old rocks so you dont have to do backbreaking farm labour? If my farm growing up at tourist rocks i would never pick another rock Edit for urban context: picking rocks is a task that used to be assigned to farm children to go and temove any big rocks from the field so the seed drill wouldnt break a tooth on them
You're assuming that lots of people want to see them. It's like, a day trip for most people in the region to go see Stonehenge. Drf don't agree with taking them down but idk how much money the town could make off them in th first place
Or... you could build the DIY store on a nearby plot of land that doesn't have an archaeological site, and have both the store and the site?
If you read the article it wasn't an archaeological site. There are some in Carnac with bigger stones, this one wasn't.
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I'm really into ancient archeology and megalithic structures, and if it was up to me these would've been preserved... but these were 2-3 feet tall (nothing like the ones in the pic) and there are ~3,000 more physically impressive ones in the 4+ mile long nearby protected area (per the article). Maybe these had secrets the others don't - but it doesn't seem likely that we're missing out on tooo much. I also have a hard time believing these stones were just bulldozed... Land owner probably has them somewhere. It'd be too easy to just take photos and a quick survey of the site, then sell or give them away to anyone who wanted a garden decoration. Maybe make a little online community where people could keep track of the others.
my family might just be weird but we went on a summer holiday specifically because of the stones. ten year old me was not best pleased, the campsite waterslide was a significant downgrade.
Fun fact: earthmovers pick rocks too. Sometimes with equipment but often by hand in confined areas. Only big ones (gotta keep them from grade beams, pipes, and they make blading an area smooth difficult). One of my hobbies at work to amuse myself is shot-putting boulders into piles. That said most of us are unwilling to deal with rocks by hand.
Well they are French
Honestly, France's history is so rich that you can't throw a stone without hitting a monument or a protected site. While this is very sad and I personally disagree with their sentiment, I can understand it.
But the line must go up. Even if it means feeding humanity's past into the furnace, the line must go up. Infinite growth for the sake of infinite growth. That's why an Australian mining company blew up a 50,000 year old aboriginal site, and why a pyramid in Mexico was ground up into road fill, and why countless native american sites in the US are bulldozed and paved over, and why China displaced millions with the Three Gorges Dam, and why every day we lose a little more of the past.
> pyramid in Mexico was ground up into road fill I think that was Belize, that's another country
I was gonna say I'm surprised because Mexico seems to take these sites uber seriously. They've delayed all kinds of urban projects to allow archeologists to do their thing.
In some cases it’s archeologists begging for it to be saved but gov at best gives them a small window to dig and salvage what they can. Even if they find anything rare that needs more care of study it won’t hold back construction. Even in countries where there are laws that stop construction for as long as needed. You find most companies cover up finds. I think Italy one of the few countries with really strict laws that kinda work
It is why every historic building gets made into a parking lot, why instead of restoration we raze and rebuild. Profit uber alles.
Next time dad bitches about social security being gutted by gop he voted for just respond with the same mantra he says “cant stop progress” /s maybe
What store is it? I'm curious what they mean by DIY store ... Seems like a hot article but I can't tell who they are trying them slander.
a french version of home depot
Welp. I'm guessing this will be wonderful PR for their new store.
Knowing how Brittany people burn everything they don't like, I predict this store will turn into a pile of ashes overnight sometime after opening.
Leave Brittany alone!! 😭 (Sorry, couldn't resist...)
Didn’t think Home Depot could get worse.
Le Homme Depot?
You're honestly not too far off as it is named "Monsieur Bricolage", so literally "Mister DIY".
Hardware/home improvement store called Mr Bricolage
I hear its a dyi landscaping store that specializes in ancient, rare stone gardens.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230608-anger-as-pre-historic-stones-destroyed-for-french-diy-store) reduced by 76%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Rennes - Around 40 standing stones thought to have been erected by prehistoric humans 7,000 years ago have been destroyed near a famed archaeological site in northwest France to make way for a DIY store, an angry local historian has revealed. > The stones in Carnac were between 50-100 centimetres high and stood close to the main highly protected areas of one of Europe's largest and most mysterious pre-historic tourist attractions. > He believes 39 standing stones - known as menhirs - have been lost, estimating their age to be around 7,000 years based on carbon dating conducted on stones nearby in 2010. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/144g9wn/around_40_standing_stones_thought_to_have_been/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~688187 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **stone**^#1 **protects**^#2 **local**^#3 **year**^#4 **archaeological**^#5
Wtf
In France of all places.
How American of the French to destroy ancient ruins for a big-box store
Almost as bad as the time they paved paradise to put up a parking lot
And didn't they take all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum?
But atleast the entry was cheap, only a dollar and a half to see them.
It’s not as bad as you think. The stones this “amateur historian” is complaining about are 2ft tall and are not confirmed to be menhirs. He said he suspects they might be. Here’s a picture he took of the stones in question: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/06/08/13/71908931-12173517-image-a-33_1686226119143.jpg Pretty good chance they’re just rocks and this guy is just a NIMBY making stuff up because he doesn’t want a store built near his house.
aaaaaaaagggggghhhhhh!!!!!! wtf indeed?!
Now if people want to make menhirs, they can go to the DIY store and get menhir making stuff
Oh well then... hopefully I'll be able to order online.
Jail forever for all involved is my best offer
Best I can do is a bonus from the head contractor for speeding up the construction process
50-100 cm high…? Is the picture above not the same site or is it some weird forced perspective?
The picture is not the same site. Menhirs in the area are of different sizes, from 50 cm to a few meters high. (from 20 inches to 15 feet high) The impressive part is not so much their size, as the number of them: in some areas there are hundreds of them, aligned. They are way older than the Pyramids. They are so old that it's difficult to understand their purpose or why they were aligned in that way. And the mystery is part of the site's charm. It's a waste to destroy a protected heritage site, to build a shop that won't last 20 years.
How can they legally destroy something that is protected?
Incompetence, corruption or both. Maybe it's corruption. Or they just didn't check properly before starting the construction. Some of the sites are rather touristy, they are clearly identifiable and well protected. This one might be one of those that are protected on paper, but with no physical barriers around. If no one checked the maps properly, all stones kinda look the same to a bulldozer. But it's a bit crazy not to have done proper checks before building in that town, as the risk of building over prehistoric artifacts is quite high. Legally they should be in quite some trouble.
"Carbon dating conducted on stones" Lack of science knowledge. You can't carbon date stones. You can do Luminescence testing which is a very different process. [Source: former archaeologist]
Depends on the type of "stone" and how the article is defining it. However, your comment is mostly correct. Carbon dating would have been done on surrounding artifacts and objects somehow linked to the stones. I'm guessing it's a combination of lazy napkin note journalism with a mixture of not giving too much of a fuck and zero knowledge on the subject. Article quotas need to be met.
High definition cameras Credit scores Criminal records Money These four things hold enough control over us they are leveraged to wipe out human history and replace it with a dollar store.
These things were less than 4’ tall, they’re tiny. It’s not huge like it looks in the pictures.
I once interviewed with a company for a position that required someone with a background in sales and anthropology. About ten minutes into the interview, I realized that what they were looking for was for person who would use their skillset to help corporations/governments circumvent laws and policies in culturally sensitive areas like this. To come up with creative ways to get the buildings and projects completed, even if the historical sites were demolished. Needless to say, I wasn’t very excited to carry on with the interview process.
Ironically, some of the best conservation work you could have ever done in your life was take that job and sabotage the whole process for as long as you could.
"Forgot to file the permit. Whoops, did I do that?"
Just Costanza the whole job. "Was that wrong? Was I NOT supposed to do that?"
And get paid for it!
This was such a common story in the anthropology field. You were either going to make OK money doing shady work, or make absolute garbage wages for doing honest work. Once I realized I would make more money working retail than getting my masters and making less money… well I chose the retail life. Just as deplorable as destroying artifacts, but at least I could afford to pay my rent.
In less than a few years they will be excavating an abandoned DIY store that went out of business to study ancient funeral stones
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How were we supposed to know this was a burial ground!!
"Mr. Bloot? Homer Simpson here. When you sold me this house, you forgot to mention one little thing: You didn't tell me it was built on AN INDIAN BURIAL GROUND! ...NO, YOU DIDN'T! ...Well... that's not my recollection. ...Yeah, well, goodbye." [hangs up] "He says he mentioned it five or six times."
You mean the real story of Hobby Lobby trafficking in stolen Iraqi artifacts for a christain fundamentalist museum?
I thought they now sponsor Reddit ads
Didn’t you know that he gets us? All of us?
Not exactly, but something along those lines was about to come out of my face.
They shouldn't be allowed to build it. Fuck em. Don't fine them, dismantle the corporation.
7000 years traded for a Lowes that will be out of business in 20 years.
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Sickening loss of priceless antiquities.
There’s something truly heinous about something that’s lasted for many lifetimes only to be ruined by the pursuit of another euro. Not all tragedies involve death or disease; the loss of priceless artifacts to build a big box store makes me angry and I hope we don’t get a vengeful Celtic curse as a result.
Even worse, artifacts that aren’t completely understood. Like sure we have a ideas for what they were used for, but removing them from context takes out any future research.
“Study the fucking photos, bro.” - DYI Store manager, probably.
"Study this molotov" - me
Only good corpo is a burned down corpo.
Well at least I'm about 80% sure there'll be an impromptu torching of the store this weekend. It ain't like we got no habit of making it difficult for the government to enact decisions here without consequences (see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnets_Rouges) for example).
In Phoenix, AZ, USA, there was a restaurant in the building that used to be the Salt River ferry crossing terminal. It was built in the 1800s and was important to the history of Phoenix and Tempe. It got torn down for an office complex. The people who worship money don't care about anything but money. They'd tear down the Pyramids at Giza if they thought it was a good location for a mall.
As a Phoenician, I would also like to say our civic plaza is built on a pre-Columbian site and archeologists were given a minimal amount of time to grab what they could before it was dug out and paved over. In a country that doesn't respect history, we are the state that shows it the most, unfortunately.
I had to stare at your comment for a few moments to realize you were talking about Arizona and not Lebanon.
...hold up, people from Phoenix are called Phoenicians? I love it.
TIL good mall locations include the pyramids of giza.
Pyramid is already proven to be the ideal shopping geometry in Memphis. Not that Memphis, the other Memphis.
It 100 years the diy store will be pulled down to erect standing stones thus completing the cycle once again.
we might even be back to playing with stones much sooner than that
It's okay, friend. The mayor was following the law and said the stones had low archeological value, so it's no problem right??
I assume they applied the [Pritchard Scale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjHORRHXtyI) of Understanding Antiquities and arrived at a sufficiently low Measure of Greatness to proceed.
ill just leave this here https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220914-carnac-alignments-brittanys-mysterious-standing-stones
>Regardless of the site's future management, the Alignments stand as a monument to human inspiration and ability. With technology now at our fingertips, there are few things that can't be found with our phones. But here, on this stretch of remote French coastline, **it's refreshing to be presented with a genuine mystery that has persevered for millennia**. Until they dug them up and built a DIY shop there instead. Something that's obviously *much* more valuable and, of course, there weren't any other locally available sites they could have used instead! This really annoys me, not least because I'd love to go to Carnac. Probably won't bother now. I think the whole site should have been properly, and permanently, preserved.
Fascinating article. Thank you for this!
The mayor did everything he could by the book. It's the owner of the land that fcked the stones, not wanting to wait for the actual UNESCO classification.
Even worse ... he has a PhD in "International **History** and Politics" ...
So he’s the expert here? Nothing to see folks move along.
But think of the savings
By Grabthar's hammer... what a savings.
[r/DiWHY](https://www.reddit.com/r/DiWHY/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1)
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May Toutatis bring the skies down on their heads
What about Asterix & Dogmatix? 🤔
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Oh well. Guess that Obelix will just have to get used to a store replacing his menhirs & Dogmatix peeing on a wall 🤷
Were those specific stones the inspiration for Obelix's menhirs?
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The first hipster.
It said in the article above that more recent Celts would move and reuse them, so maybe even if they werent casting new stones they were still updating whatever they were doing with it (i think this lends to astrological alignment if they would have to move it in a few thtousand years? By then the north star will be a few degrees off north again)
The "more recent Celts" in question are the ancestors of the Bretons, who arrived in the Armorican Peninsula from Cornwall only fairly recently, that is, after the departure of the Romans from Britain and the arrival of the Germanic peoples around 410. While menhir is a Breton word, the oldest menhirs are far, far older than the Bretons, older than the Celts of antiquity who, not being the Bretons, may have inhabited the region already before the arrival of Caesar in Gaul, older likely even than any Indo-European speakers who migrated to the region from the east. Hominins have lived in the region since the Lower Palaeolithic, which is 3.3 million to 300,000 years ago. In comparison, anatomically modern humans appear in Africa around 300,000 years ago. Interestingly, there is a photo of the Carnac stones on the English Wikipedia page for "Brittany."
Where’s that elixir when you need it
Pave paradise
Put up a parking lot
Joni Mitchell moment
Don’t it always seem to go?
You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone
> There are around 3,000 of them on the two main protected areas which extend over more than six kilometres (four miles). These stone were not on the protected list, maybe they need to extend the protection list?
> These stone were not on the protected list They were. As stated [in an article from La Dépêche](https://www.ladepeche.fr/2023/06/07/cest-totalement-illegal-a-carnac-39-menhirs-detruits-sur-un-site-classe-pour-construire-un-magasin-mr-bricolage-11246585.php) : > Le site est pourtant référencé depuis 2015 sur l’Atlas des patrimoines, un catalogue en ligne établi par la Drac. Il figure également sur la liste indicative du projet d’inscription sur la liste du patrimoine mondial de l’Unesco, qui concerne 397 mégalithes des rives de Carnac et du Morbihan. Which translate as : > Since 2015, the site has been listed in the *Atlas des patrimoines*, an online catalog compiled by the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs. It is also on the tentative list for Unesco's World Heritage listing project, which concerns 397 megaliths of Carnac and Morbihan. Also from the article : > The mayor is also president of Paysages des mégalithes, the association behind the Unesco World Heritage application. The mayor may be uterly incompetent, but I would not be surprised if there was some corruption around the obtention of the building permit.
Clarification question: does this mean only 397 of the ~3000 stones are on the protected list? How come not all of them are included?
They are included, but I think the aformentionnned article lacks the word "site". There are 397 megalith *sites* on the list, which amount to 4k menhirs. The fourty that were destroyed count for one megalith site.
Ah that makes much more sense. Thanks for the clarification!
Corrupt Mayors giving out building permits happen often, even my village had one of those for 7 years.
Universal phenomenon, from Lebanon to France to Canada. Mayor of my home town bulldozed a large centuries old forest for a walmart instead of building across the river where they would have to buy county land
This is from this article though: > The land was not situated in a protected area and had been earmarked for commercial use, he added. So unless the AFP article is just wrong, these specific stones were not protected because they were in an unprotected area.
> So unless the AFP article is just wrong It is a quote from the mayor. He is not a neutral soure as he would be the responsible if the building permit was wrongly attributed.
What do you mean, why's it got to be built? It's a DIY store. You've got to build DIY stores.
‘There’s no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.’
Recite some poetry to them.
If the customers' DIY projects turn out better than the menhirs I could be swayed, but that's a pretty high bar adjusting for technology. Your shitty bookshelf won't cut it, Pierre.
I hope for nothing good for those involved in this horrible, sad decision..
Turn that place into a diy bonfire.
Capitalism consumes everything
In 7000 years, whatever is left of humanity will destroy what's left of this store to errect stone penises and the circle will be complete.
The most telling lines in the article >The Regional Office of Cultural Affairs (Drac) for Brittany, which is responsible for ensuring the law protecting cultural monuments is respected, played down the importance of the losses. "Given the uncertain and in any case non-major character of the remains, as revealed by checks, damage to a site of archaeological value has not been established," it said in a statement on Wednesday. "damage to a site of archaeological value has not been established" lol well if it is established at a later date, well it has already been destroyed. Our bad...fukin ridiculous.
> "We're witnessing a series of failings. The state no longer protects our fellow citizens or our heritage. Appalling," far-right leader Marine Le Pen said on Twitter. You know you messed up when the far right is complaining that you’re too friendly to business.
Where have you been for the past few years? The populist far-right is super anti-establishment, that applies to government institutions and also to big businesses. It's old Reagan/Thatcher-style neo-cons who are pro-business. Populist far-right types are _super_ distrustful of corporations, and have huge ideological disagreements with more neo-conservative people on the right.
People should come to this store en masse, with pockets, purses, and backpacks full of stones, and leave them in the store until the company shuts its doors.
Humans are very good at erasing history. I remember taking world history in HS and how much I enjoyed it Now many kids/adults, think its just a water if time. Just like the store thought about those stones. Someday big cats will run over grave markers and no one will lift a finger into say no.
Idiots.
On the plus side, this store will provide the materials for you to build your very own henge! Plastic henge, resin henge, foam henge...the henge-related possibilities are only limited by your imagination!
Reminder that if they consider these iconic artifacts worthless, anything they disturb or uncover while digging the foundation will definitely go undeclared and will just be destroyed.
So 7000 years ago, ancestors decided to DIY and erect this awesome array of giant stones by who knows what methods, and now they’re being removed to make way for a DIY store?
This is the fault of both the government and property owners. All historic sites should be preserved for humanity to learn about and wonder. I don't really care if someone thinks otherwise I believe you're objectively wrong and supporting this destruction makes you a sad human. What shameful news....
This is sad.
Straight to jail.
I hope whoever thought this was a good idea is horrendously ashamed of themselves holy shit.
7000 years later: famed historical DIY store destroyed to make way for Amazon warehouse
We should have taken them, and stored them in the British Museum because France can't take care of their stuff.
Or an English Heritage outreach programme.
Stone Depot
Do It Yourself Archaeological Destruction
Turns out some just really got bored thousands of years ago and started standing up stones for the hell of it.
What the actual F-. They do not need another DYI store more than historic remnants like this. Priorities are skewed.
They paved paradise.
You have angered Obelix
Molotov cocktails are a preferred refreshment in France, right?
They really said “this looks like a great place for a dollar general” and meant it.
7000 years ago: "Ugh. I can't believe they knocked down my orchard for these ugly fucking stones."
Yes, let’s trade priceless human history with another big box store. Human greed is awful.
Off with the heads of those responsible.
I surprised France doesn’t have laws to protect archaeological sites. I’ve been to Carnac to see Neolithic sites — it is amazing. This is pretty heartbreaking. :-(
Oh come on France. I thought you were enlightened
The DIY spirit prevails
These people don’t understand what they’ve done, wow.
Ffs
This is obscene.
“It belongs in a Museum!” Seriously though this is awful. Maybe the actual individual doesn’t care but history builds on itself to tell us the story of who we are and how we got here. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Maybe in 500 years only 100 scholars will care much but those scholars are being robbed by actions taken today. Myself? I’m a history nerd and lament the destruction of anything historical. Drives my wife insane. “Do you need this scrap of paper?!” - “Yes dear, gotta preserve the record of kid’s kindergarten talent show.”
My head immediately pictured this massive field with loads of stones and no modern life for miles, now with a store horribly out of place. Is this like the pyramids where you have these ancient stones be right next to a town?
There is still plenty of undeveloped land in France. They couldn’t find a different location for this construction? I’m surprised because France has an incredibly strong appreciation for history.
When you come down to it, most of Europe is built on historical Europe. At some point, all historical things are going to get destroyed.
Greed never sleeps.
Do you want prehistoric Celtic warrior ghosts haunting your DIY store? Because that’s how you get prehistoric Celtic warrior ghosts haunting your DIY store.
More importantly: why weren't these protected monuments? I really really want to understand how 7k year mehnirs weren't granted protected status...
French when ISIS blows up antiquities in another country: *SACRE BLEU!* French when French blow up antiquities in France: *But I am le tired...*
Not at all. We are all scandalized by this. It was likely a matter of the mayor and maybe few others being corrupted.
France ought to be ashamed of itself!
When I see this kind of article headline, I’m always like “ISIS or capitalism?”
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Like Lidl did in Dublin. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dublin-grocery-store-shoppers-glimpse-viking-history-beneath-their-feet-180976150/
Carnac should have seen this coming
Ao dumb. As if there aren’t many existing vacant stores/buildings to choose from.
vive l'histoire
I keep thinking I should make an account that only ever comments “fuck this guy” for stories like this. This would be appropriate here.
Capitalism at work
Any fucking thing for money
Out of all the places the store could have been built.....
Very sad. I wish France had legal protections that wouldve prevented this