• Thirty-nine menhirs were destroyed in Carnac (Morbihan) for the construction of a DIY store.
  • The building permit was issued last year by the Breton commune, known throughout the world for its alignment of menhirs.
  • The town hall of Carnac defends itself by indicating that the investigation of the file was "conducted with the greatest rigor. "

It is one of the largest megalithic sites in the world. One of the best known also with Stonehenge. On an area of just over four kilometers, the site of Carnac, in Morbihan, shelters an alignment of nearly 3,000 menhirs 7,000 years old. A place with exceptional cultural heritage, but which is now in turmoil after the revelations of Ouest-France. To make way for a DIY store currently under construction, 39 menhirs were destroyed in the area of the Chemin de Montauban. "It was undoubtedly one of the oldest sets of stelae in the commune of Carnac," chokes Christian Obeltz.

Passionate about archaeology, it was he who gave the alert Friday in a post published on the website of the association Sites and Monuments. "Yves Coppens must be turning in his grave: several brutal developments have been carried out, this winter and spring, around the alignments of Carnac, distorting this world-famous site," he denounces. He cites as an example the building permit issued last summer by the town hall of Carnac for the establishment of the sign Mr Bricolage in an area whose historical interest was known. This same sector was also on the tentative list in the inscription file of the alignments of Carnac to the UNESCO World Heritage which must be submitted at the end of September to the Ministry of Culture.

A first building permit refused

How then to explain this sacrifice of 39 menhirs? In a statement written with the prefecture of Morbihan and the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (Drac) of Brittany, the town hall of Carnac explains that the project leader had already filed in 2014 an application for a building permit for a supermarket in the same area. "As the project is located near a preventive excavation that delivered Neolithic remains in 2009, the realization of a preliminary archaeological diagnosis was prescribed on December 22, 2014 by the Drac Bretagne," explains the Breton commune.

Conducted in March 2015, this operation did not lead to the discovery of any archaeological remains. The Inrap report still evoked the probable presence of an alignment of menhirs without this hypothesis "being formally established at this stage." The building permit had finally been revoked and "no follow-up given by the client to the prescription of excavations issued by the Drac."



Eight years later, the same project leader returned to the charge with a new building permit at the same location. "As part of the urban planning instruction and regulatory documents in force, this file has been the subject of a meticulous examination by the services of the DRAC, says the mayor of Carnac. The investigation of this case was therefore conducted with the utmost rigour. An answer that will hardly satisfy Christian Obeltz who recalls in the columns of Ouest-France that "the law is formal" and that "any destruction of an archaeological site is punishable by a heavy fine. "

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