Neolithic

Almost two hundred years ago, several hundred large polished axes of exceptional quality were discovered in the region around Carnac. The majority were discovered in large tombs from the second half of the 5th millennium, scattered around the edge of the Gulf of Morbihan. They had been placed in burial chambers made of megalithic slabs, which were themselves covered in huge mounds of earth and stones known as “tumuli” or “cairns”.

Other axes, like these from Bernon, were grouped into “hoards”, unless they came from a ruined tumulus and were not recognised when they were discovered. Dr de Closmadeuc, an erudite local man who acquired this collection in 1894, describes the discovery as follows: “When breaking one of the large stones that seemed to have been intentionally arranged in a large circle, we discovered 17 stone axes (…) upright, the blade uppermost, one against another in a tight circle, and protected at the sides by a sort of dry stone wall, and covered with a flat stone.”

Of the sixteen Bernon axes now in the museum, six were made from fibrolite, a local rock that is found in strata 10 kilometres from Arzon. Ten are in greenstone, and will have come from further away, probably the Alps. All have been extremely carefully polished over the whole of their surface, giving these pieces a magnificent shine when looked at from all angles.

In the 3rd millennium BC, there was a highly original artistic centre in the south of France. Genuine statuary, carved in the round with single three-dimensional figures, was produced at this site. At the point where the departments of Aveyron, Tarn and Hérault meet, in the region of Rouergue, there is a collection of around fifty sandstone statue-menhirs that are stylistically very homogenous.

It was discovered by chance in 1886, at the same time as another statue-menhir that has now disappeared. A monolith, once fixed in the ground and upright like a menhir, it represents a woman standing, whose outline follows the contours of the block of stone. Her back and her ribs are also carved. Like the majority of the statues from the Rouergat group, it was found at a site where there was no sign of any habitation or tombs, and which, during the Neolithic Period, had been a dense oak forest. Man had not at the point started to clear the trees from this part of the area, preferring the limestone countryside of the Causses and the areas around there, which were more easily cultivated. These stone divinities were therefore erected in the very depths of dark forests, far from any village. Perhaps they protected the hunters who ventured into these hostile places, following the stags and the wild boar.