
1891.] Among the Prehistoric Monuments of Brittany. 885 
We shall now dismiss the dolmens, which are so numerous and 
interesting. They are regarded as the tombs or burial-places, 
possibly in some cases ossuaries, of tribal chiefs and their families. 
They were opened at intervals, perhaps for the interment of the 
successors of the warriors for whom they were first built. Many 
of them have a circular hole in the stone door a little over a foot 
in diameter, too small for the passage of a body, and probably 
used for the deposit of food for the service of the departed in 
his wanderings in the other world. It is not improbable that 
our pre-Celtic, neolithic ancestors brought with them from their 
eastern homes the observance of burial rites, and very primitive 
religious ideas, involving some notion of a future life, besides the 
worship of their ancestors and of the sun. 
On the whole the Erdeven group of alignments is more im- 
pressive than the others, on account of the greater length of the 
rows, the larger, higher stones, and their greater number, 1,120 
having been counted by M. Gaillard. They extend over the 
rolling plains a distance of more than two kilometers, or over a 
mile,—viz., 6,886 feet. One of the standing stones near the 
western end is nineteen-and-a-half feet in height, and two others 
a little over twenty feet high; one of the prostrate stones is 
called “ the sacrificial stone,” but the furrows in the surface seem 
due rather to weathering than to artificial means. 
Could one stand at or near the head, and overlook the entire . 
group of alignments, the impression made would be of course 
more striking than at present, since many of the stones have 
fallen, and the lines are much broken, while they make a turn to 
the southeast near their middle. But as they stand, the longer 
the observer lingers among them the more impressive they 
become; and not to see the alignments of Carnac and of Erdeven 
is to miss one of the wonders of the world. They rank in im- 
portance and interest with the ruins of Central America and of 
Mexico, and the so-called Pelasgic walls and burial-mounds of 
Greece, while they are by far the most imposing relics of pre- 
historic times. 
Rows of standing stones are not, however, confined to the 
Morbihan; the menhir-erecting and dolmen-building race, judging 
