A first size. An alignment of thirty monoliths multi-millennia, the first of this type in the centre of France, has just been unearthed in the Puy-de-Dome, announced on Monday the national Institute of preventive archaeological research (Inrap).

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“This is the first time that such an alignment, cairn and statue menhir, are unearthed in the Auvergne region, and more broadly in the centre of France,” he stressed in a press release. The discovery was made in Veyre-Monton, between Clermont-Ferrand and Issoire, in the context of the work of widening of the highway A75. She revealed monoliths of basalt “of 1 meter to 1.60 meter” of which the alignment stretches “about 150 meters in the direction of the search, and likely beyond,” continues the same source.

These monoliths are lined with another alignment of large blocks of stone, in the continuity of which five stones make up a set of iron horse. Finally, six other blocks “evenly spaced” in a circle of 15 meters diameter.

“To the image of some monuments, including Belz, in Morbihan, the standing stones of Veyre-Monton were slaughtered to make them disappear from the landscape. Pushed into large pits, sometimes mutilated or covered with earth, these monoliths have been the subject of gestures, iconoclastic, kind of a conviction may be related to any change of community or beliefs,” explains the Inrap.

A menhir “crudely anthropomorphic”

This set, which follows a “north-south” and “evokes the great megalithic monuments armoricains” as that of Carnac (Morbihan), also presents an “amazing perspective”: the biggest menhirs are mainly at the top of slope to the north, the smaller, less spaced, to the south.

even More surprising is the presence in the alignment of a menhir “sculpted” and “crudely anthropomorphic”. This “statue”, the “only known copy in the Auvergne region” presents “an eminence rounded, resting on the shoulders summarily roughed out, as well as two small breasts”.

A burial welcoming “the remains of a tall man” was also revealed, covered with a cairn “quadrangular” of 14 meters long and 6.50 meters wide. The latter, like the alignment of the monoliths, has been “deliberately erased from the landscape”, according to the Inrap.

“there is Little evidence of dating” have been left in place by the communities that have succeeded to establish a “precise chronology”, still shows the institute, which will be achieved with a next series of analyses, including that of the skeleton. For the time being, the Inrap believes that the primary occupation of the site covers a period from the Neolithic to the Bronze age.

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