Photos of the Neolithic Standing Stones & Burial Chambers

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Sacred Places – Dolmen and Quoits Photos bu Paul E Williams

Neolithic Standing Stones – Dolmen, Quoits & Standing Stones of the British Isles & Brittany

Sacred Places – Neolithic Standing Stones, Dolmen and Quoits – Colour wall art photo prints of the mysterious enigmatic standing stone burial chambers of the British Isles – Dolmen are monolithic burial chambers and can be found in many parts of the British Isles. Dating from 3 – 4,000 years old the massive standing stone chambers are a testament to our ancestors burial rites. Photos by photographer Paul E Williams

Dolmen & Quoits Standing Stones

“The burial of the dead was an important ritual to Neolithic prehistoric people and burial tombs have been identified in Western Europe dating back to around 5000 BC.

One of the commonest type of single chamber megalith tomb is known as a dolmen or in the British Isles is also known as a quoit . Dolmen consist of upright stones topped by a large capping stone so creating a stone chamber. This design can be found as far apart as in the British Isles and India.

The dolmen Neolithic standing stones look odd today and it is hard to imagine them as a stone burial chambers, until it is realised that the standing stones were covered by an earth burial mound. Over the millennia the earth has been washed away to leave the dolmen standing stones.

It has been assumed that dolmen were burial chambers but the lack of human remains in them suggests that they may have had a slightly more macabre use. It is becoming evident that neolithic people worshipped, or at least venerated, their ancestors. As was the common practise of Native American Indians, it seems that bodies would be left to decay in the open, or possibly in dolmen, then the bones would be collected and kept by the relations in their houses.

Once these burial rituals were no longer fashionable, the dolmen were not looked after and the rain slowly washed the soil away to reveal what we see today.

Mystified by the standing stones, people began to create myths about the dolmen. Nobody could believe that the huge stones of the dolmen could be moved by people, so they came to believe that only giants could have made the dolmen. To explain the capping stone lying onto of standing stones the story grew that the giants used to play quoits with the giant stones so creating the domain. This is why in part of the British Isles these neolithic burial chambers are known as Quoits.

The Carnac Neolithic Standing Stones

The sheer volume of neolithic standing stones at Carnac is incredible. There are over 3000 stones making it the largest in the world. The stones are arranged in rows in areas called alignments. There are 4 alignment areas running over an area several kilometres long.

Carnac Ménec stone alignments

The Carnac Ménec stone alignments consist of Eleven converging rows of stones menhirs stretching for 1,165 by 100 metres (3,822 by 328 feet). The Kermario alignment is a fan-like layout recurs a little further along to the east in the Kermario (House of the Dead) alignment. It consists of 1029 stones in ten columns, about 1,300 m (4,300 ft) in length.

Carnac Kerlescan stone alignments

The Carnac Kerlescan stone alignments is a smaller group of 555 stones, further to the east of the other two sites. It is composed of 13 lines with a total length of about 800 metres (2,600 ft).

The Carnac Petit-Ménec stone alignments is a A much smaller group, further east again of Carnac Kerlescan. Most of the stones are within the Breton village of Carnac, but some to the east are within La Trinité-sur-Mer.

The stones were erected at some stage during the Neolithic period, probably around 3300 BCE, but some may date to as early as 4500 BC.

A Christian myth associated with the stones held that they were pagan soldiers in pursuit of Pope Cornelius when he turned them to stone. Brittany has its own local versions of the Arthurian cycle.

Local tradition claims that the reason they stand in such perfectly straight lines is that they are a Roman legion turned to stone by Merlin.

I hope you enjoy the photos”

Paul E Williams.