FR IMAGES. Dolmens, menhirs … On the trail of the megaliths of the North – Pas-de-Calais
Through Writing Lille
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From “Megaliths” (from the Greek: large stones), isolated, in a circle or aligned, there are almost everywhere in the world, including more than 5000 sites in France alone, each site being able to contain hundreds. And in the Nord – Pas-de-Calais?
Of course, the public knows those of Stonehenge and Avebury in Great Britain, those of Carnac (3000 megaliths), east of the peninsula of Quiberon, those of the Gulf of Morbihan (covered alley of Gavrinis), or the “Men ar hrverc’h” de Locmariaquer (20 m X 3 m, 300 tonnes), the largest menhir in Europe, fallen and broken in four at a date and by an undetermined cause …
That said, in France, the most numerous (if not the most spectacular) megaliths are found rather in the South (Aveyron, Hérault, Lot…)
How many megaliths in Nord – Pas-de-Calais?
And in our northern region? Yes, we have them too, but fewer in number and less publicized, no doubt because they have suffered more than the others. Specialists believe that only 15% of the total formed in the Neolithic remain in France. Maybe 5% in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais? Especially in the XIXe century, some superstitious parishioners have broken them and / or buried them as “diabolical” objects.
Others, greedy treasure hunters, knocked them down (especially the dolmens). The local authorities coldly made them cut to gravel the roads; certain city officials left them squared in cobblestones, in boundary stones, in “gresseries” for the basements of houses, or because they obstructed the passage of machinery. Natural phenomena may have played a role: sinks in the peat, mini-earthquakes, lightning, floods, etc.
During the 1914-1918 war, the German occupation troops vandalized many of them when they left. In addition, certain contemporary “fans” of mysteries and legends, enamored of “re-enchantment of the world”, have sometimes “discredited” them by dint of eccentric tales to the detriment of the – prosaic – achievements of archaeological science, to the point that the owners land would have removed them.
Round of petrified witches?
In the center of the triangle Arras-Douai-Cambrai, on either side of the banks of the many ponds bordering the Sensée valley (tributary of the Scheldt), a string of megalithic monuments of various sizes is scattered from west to east, straddling the boundary between the North and the Pas-de-Calais.
Most of the remaining stones stand in wooded, marshy areas, on uninhabited mounds, often away from roads and towns, a position which accentuates their current enigmatic aspect, conducive to the inventions of occultists, “magnetists,” tellurists ” …
A Sailly-en-Ostrevent, the site of Beanies, five (formerly seven) stones erected in a cromlech (circle) at the top of a conical tumulus fascinate all those who take the walk. Reconciliation of vaguely anthropomorphic menhirs? It is the highest point of the sector, isolated in an attractive landscape with vast horizons undulating fields and woods, without apparent human presence. Preceltic sanctuary? Geodesic or astronomical beacons? Dating from the final Neolithic: around 3000 years before our era, when settled men began to practice agriculture and animal husbandry?
A Lock, the “Devil’s Stone”, the highest standing stone in the region (four meters), stands at the top of a bare plateau. He was double before the Germans knocked him down.
Stones in the shape of animals or men?
In this sector from Arleux as elsewhere, the strange builders of the Neolithic, experts in geology, physics, geometry and logistics, extradited these slabs weighing several tons, from outcrops of “Landenian sandstone”, and moved them over several kilometers, sometimes steep. One hypothesis: they did it using huge wooden sleds with greased runners, all pulled on logs by ropes where tens (hundreds?) Of men were harnessed, perhaps aided by animals.
Continuing our almost rectilinear route towards the East, we find other curiosities. In the village of Hamel, a remains of a dolmen or “covered alley” is hidden at the top of a wooded hill, near the “Cuisine des fées”, a beautiful spring on the edge of the road to Estrées. On its tabular stone, “chavattes” (in patois, slippers), that is to say “cups” in the shape of feet representing, they say, the map of the constellation of the Big Dipper … In the village of Palluel, at the corner of the chapel in Rue du Moulin, a low stone that looks like a wheel stopper, with a sculpted human face.
Further along, after Arleux, the town from Aubigny-au-Bac conceals, near its leisure park, in the peat woods, a menhir with a horse’s head, called the “Growing Stone”. It would be “alive”, and little by little would extract itself from the ground on its own …
In the neighboring village of Féchain, near the church, a remains of an enormous megalith was transported there, after dynamiting in 1968: this enormous piece was used, 2,500 years ago, as a polisher to harden the two faces of the axes (in flint?) and sharpen their edge.
Jean-Louis Pelon
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