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Mature Flâneur in France
Rock Gods: Brittany’s Megalithic Masterpiece
The “Sistine Chapel” of the Neolithic
It’s a scene from a dream: I’m alone underground in a dark tunnel. The stone slab walls all around me are carved with swirling spirals. They mean something — something important — but I don’t know what. I gaze, uncomprehending. The dark silhouette of Teresa (my wife) stands at the entrance. She seems to be signaling to me. What is she trying to tell me?
“Tim, come on!” says my beloved, petulantly. “You are the last one still inside! Let’s go!”
Well, it’s not a dream, and I have lingered perhaps a bit too long underneath this ancient hill of rock and earth. But it’s hard for me to leave this mysterious tumulus, built some 6,000 years ago on the island of Gavrinis on the coast of Brittany.
Our guide, Louise, tells us this tumulus is known as the “Sistine Chapel of the Neolithic”. The interior walls were carved with hand-held rock-and-antler picks, each slab with its own unique pattern — combinations of wavy lines, curves, whorls — as distinct from one another as the fingerprints they resemble. Twenty-nine massive, multi-ton, granite blocks, in all, line the dark passageway.
