Original subtitles

>> Close to a clearing in the middle of a field at the peak

of a hill or on the slopes of a health stand stone giants which

have stood for thousands of years.

They mark the landscape with a mysterious trace.

Grazing giant stones has been a part of many cultures

around the world.

However, the most spectacular and the most ancient forms

are found on the French Atlantic coast

and in the United Kingdom.

These imposing stone blocks called

megaliths, from Greek megas meaning

great and lithos meaning stone, raise many questions.

Some people think they are monuments.

>> If this stone was raised for someone,

they must have been important.

>> Others ask what force can have raised them.

>> Could it be that our ancient ancestors somehow knew

and manipulated frequency of levitation?

>> Are these constructions the work of architects or artists?

>> We ask if it was the same hand that carved all these

rocks.

In which case, the artist would be

the Michelangelo of their time.

>> Are the megaliths vestiges of ancient beliefs?

>> It's obvious that the stones are laid out in some form

of astrological, cosmic thinking behind them.

>> Surrounded by mystery and legend,

the megaliths attract scientists, artists,

adventurers, and followers from everywhere.

For centuries, mankind has wondered

about the origins and significance

of these strange monuments.

In the Middle Ages, they were seen as the work of the devil

or of giants who lived on the earth before the Great Flood.

Later, they were attributed to the druids, Celtic priests who

raised them in order to celebrate their rituals.

Those with a fertile imagination connect them

with supernatural forces or extraterrestrial visitors.

Whatever the theories put forward,

they always raise the same questions--

who raised these monuments, when, how, and why?

These questions will come up during our voyage

to some iconic signs from the west of France

to the far north of Scotland.

Carnac is our first stop.

The menhir, long stones in Celtic,

are arranged in impressive lines.

The site is unique in the world, for there

are more than 3,000 stones aligned

over nearly 4 kilometers.

The age of the site has been estimated

to be 4,000 years BC, thanks to carbon-14 dating of charcoal

found at the base of some menhir.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

At first site, the groups are just

alignments of uncut stones, but to a careful observer,

the arrangement is a lot more complex than it seems.

>> When you progress along these alignments,

there's a surprising effect of perspective.

There's this gentle slope, and at the same time,

the small hill, which is really emphasized

by the size of the monoliths, which get bigger and bigger.

But there's more to it than that.

Some studies have shown that these quarried stones here

often have an outcropped side and a quarried side,

which means that all this granite emerged from the ground

and was extracted from the site.

And there are groups of rows like that where there

are two lines of dressed stones, and the sides which were cut,

which are flatter, are all turned inwards.

I mean to say it's an arrangement which is planned.

It hasn't happened by chance.

If that allows a particular pathway or a kind

of precession, it's difficult to imagine,

but it's very possible.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Whether there was an architect to manage the work

is very hard to tell.

There were surely very, very strong

symbolic and social contexts, but I

think we're far from having all the answers.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When it comes to the orientation of the rows, when we analyze

a lot of these, we can see that there

are very few or none which correspond

to any special astronomical axis.

There's no alignment truly oriented

towards the rising of the sun, solstice, or lunar axes.

The principle behind this, and the concept of emplacement,

is something else entirely.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> The logic behind the emplacement of menhir in this

landscape is the subject which Christian Obeltz,

a self-educated archeologist, is exploring.

Christian has been traveling the Brittany landscape

for 25 years, trying to understand

the geographical placement of these alignments.

The site of Kerzerho, a few kilometers from Carnac,

is one of his favorite stops.

>> I'll show you the plan made by the English geometrist

Murray Vicars in 1832.

He was a great geometrist who was

working for the English crown.

So here's what he saw when he came in 1832--

the alignment where we are.

There's two kilometers 100 meters from one

end to the other of the alignment.

It's the largest group of standing stones

known in Europe.

What's the most surprising is that the lines aren't straight

at all, and people say, why?

The relief justifies the changes of direction.

For example, here you see that the lines of menhir

are all going in the same direction.

And when you come to this path, which is just beside a stream,

there's a change of direction.

Then the lines will bend and reach up to this rocky ridge.

Every change of direction corresponds with the line

to a hill or water.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> The inclusion of the menhir in their natural surroundings

seems to have been a major concern of our ancestor

builders.

They were doubtless led by aesthetic logic,

but also by a symbolic quality.

It's true that these lines of stone stretching out

through the landscape are impressive.

>> It's a symbol of the power of these people.

There's really the idea that the territory

is barred off by something.

It's the symbol of an ethnic group belonging

to a great family, a large community

with a common culture, which does this.

>> However, a major question remains.

Why were these monumental groups raised?

Commemorative stones for people or events, ceremonial places,

territory markers--

there are many hypotheses, but the answer

lies forever buried with the minds of our ancestors.

>> It has to be said that about everything concerning the daily

life of these people, their dwellings,

very little data is available.

There have been a few excavations

made of the habitations.

I think we're missing a great many elements.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> The megaliths are an illustration of the great

change in human history between 6,000 and 2,000 years BC.

This period is known as the Neolithic,

and is the time when our hunter-gatherer ancestors

became sedentary, invented agriculture, animal farming,

and built tombs to bury their dead.

Their collective tombs, called dolmen,

appeared at the same period as the menhir.

They are built of a horizontal slab

of stone posed on vertical stones which hold it up.

>> The humans of the Neolithic went inside this corridor

and placed bodies all along it.

We know there could be more than 10, up to 100 bodies inside.

>> Dolmen, like menhir, bear witness to the birth

of a culture 6,000 years ago.

>> It's really the start of our own culture,

because it's the first time in the history of humanity that

people made something which was not just made for survival

purposes.

>> But how did people manage in 4,000 BC to extract these

enormous blocks of stone?

>> The Neolithic people worked at the fissures,

making little notches.

They just had to put bits of wood into these

and then soak them in water for the wood

to swell and finally crack open the rock a little more.

And there, that's really the face they cracked.

As well as that, it's a typical case.

There are extraction notches on either side.

There are two notches here and two there.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

While the raising of these stones

must have happened during great gatherings of people,

the sheer number put in place must

have taken hundreds of years.

The sight of these thousands of standing stones

raises an immediate question.

Why are they concentrated at Carnac and the area around it?

>> There must have been a very dense population,

or otherwise a place where gatherings were inevitable,

to raise these cut stones and gigantic monuments.

>> In 4,000 BC, was the Brittany coast a kind of El Dorado

attracting a dense population?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> In the Neolithic, they had everything here--

excellent land, the sea, cultural and business exchanges

by boat.

And it's probable that the making of salt

was the reason for the region being so rich.

You can see that it's the sea's edge that is literally bordered

with these pillars, and by looking

at the Carnac alignments, you can really

see their idea of a barrier of stones

when you come up from there.

It's really a kind of wall marking

the start of the land, where there's

a great number of these standing stones.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> While most of these menhir are part of groups, others,

more isolated, immediately attract us by their size

and their particular placing.

>> So this enormous menhir here is the highest raise nowadays

on the Morbihan coast.

We don't know its total length, but it's close to 6 meters

high, just a little bit less.

It's clear that it being outside the rows of monoliths

gives it a very special value.

The fact that it's the biggest, the most important,

would mean if it's the stone of a person,

they were very important, or the values attributed to them were.

We're in the domain of mythology which invents an entire people,

and I think it's the start of our modern myths, which

gradually will take shape here and develop over time.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So menhir symbolize the emergence

of a mysterious culture.

Sometimes it takes a detective's eye to see and decode

all their secrets.

>> What's really amazing is that because of this lovely,

ambient light and the strong sunlight,

there are carvings which appear on the menhirs.

This is one that isn't known of in my opinion.

You can see a whole series of horizontal cuts,

and you can follow them up to here.

There are even some a little lower.

And there you are.

I'd say that's a real discovery.

I think if we checked all carvings on all the menhirs

with a strong nightlight, we'd make a number of discoveries.

I think there's a lot left to discover in these alignments.

>> Far from being just big blocks of raw stone planted

in the ground, the menhir were perhaps once carved.

Most of these carvings have been worn away by wind and rain,

but some, protected from the weather,

have crossed millennia.

>> There's a whole series of snakes carved here.

You can clearly see the winding snake body,

with head positioned here.

There's another one beside it there.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> The symbolic aspect of megaliths is omnipresent.

Bearing witness to this are the carvings on some stones,

as well as the spatial organization

of the groups of stones.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Sometimes the architecture of the sites

is surprisingly precise.

This is true of Stonehenge, the geometric structure

of which is a model.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Sites 150 kilometers west of London, Stonehenge

is the most complete form of what the Celts called

a cromlech, a stone circle.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It was built in three phases between 3,000 and 1,500 BC,

more than 1,000 years after Carnac.

The Giants' Dance, as it was known in the Middle Ages,

has attracted archeologists for decades.

Astronomical observatory, royal tomb, ceremonial place,

memorial--

the explanations follow each new discovery,

but for some, the magic of the place is beyond explanation.

Some regular visitors, roaming adventurers,

come and stop here every year to feel the place's beauty.

Chris and Rob are two pillars of this community

of Stonehenge lovers.

They set up house here for a few weeks

on the roads which border the site, and despite the fences,

let the atmosphere of the place wash over them.

It

>> There's something about this place that causes you

to reflect on your mortality and your sense of life and what

it's about.

>> There is something that draws me that I can't quite explain.

Every time I try and do something else

or go somewhere else or concentrate

on another part of my life, it kind of turns me around

and brings me back here.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> There's a power to this place.

You look at the world in a different way.

You know, we have all this chaos going on around us

in our lives.

But you come here, and you kind of put it in perspective.

It's something stable and tangible in a changing world.

>> Such a place should have a caretaker,

and Rob sometimes feels he has been given this job.

>> I think maybe I'm here just to watch over it,

maybe just to make sure that it's kind of looked after,

you know?

>> It's obvious that the stones are laid out in some form

of astrological cosmic thinking behind them

because of the nature of the geometry that lies behind it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> Perhaps this is the reason that Stonehenge has become

a place of pilgrimage.

>> Hundreds of generations, people have been come gathering

here.

People come here from all over the world to gather,

and there's got to be a common theme between them.

I don't know.

Maybe it's just something that was built into us.

We need some places like this, as a species,

to gather together and just be.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> For our ancestors, Stonehenge was without doubt a solar

temple, which marked the season's passing during large

gatherings.

The celebrations held here 5,000 years ago

are perpetuated today.

At the time of the summer solstice,

on the night of the 20th to the 21st of June,

an immense crowd drawn from all around the world

gather to celebrate sunrise on the first day of summer.

[CHATTER]

>> My name's King Arthur.

I'm a senior druid, and I'm here to celebrate the solstice.

And what we're here to celebrate is the rebirth

of the sun on the longest day.

We will do it with poetry.

We will do it with verse.

We will do with ritual, and we will do it

with up to 37,000 people, because this

is a gathering of the tribes.

>> This is the Festival of Light for the Celts.

It's the time when the night is shortest in the year,

so it's a very important festival for us,

a festival to shared.

>> While Stonehenge can inspire modern druids, the site has,

however, no link with the first Celts,

who appeared 2,000 years after it was built.

The force which emanates from this place doubtless explains

the fascination felt for this imposing monument.

>> The energy that comes from the stones at this time of year

is really overwhelming.

>> There is natural energies along the Earth,

and the ancient peoples knew this.

That is why they were attracted to this spot.

That's why they built the stones.

That's one of the things that may have

helped them build the stones.

>> There's sort of like an energy point in the planet.

You know, you can't have millions

of people drawn to the same place for thousands

of years for nothing.

Do you know what I mean?

It's just-- it's a special place.

It's like a church.

[DRUMMING]

>> I proposed to my lady in there.

[CHUCKLING]

>> I said yes.

>> Nowadays, everyone has their own reasons for coming

to celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge,

but archeologists are unanimous that the circle of giant stones

was certainly the site of great gatherings.

>> I like to imagine that this is the same sort of thing that

was going on 5,000 years ago.

[DRUMMING]

>> Stonehenge was built at a time when we, mankind,

are changing from hunter-gatherers

to agriculturalists.

The ancients built this so they knew what time of year it was,

and the reason was that is a great solar clock.

It does not tell you the time of day.

It tells you the time of year.

Now, if you think about it, if they got it wrong,

the frost would get the crop.

If they planted at the wrong time,

the whole of their society, their tribe,

would be wiped out.

They had to get it right.

And the way they got it right was

by observing the movement of the stars and the sun,

and that is what this temple is designed for.

That is what it does, and that is why some of us

still celebrate to this day.

[DRUMMING]

>> 4,000 years ago, the celebrations were doubtless

accompanied by singing, music, and dance.

Some archeologists have theorized

that the structure of Stonehenge was

designed so as to help sound to be diffused during ceremonies.

[DRUMMING]

>> I'm a dancer.

I love to dance, and I love music.

And I believe that music can change a mood.

I believe music can change where your consciousness lies,

can put you in a dream-like state,

and I think that is something that's

recognized through shamanic teachings all over the world.

And I think as well as being a temple of light

as well as being something to do with the sun,

I think is also it was done in a way

that the acoustics were very important as well.

>> It can be anything just from being able to hear somebody

speak like in a lecture theater.

Or it could be, as I said, to help aid people to change

their state of consciousness, to allow themselves

to be more open.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> Stonehenge has inspired minds from its creation right

to our time.

The power of its structure and its style fascinate.

The site has been copied in different forms

down through the centuries.

In 1820, the Sheriff of Yorkshire

had the Druid Temple built, with its structure and proportions

inspired strongly by Stonehenge.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The sacrificial altar in the middle

of the construction and the mysterious atmosphere

it has fed many rumors of satanic ceremonies

and of secret society meetings.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Much more recently, a postindustrial version

of the famous site of Stonehenge was created in the USA

during the 1970s.

Carhenge is a faithful reproduction

of the Neolithic site.

Compressed cars have replaced the stones,

but the solar orientation has been respected,

a way of being faithful to the astral clock

face of the original site.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The question recurs, were, like Stonehenge, megalithic sites

used as seasonal clocks?

The reason for the theory that they

are oriented towards the stars becomes clear

when they are seen from above.

Laurent Lescop, an architect with a passion for archeology,

wishes to test this theory scientifically at the Crucuno

site in Morbihan.

He is there with his son to explore the question.

>> The important thing here is that there's a very particular

story attached to Crucuno.

It has the reputation of being oriented towards the stars

and especially towards the sunrise at the summer

and winter solstices.

So you could say, it's a sort of little Stonehenge, at least

that's its reputation.

The idea is to make a survey of the site.

So we're taking advantage of time

when the light is relatively even.

The morning is ideal, so as not to have shadows cast

or contrast too strong.

The idea is to photograph the zone entirely,

taking shots from every angle, and then to reconstitute it

all using 3D software.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

These blue squares are the camera positions.

This here is a faithful model and carefully oriented,

because our concern here is to have a perfectly precise

orientation, so afterwards, we can

simulate the course of the sun.

So here we have an arc, which corresponds to the sun's

position each hour.

Here, in 4000 BC, and in comparison

with today's situation, in the morning,

we have in this direction, the sun which rises at the angle,

and in the evening, the sun will set at the angle.

>> In 4000 years BC, our farmer ancestors was certainly aware

of the natural phenomena that gave rhythm to working

the land.

Some megalithic sites could have served as observatories

to measure the course of the sun and cycle of the seasons.

Well, to know whether these sites were oriented in this way

with that idea in mind, to know if that

was the initial idea, the objective,

is difficult to say one way or the other.

If saying that they could have been

part of a kind of spatial and temporal marker, I think so.

>> The solar orientation of Crucuno has caused debate

following restoration of the site by Felix Gaillard,

one of the pioneers of megalith archeology at the end

of the 19th century.

Felix Gaillard protected and restored the site in 1887,

and what's important is that he wrote about it 10 years later

and published a book, which was quite important,

called "Prehistoric Astronomy."

And the fact the site was perfectly oriented

towards the solstices fits the theory perfectly.

It was widely said that the site was intentionally

replaced so that it corresponded very well to the theory.

>> Christian Obeltz, tireless megalith explorer,

has come to make his own examination of the site

because for him, the astral orientation of Crucuno remains

uncertain.

>> The presence of a great number of monoliths taken

into the walls, which are now hidden by vegetation,

suggests that this was much more than a simple rectangle.

I've worked on the archives, and it gets really interesting.

There are big surprises that when

you study the plan made by Murray Vicars,

you see that instead of there being 22 monoliths,

there are 50 or so, and they don't at all

form a structure like that.

Today, what is being conserved is that, that, that, and that.

All the rest has been destroyed, except for a few stones

that you can see here and there.

Once again, the plan was made in 1832, so what was there before?

>> Trying to rewind time and unlock the secrets

of the megaliths is the objective of archeologists like

Deborah Anderson.

She regularly braves the wind and cold

of the wild fringes of Scotland to visit the site of Callanish.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Known as the Stonehenge of the North,

this stone circle is found on Lewis Island

in the extreme north of Scotland.

Its very special location leads to our thinking

that the structure is linked to the lunar cycle.

>> The Isle of Lewis is actually on 58 degrees north alignment.

So the lunar standstill only happens at 58 degrees.

The only other place it happens is 58 degrees south

in Cape Horn, in southern Chile.

So you know, Callanish, part of it

was built specifically with that lunar alignment in mind.

Lunar alignments only happens every 18.9 years,

and it's when the moon is closest

to the horizon, how it skims.

And there's a set of hills over there

that actually looks like a woman lying on their back.

And during the lunar standstill, the moon

skirts the hills there.

>> This astonishing display inspired artist Christina

Walczuk, and she became quite passionate about the site.

>> This figure has the name "Sleeping Woman"

or "Old Woman of the Moon."

so from this point, it looks like the moon

is born from the figure and then glides across the sky

and disappears behind this hill and then this reborn.

When you're standing at the bottom of the avenue,

it looks like it sinks into the ring,

and it's an absolutely spectacular event.

So I wanted to recreate that in my painting.

>> The orientation of Callanish, according to the lunar axis,

has attracted attention since antiquity.

>> There was a Greek historian called Diodorus that mentioned

that there was a lunar temple on this kind of 58-degree north

alignment.

>> According to other ancient manuscripts,

Callanish was the place where the goddess of the moon visited

Earth every 19 years.

Perhaps it was to capture the power of the moon

that the people of the north raised this stone circle there,

where the full solstice moon touched the mountain tops.

Raised in 3000 BC, this site is unique in Europe,

because it brings together in one place all three main forms

of megalithic structures, alignments,

stone circles, and a tomb.

>> This is what you call the chamber tomb,

which was inserted after the monolith and the stone circle.

This would have had burials in there, communal burials.

>> Burying the dead was a major cultural, social,

and spiritual development for our ancestors 5,000 years ago.

>> The Neolithic see an entire reworking of the relationship

of people with nature.

Before, in the Mesolithic, you were part of nature.

You moved around the landscape.

Your special places were natural places.

In the Neolithic, when you start settling in one place,

they start building monuments, you know?

And this is that relationship, we own this land.

This is why we turn to cairns we built on hills.

These are our ancestors.

This is our land.

>> As for many megalith sites, the placing of the site

of Callanish within its landscape has been thought out.

>> You often find stone circles very close to water bodies.

And it's this liminality between the living and the dead

and the water and the land that seems

to be so important to the monument builders of stone

circles.

>> The representations which guided the conception

of Callanish have been revisited 5,000 years later by Christina

Walczuk.

In the gallery she runs with her husband Roger,

the paintings on show are full of symbolic elements.

I like to get the emotional point of view,

the spiritual point of view.

And I used to be a figurative artist,

now I try and pick out the figurative element

in the landscape and the stones.

I included the crow flying, because in Celtic methodology,

it represents death, and this figure

looks like it's a skeleton.

So we actually see this as something

that dies and is reborn in relationship to the moon.

I personally think it's a woman who's just given birth.

Now, this is the skeleton, who implies death,

and I like to think this is life, death,

and the cycle of life.

>> While Christina puts the finishing touches to her latest

work, Roger goes to the site looking for symbols.

>> Coming up to the stones now, some people have noticed images

on the stones, and we're artists,

and that's what we're interested in.

I don't know if you noticed here there's an image of a face,

like a woman's face, a bit like an Egyptian sort of face.

This, we call the Woman Stone.

From inside, this one we refer to as the male stone

because it's obviously very phallic.

The female stone and the male stone

work together to form a box, those shelves there from a box,

where the midsummer sunrise, just after it, shines

a beam of light to this stone.

It's bringing the adages of the sun into the ring.

>> Lost in the middle of the Scottish lochs and heaths,

the site has a rare strength and poetic quality.

It can't help inspiring artists and firing the imagination.

Roger crisscrosses the site and allows inspiration

to carry him away.

>> There would be the point, that box, the equinox,

it echoes the shape of the landscape, that ridge there,

that notch.

That's where the midwinter sun sets.

Because you would actually go like that when

something's dazzling you, yeah, to sort of stop it

from dazzling you.

And I think they made that stone deliberately to hide it,

because it was hurting their eyes.

This stone, I think, represents revering

the dead, because it seems like a skeleton, yeah?

So it's like revering the dead near the cairn here.

Perhaps why the later people built the cairn

here because of this stone with this image on.

The big stone in the center, some people

have suggested it's like a rudder of a boat,

you know, the steering part of a boat,

to steer the spirits of the dead to the stars.

>> The Callanish, which affects us today,

is the work of people who have mastered the cycle

of the seasons, observed the stars,

and voyaged on the ocean.

Could these stones standing on the hills of Scotland

be simply the symbol of a megalithic civilization?

>> This stone circle here is just part of the Atlantic

tradition, which you will have links all the way down

the Atlantic coast.

There's lots of evidence to suggest that people are moving

up and down the Atlantic seaways but also

ideas and traditions as well.

>> Some thousands of kilometers to the south,

like an echo to Callanish, silhouettes of stones are lost

in the sea.

Witness to the changes in the landscape over 5,000 years,

these half-drowned arcs of standing stones intrigue us.

Sited in the Gulf of Morbihan, the island of Er Lannic

has been declared a natural reserve.

It is only accessible by sea, and it

is forbidden to set foot there.

So Laurent Lescop is taken there in a boat

by Yves Belenfant, who knows the place well.

>> It's a double semi-circle really.

It's not completely two arcs of a circle.

So there we can see the first, and the second you

can't see, because it's completely immersed.

Here, we're at full tide.

So at full tide, they're at about three to four meters

maximum.

The monoliths that we see here in the first arc,

well, there's a big one there, the one at the summit.

But the monoliths of the second semicircle,

which are completely immersed, are three to four times bigger.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

>> Archaeological excavations made near the stones have given

clues to the function of the site.

>> When we look at the archaeological material that

has been found, there's over a ton of pottery and traces

of elements of fumigation.

So this could have links with some kind of cult practice.

There were also a number of little flint arrows

and as well, there were casings, and in these casings

were the burned bones of cattle.

So we have something which is perhaps a lot more

to do with the ceremony, cult of some kind, but what kind,

it's very hard to say.

>> One thing is sure is that the semi-circles of stone were

raised on dry land in a very different landscape,

which has since been altered by the change in climate.

Laurent has made a photographic survey of the site

to model it in 3D and simulate the original environment.

5,000 years ago, it's estimated the water level

was six to eight meters lower.

>> It's true that imagining this place without water requires

a little effort of the imagination.

So this image will help that effort of imagination.

It's a model which will help to understand

the proportions of this to the scale of the landscape.

>> These standing stones were without doubt part of a group

of interconnected sites.

In fact, far off, on the other side of the sea,

is a construction of dry stones, which

the archeologists call a cairn.

The Cairn of Gavrinis is a funerary monument

built around 4000 years BC.

Beneath this massive stone is hidden a treasure,

and this is one of the sites explored by Laurent Lescop.

22 of the 24 blocks of stone which

make up the inner corridor and funeral chamber

are entirely covered in carvings.

The site is known for this reason as the Neolithic Sistine

Chapel.

Laurent is carefully surveying all the stones

to model them in 3D and thus, be able to better decipher

the motifs.

>> We can see the carvings much more precisely.

One very important element is the position

of each carving within the global space.

That is to say, until now, what we had been seeing

were carvings reproduced on a plan.

So we had little idea of the volume over which

the carvings stretched.

However, Gavrinis by closely observing all of the stones,

we see that some carvings are directed

by the volume of the stones, by the starting model

that the stone offered.

Given the density, the regularity

and the way in which things have been done,

we can ask ourselves if it was the same hand which

carved the whole site, and in that case,

we would have ourselves here a Michelangelo of that time.

>> One of the remarkable elements is found here.

These are, in fact, boats.

They are here and there.

And then these elements, like points, would be the crew.

It's a way of representing the boats and their crews that

is found in a lot of carvings of this time.

>> The maritime environment certainly influenced

the artistic repertory of the Neolithic occupants

of the region.

>> When you see the current, you can see it makes arcs,

and you could ask yourself if these forms inspired what we

find inside.

>> Laurent's objective is also to make a precise 3D model

of the exterior of the site.

>> Here, for example, we have the general volume of the cairn

as a scatter plot, and you can see there are some elements

missing, which will probably be completed by the shots we take

with the drone.

With the images taken by the drone,

I'll be able to have the whole of the site all at once

with a lot of detail, which will then come in very, very useful.

>> OK, we'll take off.

Can we sweep the facade there?

>> Yes, of course.

We'll go from left to right.

>> There, that's perfect

>> The use of models for the exterior is to get the complete

volume and the interior to have detail of all the carvings,

to relate the inside to the outside,

allowing us to place the corridor very precisely

in the cairn and have an image, a bit like an ultrasound image.

>> Laurent thinks that the corridor of the Cairn

of Gavrinis was lined up in relation to the axis of the sun

at the winter solstice.

On the 21st of December, the first rays of the sun

light up the corridor in the funeral chamber,

one more sign that shows the close link

for Neolithic people between nature

and all the forces that drive it.

>> Natural elements, whether they be stone, water, wind,

or the stars have contributed to the placing of these megaliths.

>> This proximity between standing stones and natural

forces has helped to feed many beliefs and legends throughout

the ages.

>> There are several legends linked to the Giant Gargantua,

to the fairies, to the Corrigans, or Brittany elves.

For example, the Giant Gargantua,

who often had a pebble in his shoes, pulled it out,

and when it fell it became a menhir.

Or it's said that the spindle of a fairy spinning wheel

was turned into a menhir.

Or that the dolmen were the houses of the Corrigans,

those mischief elves, that once night fell

could lead you into infernal dances,

and you'd never be seen again.

Very close to megalithic monuments

are often found natural outcrops of rock

on the surface formed geologically

by natural erosion of granite.

And these rocks, which were often

thought to be sacrificial stones,

have led to many legends.

Some menhirs were used for fertility rights

for women wanting children.

Small flowers braided with oil were brought to the menhir,

and they rub their stomachs against the menhir,

naked preferably, and I've seen this done, not by new agers

but by older folk.

So it hasn't yet disappeared from tradition here.

It brings us back again to the idea of a force in the stone.

When you see a standing stone, I don't

want to be a total Freudian, and I'm not one,

but there is a phallic quality all the same

in these enormous standing stones,

a force in this shape of virility and potency.

Nowadays, a lot of people come to find energy

in these megaliths, come and place the hands upon it

or to walk around it, lie down, sit, lie and watch them.

Do these stones transmit energy?

Here, we're flirting with what can be scientifically proved

and that which can't be between the visible and the invisible.

>> It is this invisible part that Maria Wheatley is

exploring.

Daughter of a dowser, she quickly became interested

in the energy of megaliths.

Her favorite exploration ground is the site of Avebury

where anybody fascinated by menhir should visit.

>> It's a special area because it contains Earth energy,

and that's what our ancient ancestors were looking for.

This is a ley line, called the Saint Michael

line that's 300 miles coursing across the landscape.

You get many ceremonial centers lined upon this ley.

Avebury is at the exact center of this line.

>> Maria thinks Avebury's site is deliberate.

The site is in the middle of a flow of energy

that crosses the southern United Kingdom from west to east.

>> When you root a standing stone into the ground

on an Earth current, something truly magical begins to happen.

The stone absorbs the Earth energy,

and it kind of has these energy bands

that coil around the stone.

There's five above ground and two below.

Band number two sends an electromagnetic signal

to that stone, to that stone, to that stone, to that stone.

So it creates a spider's web of electromagnetic energy

on the inside of a stone circle.

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>> According to Maria, the capacity of the stones

to absorb energy comes from their composition.

>> This type of stone is a form of sandstone.

Sandstone formed thousands of years ago.

And it contains a lot of silicon,

which is quite intriguing, because when

we think of silicon, we think of macrochips and microchips

and everything that has revolutionized our lives,

because semiconductors and those microchips

are used today in our PCs, our telephones.

Well, our ancient ancestors may have used them

in a completely different way, because this

is a massive piece of silicon put into Earth energy currents

to make them come alive with those energy bands.

And I'm going to give you a dowsing demonstration now.

This is a dowsing rod.

It's made of copper and nickel.

So it's quite conductive.

It's particularly good at picking up these energy bands.

So just by lifting the rod up the face of the stone,

when it gets to the top of that third energy band, there we go.

There, it said found.

So that's the top there.

We just lift it up the face of the stone again.

That's particularly strong there.

And lift it up the face of the stone there,

that's the energy band.

>> Some people think the Neolithic people knew how

to channel this energy.

>> A lot of people think somehow our ancient ancestors were able

to manipulate that energy and transport stones.

That sounds quite fantastic.

It really does.

But maybe there's a shred of evidence for that.

With using our equipment, we decided

to see if there was any electromagnetic activity

happening in the Earth currents, and what

we found was three distinctive electromagnetic signals.

There's a researcher who looks into the Bosnian pyramids,

and he claims that the signal for levitation is 25 Hertz.

Well, we found round about 25 Hertz in this Earth current.

So could it be that our ancient ancestors somehow knew

and manipulated that frequency of levitation?

>> Maria also thinks she has unlocked the secret of why

the megalithic sites have such an attraction for us.

>> With our equipment, we realized that the Earth

currents and underground water, particular type of underground

water, emits a frequency, and that frequency is seven Hertz.

Well, what does that mean?

Seven Hertz is when you feel relaxed.

It's like when you're in a meditative state.

So I'm sure that is why people are drawn to these sites.

They know what's good for them, and they

feel that there's something about these sites.

They make them feel good.

>> The energy released by these sites attracts us even today,

although, according to Maria, our ancestors could feel it

much more powerfully.

>> Our ancestors were more connected to the landscape,

and also, I think their sensitivity was increased.

Today, we just walk around.

We've got synthetic clothes on, made of nylon.

Some of us wear synthetic shoes.

We're not connected to the earth,

so we've lost that connection.

I feel ancient sites, they're places

where we can get a connection back to Mother Earth.

So it's about really connecting back to the Earth

and seeing the Earth in all of her glory.

>> Megaliths attract us through their evocative power for they

draw us back to the origins of our culture.

They illustrate an essential period of humanity's history

6,000 years ago, when our ancestors settled, marked out

their territory, buried their dead,

and set the foundations of a civilization which

the megaliths symbolized spectacularly.

While science has allowed us to better understand

who built these monuments, at what time they were built,

and how, a question has never been answered.

Why?

For our ancestors took with them the rituals and beliefs

that brought these places to life.

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