Everyone pictures Stonehenge, but in northwestern France stands a megalithic metropolis that dwarfs it: over 3,000 prehistoric standing stones, some erected as far back as 4,500 BC, thousands of years before the first Egyptian pyramids. Who built it, and why?

This deep dive explores the Carnac stones of Brittany as a window into a complex, deeply unequal Neolithic society. We examine the staggering engineering behind miles of aligned granite, the divine kings buried in colossal mounds with imported luxury goods, and how this ancient wonder survived millennia of neglect only to face bulldozers and retail developers.

• The three great alignments, Menec, Kermario, and Kerlescan, and how the stones were quarried and hauled
• Folklore of petrified Roman legions and disputed theories of astronomical observatories
• The 35,000-cubic-meter tumuli holding single elite “divine kings”
• Jade axes from the Italian Alps and callais from Iberia, echoing Bulgaria’s Varna culture
• From farm sheds and sledgehammers to Zacharie Le Rouzic’s rescue, contested fences, and the 2023 store that destroyed 39 stones