Cairn de l'île Carn - Ploudalmézeau, Finistère, FRA - Cairns on Waymarking.com

The cairn of Île Carn, locally called the cairn, is a megalithic monument located on Île Carn, in the town of Ploudalmézeau, north of Bas-Léon, in Finistère, Brittany.

Carn Island is a coastal islet in the Celtic Sea. At low tide, access is on dry foot, by a rocky causeway.

The primary cairn has three dolmens with passage and corbelled vault. The construction of the first two took place around 4200 BC. AD, that of the third around 3600. This primary, trapezoidal cairn was buried in the late Neolithic under a “prohibition massif”: a large circular cairn, without an entrance.

In 1959, the central dolmen was the first corridor dolmen in Europe dated by carbon 14. The announcement of its great antiquity (1,600 years older than the oldest pyramid in Egypt) produced a shock in the scientific community : Until then, archaeologists saw megalithic constructions much more recent.

In the Middle Neolithic, here, the sea level was 8.80 meters lower than today. At the time of its construction, the primary cairn must therefore be on the mainland, about 200 meters from the shore, and overlook the sea by about twenty meters. It is trapezoidal (a little wider in the south-west than in the north-east). Three passage dolmens are aligned there.

The date of construction of the south and central dolmens is around 4200 BC. AD 4 They would therefore have been a few centuries younger than dolmen C of cairn III of Guennoc island and dolmen G of cairn of Barnenez (both around 4600).
The north dolmen is more recent (around 3600).

During or at the end of the final Neolithic, the monument is condemned: it is buried under a block of prohibition, a large circular cairn without entry. “It is,” says Pierre-Roland Giot, “the most spectacular example of an important prohibition structure. "And Jean L'Helgouac'h adds that the replacement of a quadrangular structure by a circular structure is not found" on any other site with an elongated dolmen cairn.

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Cairn Location: island Cairn Purpose: Grave Memorial Cairn Condition: Type if different from above list: Not listed Types of rock: Not listed

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