Menhir de Kerloas

At 9.5 meters in height (about 31 feet), the Kerloas menhir is the tallest menhir (or standing stone) in the world still upright. It is located slightly below the highest point of the Pays d'Iroise, and dominates a pleasant and large space for visitors.

The menhir’s flattened shape and surface flanks are typical of a Bronze Age technique. It has the particularity of having a curiously bevelled top. The monument, which is said to have once reached 11 to 12 meters in height (36 to 39 feet), was damaged by lightning during the 17th century. It is said that from the block that fell to the ground, a farmer made a trough. The stone is visible from up to 30 kilometers away—especially from some buildings in Brest—and has long been a remarkable landmark for navigators.

Specialists estimate the total weight of the menhir, also known as Kervéatoux menhir, to be between 100 and 150 tons. Composed of porphyroid granite, it was probably extracted from outcrops at least two kilometers away towards Aber Ildut. From then on, we can imagine the difficulties that the monument's builders had to overcome to extract it from its rock, carve it, then transport it over this distance up the natural slope of the land, and erect it in its current location.

The Kerloas menhir has two opposite humps at about one metre from the ground, two small rounded protuberances about thirty centimetres in diameter. That's why some people still call this monument Le Bossu (“the hunchback”). The presence of these two opposite bumps on a perfectly bush-hammered stone suggests that they were deliberately shaped if not maintained. For what purpose? One can imagine, for example, that they would have been used to block ropes during transport. Another protrusion, but of a different type, is visible on the menhir of Kerhouézel, in the commune of Porspoder.

A rite was transmitted to us by several 19th-century travelers. Jacques Cambry, a Breton writer, tells us, for example, in 1805: “New brides take their husbands there, make them kiss the stone, to be mistresses in their homes. A strange superstition causes men and women to rub their navels against this pillar to give birth to boys rather than girls, and the stone is worn and polished at the waist.”

For his part, in 1832, Christophe-Paulin de la Poix, Chevalier de Fréminville, told us: “The newlyweds go devoutly to the foot of this menhir, and after having partly stripped themselves of their clothes, the woman on one side, the husband on the other, rub their bare bellies against one of these bumps. The man claims, through this ridiculous ceremony, to obtain male children rather than daughters, and the woman claims that by doing so she will have the advantage of being the absolute mistress of the dwelling and of governing her husband entirely.”

Another legend claims that the stones scattered throughout the territory, including the Kerloas menhir, were thrown by the giant Gargantua at the population of Plouarzel because he was unhappy with the food they had given him to eat.

Several excavations have been carried out around the monument. They revealed a pavement about 20 meters long and 26 shards from the deposition of a Bronze Age ceramic vase, from much later than the erection of the menhir. In 1961, following the clandestine excavation of a treasure seeker, another pottery deposit was discovered at the foot of the monument. The shards were deposited at the Museum of Prehistory in Penmarc'h. Unfortunately, we do not yet know the civilization that created this feat.