7,000-Year-Old Ancient Stones in France Removed to Make Way for a New Hardware Store Chain

A field of ancient stones in Carnac, a town in northern France, has been swept away to make room for a hardware store chain, France 24 reported Thursday.

“The site has been destroyed,” Carnac-based archaeologist Christian Obeltz told Agence France Presse of the local pre-historic treasure. The 39 stones were around two to four feet in height and thought to be around 7,000 years old. 

While these particular stones were close to a protected site where 3,000 similar stones known as menhirs exist, the land they were on was not protected. Last August, hardware chain Mr. Bricolage successfully applied for a building permit on the land to open a new store. 

The mayor of Carnac, Olivier Lepick, told AFP that those stones in particular were “of low archaeological value” and that the site had been inspected prior to the start of construction, as required by law. 

The Regional Office of Cultural Affairs (Drac) for Brittany, which oversees cultural sites like the menhir fields in Carnac followed suit, releasing a statement earlier this week that said given “the uncertain and in any case non-major character of the remains, as revealed by checks, damage to a site of archaeological value has not been established.”

Obeltz disagrees. The archaeologist claims that local authorities didn’t properly investigate the site, and didn’t actually disprove that the now=cleared stones were menhirs. “There weren’t archaeological excavations in order to know if the stones were menhirs or not,” Obeltz told AFP.