ABSTRACT
The shaping and erection of the giant axe-like menhirs in the landscape of Bas Leon was perhaps a form of reference to, and acknowledgement of, this creative force of the ancestors, whose own axes had been congealed into the stones and subsequently revealed by the sea. A significant number of the menhirs in Finistere with their curved dynamic profiles suggest themes of fertility and growth. Perhaps those stones of anthropomorphic form are linked to a theme of human reproduction. Some menhirs can be likened to great bulbous rhizomes being inserted into the ground. A few excavations undertaken around the bases of menhirs have recovered fragments of Neolithic and Bronze Age pottery, fire-reddened stones, charred wood, chips of flint and axe blades but tantalizingly little else. The axe-like menhirs of Bas Leon, planted into the land, have enormous symbolic power.
