These pyramidal tombs are located at Al-Hatiya in Wadi al-Ajal, Fezzan, southern Libya. They are associated with the ancient Garamantes, a civilization that flourished in the region from around 50O BC to AD 700. The pyramidal tombs were built as funerary monuments, mainly from mudbrick. Archaeological surveys have identified several cemeteries of these pyramid-like tombs across Wadi al-Ajal. I photographed these during my visit to Al-Hatiya.
Aprox. 11,000-years-old. Ergun Lafli says the statue “is one of the very earliest evidences of religion and cult in the entire ancient Near East and therefore meaningful for the whole Neolithic world stretching from Spain in the west to Afghanistan in the east, including Stonehenge in the UK.”
Ancient people could erect inscriptions for almost anything: tombstones, civic decrees, royal letters, diplomatic relations, honorary inscriptions, prayers, curses, and many more.
I came across this inscription in Hasan Malay’s 1994 Greek and Latin Inscriptions in the Manisa Museum. What caught my attention first was the Nike relief at the top. Beneath it, the inscription gives the name of the dedicator and the gods to whom the offering was made: Men Kamarites, Pluto, and Kore.
Men was an Anatolian moon god, worshipped in many local cults across Anatolia. Pluto was another name for Hades, while Kore was his wife and queen of the Underworld.
[Ἀ]πελλῆς Ἀπελλήο[υς]
[Μ]ηνὶ Καμαρίτῃ καὶ
[Πλ]ούτωνι καὶ Κόρῃ εὐ-
[χὴ]ν ὅτι μοι ἐπήκουσαν
πάντα.
“Apelles, son of Apelleus, [dedicated] a votive offering to Men Kamarites, Pluto, and Kore, because they heard me in everything.”
So this was a thanksgiving offering. But why was Apelles thanking gods so closely associated with the Underworld and death?
We will probably never know. Maybe that is one of the most interesting things about these inscriptions: sometimes all that remains is a few words, while the story behind them is gone.
The early 12th century BC often reads like an ancient apocalypse. The great powers of the Late Bronze Age fractured. The Hittite Empire, a superpower sprawling across Anatolia and modern Syria from about 1600 BCE, seemingly vanished into the dust in 1180 BCE. We picture burning cities. We imagine a sudden, violent end.
But this picture is incomplete. The famous "collapse" was not uniform across the Near East. Instead, it was a complex, often traumatic transformation. It depended entirely on who you were, where you were, and when you were there. To understand who survived the destruction of Hattusa and the Land of Hatti, we must first look at what failed.
The Abandoned Heartland
For decades, historians believed that hostile invaders, often linked to the mysterious Sea Peoples, violently destroyed the Hittite capital of Hattusa. The archaeological evidence, however, tells a more complicated story. The city did burn, but archaeologists now know the royal court largely abandoned it first (Bryce, 2005). The elites packed their treasures and fled.
Why did they leave? A lethal combination of systemic failures doomed the central Anatolian highlands. Prolonged droughts devastated local agriculture (Cline, 2014). This was no ordinary drought. This was a mega-drought lasting up to 300 years, stretching from about 1250 BCE until about 850 BCE. We know this from pollen samples taken from dried up lakes, lagoons, and rivers. Inside deep cave systems, stalagmites stopped growing.
We know there were severe famines in Hatti. Even the Egyptians recorded this Anatolian disaster. An inscription by the Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah, carved at Karnak, boasts about his generosity. He states that he sent massive grain shipments in ships "to keep alive that land of Hatti" (Cline, 2014). As best we can tell, this grain was shipped between 1210 and 1208 BCE.
On a tablet (text Bo 2810) written in the Hittite language and found at Hattusa, is a draft of a letter from the Great King to a subordinate prince (Hoffner, 2009). "Do you not know that there was a famine in my lands?" (Klengel, 1974)
The king issued a blunt command. He orders his officials to secure grain immediately. They must transport it to Ura, a port on the Mediterranean (Hoffner, 2009).
Scholars generally attribute the tablet to the reign of Tudhaliya IV or his successor, Suppiluliuma II (Hoffner, 2009) so it was written between 1210 and 1190 BCE. By this time the Great King was losing control of his territory. The drought was transitioning from a temporary crisis into a permanent catastrophe.
A Matter of Life and Death
It was not long before hostile neighbours severed urgently required grain shipments from the coast. We have the ‘Matter of Life and Death’ text RS 20.212, found in a private archive in Ugarit. Here, the Hittite king wrote directly to the ruler of Ugarit. He demanded an emergency shipment of roughly 450 tons of grain (Cline, 2014). The king ordered Ugarit to provide merchant ships at once. They had to sail to the agricultural region of Mukiš (along the Orontes River in modern day southern Turkey), load the grain, and rush it to the Hittite port. He stressed the utter panic of the situation. He repeated a terrifying phrase twice in the letter, "It is a matter of life and death!" (Singer, 1999)
Migrations and Invaders
If you have drought and famine, then you also see migrations. Hundreds of people moving around the landscape looking for less arid lands on which to grow their crops. We know some of those migrants arrived in Ugarit in ships because the same letters that talk about famine also mention enemies. In fact, in one particular text, which is written by the king of Ugarit, he says, “The enemy has landed. They have overrun one of my port cities and they are now advancing on Ugarit itself. Please send help.” Whether the ‘enemy’ were the infamous Sea Peoples or not was not stated.
The ‘enemy’ at Ugarit were not the only aggressors. In the north were the Kaska tribe. The Kaska were a fierce tribal confederacy living in the Pontic Mountains near the Black Sea. For centuries, they practised transhumance (the seasonal movement of livestock between mountain pastures and lowland valleys).
As the Late Bronze Age climate deteriorated, these northern mountains became increasingly arid. The Kaska pushed south. They abandoned their standard seasonal raids to migrate permanently into Hittite lands. They needed immediate access to the Hittite agricultural plateau. Textual evidence shows constant Hittite military campaigns desperately trying to push them back (Bryce, 2005). Ultimately, the Kaska breached the northern defences. Archaeologists broadly agree that it was Kaska migrants who likely burned Hattusa shortly after the royal court fled.
Then there were the Phrygians. Assyrian and later Greek records speak of the Mushki, commonly identified as the Phrygians. They crossed the Hellespont from the Balkans directly into Anatolia. Why did they move? The shifting climate was a primary driver. A sudden, prolonged drop in global temperatures reduced crop yields across Europe (Drake, 2012). The Mushki moved into the vacuum left by the dying Hittite state. They did not necessarily destroy the empire, they occupied the less arid river valleys after the central administration collapsed.
Immigrants are one thing, invaders come into another category altogether. The Middle Assyrian Empire, southeast of Hatti, smelt blood in the water. Assyria was heavily militarised and rapidly expanding. Under their ruthless King Tukulti-Ninurta I, the Assyrians challenged Hittite supremacy over trade routes. Around 1237 BCE, the two superpowers clashed at the Battle of Nihriya.
The Assyrians utterly crushed the Hittite forces on the battlefield (Singer, 1985). Hatti permanently lost control of the eastern copper networks. After the battle, Assyria annexed key border territories, drastically reducing the Hittite agricultural base, exacerbating the drought/famine problem for the Hittites.
We have direct textual proof of this geopolitical disaster. A frantic letter from the Hittite king demands emergency military aid against the encroaching Assyrians (Cline, 2014).
Throw in an earthquake or two, such as the one that destroyed Troy 6 around 1300 BCE and you have what modern historians call a polycrisis, a cascading failure of interconnected systems. Which is a fancy word for what my mother would have said, “It’s just one thing after another.”
The administratively bloated Hittite state could not cope with a polycrisis. Yet, the fall of Hattusa was not the end of the Hittites. While the Anatolian highlands burned and starved, the lights stayed on in the northern Syrian provinces. The great cities of Carchemish and Aleppo faced the same polycrisis, but they did not collapse.
Disambiguating Syria and Levant
To be historically precise, the nation of "Syria" did not exist in 1200 BCE. Neither did the "Levant." If you asked a merchant where he lived, he would not name a country. He would name his city. He was a man of Halab (Aleppo) or a citizen of Kargamiš (Carchemish).
When ancient diplomats needed a broader regional name, they referred to a patchwork of local kingdoms. The coast was Amurru. The inland plains were Nuhashshe. The river valleys were Mukish.
The local population in these territories was a complex ethnic mix. The urban merchants, farmers, and artisans were predominantly Amorites and Hurrians. However, a Luwian-speaking elite, originally from Anatolia, ruled over them. Therefore, when we refer to these "Syrian" survivors, we actually mean a hybrid indigenous population governed by a pragmatic, transplanted Hittite ruling class. They were defined by their cities, not by modern borders. To avoid confusion and complicated explanations, I will continue to use the geographical terms, Syria and Levant.
How Carchemish and Aleppo Survived the Hittite Collapse
It remains one of the most frustrating archaeological mysteries of the Late Bronze Age. When the central government in Hattusa collapsed, the top elite did not die in the flames. They vanished.
The excavation trenches reveal a deliberate, highly organised evacuation. The royal scribes methodically packed up critical treaties and sensitive diplomatic correspondence. The elites loaded their portable wealth, their families, and their religious idols into wagons. Then, the last known Hittite king, Suppiluliuma II, walked out of the capital with his royal court.
Where did they go? We do not know. Perhaps they fled south to secondary administrative centres. Perhaps they marched out to fight a final, unrecorded battle (Bryce, 2005). Whatever happened, the historical trail goes completely cold. The supreme royal line evaporated. They ceased to be rulers and became ghosts.
The ghostly silence created an opportunity for a select few. While the top tier of the Hittite elite disappeared into the Anatolian dust, the second rank survived. The cadet branches of the royal family, the provincial viceroys, faced the same polycrisis, but they chose adaptation over retreat.
Carchemish: A River Fortress
Carchemish sat strategically on the western bank of the Euphrates River. It was an economic powerhouse. For generations, a cadet branch of the Hittite royal family ruled the city. Suppiluliuma I, the great 14th-century Hittite conqueror, had originally installed his own son there as viceroy. This move transformed Carchemish into the administrative capital of the Syrian territories. The city controlled the highly lucrative overland corridors and riverine trade routes connecting Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean.
When the central imperial administration failed around 1190 BCE, the viceroy of Carchemish was a man named Kuzi-Teshub. He did not flee. He did not wait for orders that would never come. He saw his chance and promoted himself from ‘King’ to ‘Great King’.
With Hattusa in ruins, Kuzi-Teshub was the highest-ranking survivor of the direct royal bloodline.
To piece together Kuzi-Teshub’s audacious political survival, archaeologists rely on two distinct types of evidence. We have the fragile clay seal impressions found at Lidar Höyük, located in southeastern Turkey on the east bank of the Euphrates River (now at the bottom of the Atatürk Dam Lake). We also have massive, monumental stone inscriptions discovered further north at surviving Neo-Hittite cities. Together, they tell a brilliant story of political propaganda.
The Lidar Höyük Sealings: Stamping Authority
At Lidar Höyük, excavators found a collection of bullae (small lumps of clay used to seal shipments of goods). A merchant or official would tie a rope around a jar, press wet clay over the knot, and stamp it with a royal seal.
These specific clay lumps were stamped with Kuzi-Teshub's personal seal. The text, written in Luvian hieroglyphs functioned as an ancient business card. It listed his name and his royal lineage, directly connecting him to the legendary Hittite conqueror Suppiluliuma I. Most importantly, the seal brazenly declared him the Great King (Hawkins, 1988).
By finding these clay tags at a key river crossing on the Euphrates, we know exactly what Kuzi-Teshub was doing. He was managing regional trade. He was not just claiming a phantom title, he was using it to conduct imperial business and control the economy.
The Monumental Stones: Carving a Dynasty
If the clay seals handled daily trade, the monumental stone inscriptions handled legacy. We find these massive carved stones at allied cities like Malatya (ancient Melid), located further up the Euphrates.
What were these stone monuments about? They were pure, unadulterated political propaganda. They were generally not commissioned by Kuzi-Teshub himself, but by his sons and grandsons. As the new rulers of these regional cities, they had an urgent need to legitimise their power (Bryce, 2012).
They achieved this by erecting massive stone reliefs showing themselves worshipping the traditional gods. Alongside these images, they carved long genealogical texts in Luvian hieroglyphs (the pictorial script used for Hittite public monuments). The text invariably traced their bloodline back to one man, Kuzi-Teshub, the Great King.
Before the discoveries at Lidar Höyük, historians thought these grandsons were simply exaggerating. They assumed Kuzi-Teshub's descendants gave him the title posthumously to make their family look more regal. The mud seals at Lidar Höyük proved the stones were telling the truth. He really did claim the supreme title while he was alive (Hawkins, 1988).
The Message of Continuity
These inscriptions, both the mud and the stone, served a psychological purpose. When a superpower collapses, local populations panic. Trade routes freeze. Rebellions erupt. The elite must project stability and continuity to survive.
By stamping Great King on trade goods at Lidar Höyük, and by carving it into stone monuments across the surviving Syrian provinces, this cadet branch sent a clear, unified message. The empire had not fallen; it had merely shrunk. The royal bloodline was intact. The gods were still satisfied. Business, as they say, would continue as usual.
Aleppo: City of the Storm God
Further west lay Aleppo. If Carchemish was the administrative heart of Hittite Syria, Aleppo was its soul. It was the ancient religious centre of the region, home to the temple of Tarhunza, the mighty Storm God. The Hittite princes of Aleppo maintained deep cultural and theological prestige. In a polycrisis, religion offers social cohesion.
What does the archaeology tell us? When we dig into the early 12th century BCE layers at the Citadel of Aleppo, the silence is deafening. We see no fiery destruction layer. There are no shattered weapons or abandoned treasuries.
Instead, the excavation trenches reveal continuity. The temple of the Storm God remained active and well-maintained (Kohlmeyer, 2000). Pottery styles, cultic rituals, and local administration carried on uninterrupted (Bryce, 2012). The religious and civic elites kept the city running. They insulated themselves from the chaos ravaging the north.
The Mechanics of the Transformation
Why did these Syrian hubs survive while the Anatolian heartland starved and was rent asunder? The evidence points to three distinct structural advantages.
Hattusa relied heavily on a fragile network of Mediterranean cabotage (short-range coastal shipping). When pirates and migrants severed those maritime routes, the capital starved. Carchemish, however, dominated inland river networks. They quickly turned away from the dying Mediterranean. They leaned into their overland trade with Assyria and inland Syria.
The Syrian plains certainly suffered from the regional mega-drought. However, they were not trapped on a dry, high-altitude plateau like the elites in Hattusa. Carchemish utilised the mighty Euphrates, while Aleppo drew on the local Quweiq river basin. Reliable river irrigation provided a safety net.
Because they possessed undeniable Hittite royal blood, the Syrian viceroys maintained absolute ideological control over their subjects. Kuzi-Teshub did not need Hattusa's military backing to justify his right to rule. The local populations accepted his authority because it was already well established.
Might is Right
It is one thing to have full granaries during a regional famine. It is quite another to keep them when surrounded by starving, desperate armies.
Why did a tidal wave of violent migrants, opportunistic raiders, and hostile empires not wash over Carchemish and Aleppo? How did they defend their wealth?
The survival of these Syrian cities was not just a matter of lucky geography or good bookkeeping. It required a pragmatic military strategy. To protect their agricultural buffering and trade networks, Kuzi-Teshub and the elites of Aleppo relied on four defensive shields.
The Coastal Buffer Zone
First, we must look at the infamous Sea Peoples. These maritime marauders devastated the eastern Mediterranean. They burned wealthy coastal hubs like Ugarit to ash. However, they were fundamentally a naval and coastal phenomenon (Cline, 2014).
Marching a coalition of ship-born raiders hundreds of miles inland across hostile, arid terrain to lay siege to Aleppo or Carchemish is a logistical nightmare. The coastal cities absorbed the brunt of the Sea Peoples' violence.
The Garrison State
Carchemish was not just a trading post. It was a heavily fortified military garrison. When the Hittite conqueror Suppiluliuma I captured the city in the 14th century BCE, he deliberately transformed it into the supreme military headquarters for all Syrian operations (Bryce, 2005).
Consequently, when the central empire collapsed, Kuzi-Teshub did not have to hastily raise a militia. He inherited an intact, professional standing army. He possessed formidable chariot divisions and massive defensive walls. Migrants looking for easy plunder do not attack heavily armed, fortified regional capitals. They attack unprotected villages. Kuzi-Teshub made his city a hard target.
Co-opting the Outlaws: The Habiru
What about the Habiru? These were not a specific ethnic group, but a dangerous social class of stateless outlaws, runaway slaves, and mercenaries who roamed the Levantine margins. During times of imperial weakness, they frequently raided caravans and harassed cities.
However, Kuzi-Teshub probably did what smart Bronze Age rulers always did with the Habiru, he likely hired them. A strong, wealthy king with full granaries does not fight mercenaries, he puts them on the payroll. As new semi-nomadic tribal groups, such as the early Arameans, began to push into the region, the Hittite elites did not try to annihilate them. Instead, they slowly integrated them. They hired Aramean tribesmen as soldiers and labourers. Over the following centuries, these cities seamlessly blended Hittite and Aramean cultures (Bryce, 2012). They managed migration rather than fighting it.
The Assyrian Implosion
Finally, there was the terrifying Middle Assyrian Empire to the east. As we saw at the Battle of Nihriya, the Assyrians were rapidly expanding. The Euphrates River formed a massive natural moat protecting Carchemish, but why did the Assyrians not cross it and finish the job?
The answer lies in a serendipitous fluke of history. Just as the Hittite central administration was collapsing, the Assyrian war machine abruptly stalled. Their ruthless king, Tukulti-Ninurta I, had grown deeply unpopular at home. Around 1197 BCE, he was assassinated by his own son (Bryce, 2005).
This sparked a devastating Assyrian dynastic crisis. The empire plunged into internal chaos and rebellion. Assyria temporarily stopped expanding westward precisely when Kuzi-Teshub needed breathing room. The predator next door was too busy fighting itself to attack the surviving Hittites.
After the Transformation
Ultimately, we must rethink the Late Bronze Age Collapse. For cities like Carchemish and Aleppo, it was not an apocalypse. It was a transformation. The massive, top-heavy imperial network underwent de-complexification (the shedding of bloated administrative layers). The empire broke apart into smaller, highly resilient city-states.
These survivors became the wealthy Neo-Hittite kingdoms of the Iron Age (Bryce, 2012).
The Heirs to the Empire
When the dust finally settled on the Late Bronze Age, the geopolitical map of the Near East was totally redrawn. The monolithic Hittite Empire was gone. In its place stood a fractious network of smaller, fiercely independent city-states.
We call them the Neo-Hittite kingdoms. They carried the cultural DNA of Hattusa deep into the Iron Age. They wrote in Luvian hieroglyphs, worshipped the ancient Storm God, and fiercely defended their trade routes. For over four centuries, these regional powerhouses thrived.
Carchemish was the undisputed heavyweight of the successors. Straddling the Euphrates, it remained the gold standard of Hittite royal legitimacy until the Assyrians finally annexed it in 717 BCE.
Melid (Modern: Arslantepe/Malatya, Turkey)
Located further north along the Euphrates, Melid became a fortress of Hittite tradition. Here, Kuzi-Teshub’s grandsons carved their monumental stone reliefs to project power and continuity.
Kummuh (Modern: Samsat/Adıyaman province, Turkey)
Kummuh was strategically positioned at a river crossing. It controlled lucrative trade arteries. Centuries later, this wealthy territory morphed into the classical kingdom of Commagene.
Tabal (Modern: Cappadocia region, Turkey)
This was not a single city, but a sprawling, powerful confederacy of Neo-Hittite states. Famed for its horses and silver mines, Tabal dominated the rugged central Anatolian plateau.
Patin was situated in the fertile Amuq Valley. It guarded the gateway between the Mediterranean Sea and the inland Syrian trade networks.
Gurgum (Modern: Kahramanmaraş, Turkey)
Gurgum became a wealthy northern kingdom in the Taurus Mountains. It managed the overland passes connecting Anatolia directly to northern Syria.
These kingdoms did not just survive the apocalypse, they built a new world upon its ashes. They traded, they fought, and they adapted. Over time, they intermarried with incoming Aramean tribes to create a dynamic, hybrid culture (Bryce, 2012).
Aleppo: The Strangest Survival of all
But what of poor old Aleppo? Here we have one of the strangest stories of survival of the Bronze Age transformation.
Immediately following the Late Bronze Age collapse, Aleppo experienced a political absorption. In the 11th century BCE, a powerful, newly formed kingdom called Palistin (sometimes read as Walistin) swept across the region (Bryce, 2012).
Palistin should not be confused with the region of Palestine in the southern Levant, though they share a fascinating root. Both territories were likely settled by splinter groups of the same Sea Peoples faction, the Peleset (the Philistines). Palestine a century earlier in the 12th century BCE. The exact origin of the Kingdom of Palistin is one of the most exciting and hotly debated mysteries in modern Near Eastern archaeology.
In the 11th century BCE, a powerful warlord named Taita conquered the region around Aleppo and the Amuq Valley (Bryce, 2012). Taita was not a native Hittite. Archaeological evidence strongly suggests his people were migrants, likely tied to the infamous Sea Peoples, specifically the Peleset (the Philistines).
Yet, Taita did not destroy the local culture. He absorbed it. This is a process historians call syncretism (the blending of different cultural and religious traditions). Taita carved his massive royal monuments using traditional Luwian hieroglyphs. He rebuilt the temple in Aleppo to worship Tarhunza, the ancient Hittite Storm God (Emanuel, 2015). The foreign migrants became the new Hittite elite. They adopted the administrative playbook of the empire they replaced.
Therefore, when the Aramean pastoralist tribes began moving into Palistin, the ruling elite knew exactly what to do. They opened the doors. The state needed farmers, soldiers, and merchants to maintain its wealth. The rulers of Palistin co-opted the Aramean tribes rather than fighting a futile, expensive border war.
It was a brilliant short-term survival strategy. However, it became a fatal long-term trap. The Arameans were not a conquering army looking for a single decisive battle. They were a slow, unstoppable demographic tide. By the dawn of the 10th century BCE, they out-populated the ruling Palistinian elite.
The Aramean Takeover
By the 10th century BCE, the Arameans were no longer just the hired help. Through force of numbers, steady settlement, and intermarriage, they became the dominant cultural force. The Arameans did not conquer the Northern Levant. They absorbed it slowly. They founded a brand-new kingdom called Bit Agusi (Bryce, 2012). An Aramean tribal dynasty took total control of the Aleppo region.
Here is why Aleppo falls off the map of great political capitals. The Aramean kings of Bit Agusi realised Aleppo was too steeped in ancient Hittite religion. They wanted a fresh political start. Therefore, they moved the political and military capital to a city called Arpad, located further north.
A City of Gods, Not Kings
Aleppo was effectively demoted. It lost its royal court. It lost its armies. However, the Aramean kings were extremely pragmatic. They knew the Temple of the Storm God in Aleppo was too famous and too lucrative to abandon. They kept Aleppo intact as a sacred pilgrimage centre.
This is the ultimate story of Syrian survival. Carchemish survived by remaining a heavily armed, rigid Hittite fortress. Aleppo survived by being incredibly flexible. It allowed itself to be absorbed by Palistin, and then by the Aramean kingdom of Bit Agusi. Aleppo surrendered its political crown, but it kept its religious soul.
The Burden of History: Aleppo Today
It is impossible for a historian not to feel a profound sorrow for Aleppo and its citizens through the ages They tried so hard, repeatedly achieved a plateaux of peace and prosperity when chaos surrounded them, only to have it taken from them time and again. Tragically, the resilience of Aleppo, and many other towns and cities in the Middle East, has been tested repeatedly right up to the modern day.
If the survivors of the Bronze Age Collapse could look upon Aleppo today, they would recognise a painfully familiar cycle of destruction. During the Syrian Civil War, the Battle of Aleppo (2012 – 2016 CE) reduced vast swathes of this ancient metropolis to rubble. High-explosive artillery and barrel bombs shattered the famed, UNESCO-listed Old City. Factions even used the great Citadel as a military base. Combatants fired through ancient arrow slits while modern explosives cracked its medieval walls.
Then, in February 2023, the earth itself fractured. A massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the region. It collapsed thousands of buildings already fatally weakened by a decade of relentless siege and poor infrastructure.
Yet, beneath the geopolitics, the proxy wars, and the rubble, the true tragedy remains human. The ordinary citizens of Aleppo do not want to be a fortress. They do not want to be a symbol of imperial resistance, nor a pawn in endless factional conflicts. The modern population simply wants what the ancient farmers and merchants of the 12th century BCE wanted. They want to rebuild their homes, trade safely in their legendary markets, and finally live in peace.
References and Further Reading
Bryce, T., 2005. The Kingdom of the Hittites. New edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bryce, T., 2012. The World of The Neo-Hittite Kingdoms: A Political and Military History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cline, E.H., 2014. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Drake, B.L., 2012. 'The influence of climatic change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages'. Journal of Archaeological Science, 39(6), pp. 1862-1870.
Emanuel, J.P., 2015. 'King Taita and His "Palistin": Philistine State or Neo-Hittite Kingdom?'. Antiguo Oriente, 13, pp. 11-40.
Hawkins, J.D., 1988. 'Kuzi-Tešub and the "Great Kings" of Kargamiš'. Anatolian Studies, 38, pp. 99-108.
Hoffner, H.A., 2009. Letters from the Hittite Kingdom. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.
Klengel, H., 1974. ''Hungersjahre' in Hatti'. Altorientalische Forschungen, 1, pp. 165-174.
Kohlmeyer, K., 2000. Der Tempel des Wettergottes von Aleppo. Münster: Rhema-Verlag.
Singer, I., 1985. 'The Battle of Nihriya and the End of the Hittite Empire'. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie, 75(1), pp. 100-123.
Singer, I., 1999. 'A Political History of Ugarit'. In: W.G.E. Watson and N. Wyatt, eds. Handbook of Ugaritic Studies. Leiden: Brill, pp. 603-733.
Note, I had originally asked this question on r/AskHistorians previous month; however, as I had not received any replies which passed moderation I thought to repost my question here.
Thanks in advance for any potential answers.
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I know that in Ancient Rome poor families sometimes abandoned surplus infants they could not take care of, those were sometimes (though I don't know how often) taken in by better off Romans to be raised as slaves; it also was tolerated that poor families sold their children into slavery, even if that was technically illegal. (However, I had the impression that those did not form important sources of slaves.) Also there was great variability in how terrible Roman slaveowners were; I had been told that Cato the Elder had advised slavers to 'whip slaves harsher than oxen; this because if an ox dies one can sell its skin if it is not too damaged by whippings, yet this is not the case for slaves'; on the other hand there also were slavers who advocated 'good' (or rather less terrible) treatment of slaves out of enlightened self-interest or for moral/philosophical reasons.
In Ancient Mesopotamia it comparably happened that poor families sometimes were forced to sell children in slavery because they otherwise could impossibly pay back their debt; and that in Ancient Greece there was misogynistic-motivated exposure/abandonment of female infants, I presume that sometimes those girls also were taken in to be raised as slaves. Presumably, there also was great variability in how terrible slaveowners were in those places.
So, I had someday assumed that in such cases, families would preferably sell/give their children/infants to less terrible than average slavers. However, thinking about it, I know of no examples of that being mentioned. I know a lot of ancient history, at least compared to the average person, from a lot of sources (including r/AskHistorians), yet I know of not even a single instance or anecdote of such a thing happening.
Naturally, ancient historical sources usually were be written for and by elites and would thus often omit certain things about slaves and poor people. However, even then I wonder why I had never read of, say, a Roman slaveowner complaining how that every time a famine happens starving poor people keep showing at his doorstep asking whether he could 'please buy one of their children so they have enough money to purchase food for the others' and then go on about how that he is the least terrible slave driver in town and they thus rather sell their children to him than a worse slaver, this despite that slaveowner having already explained he 'had more than enough slaves at the moment'.
Though, I suppose it is possible that such things had happened yet I had just never read of it.
Genesis of the Stone Builders (c. 4790 – 4300 BCE)
On the rugged southern coast of Brittany, along the shores of the Morbihan Gulf, a noticeable behavioural shift occurred in the mid-5th millennium BCE. For millennia during the Mesolithic period, human societies had lived lightly on the land. Then, suddenly, in the early part of the Neolithic, they began to drag the bones of the earth upright (Scarre, 2011).
For decades, archaeologists believed the inspiration for these megaliths arrived from the civilisations of the East. This was the Ex Oriente Lux ("Light from the East") theory. Scholars assumed complex architecture arrived with the Neolithic farmers themselves. They were wrong. New analysis proves that the megalithic phenomenon was an indigenous invention of the Atlantic façade.
But why did these early communities abruptly commit to such colossal labour? The answer lies not in their security, but in their insecurity. The stone giants of Armorica (ancient Brittany) were the "Architecture of Anxiety." They were an attempt to permanently claim territory in a rapidly changing world (Renfrew, 1976). Over time, the stone enclosures, often called cromlechs (stone circles), became monuments to other anxieties. As sea levels rose during the Flandrian Transgression, Neolithic settlers watched the tide eat their claimed land (Cassen et al., 2010). The rising tide put the resident farming communities between a rock and a hard place. The sea was pushing the population inland from the coast, at the time that incoming Neolithic farmers were pushing outward from the interior. The coastal tribes were physically trapped between rising tides and rival farmers. There must have been a collective sigh of relief when their rituals, faithfully carried out over generations, proved felicitous.
Before the Stones (c. 6000–5000 BCE)
Before the first giant stone was heaved into a vertical position, the hunter-gatherers of the Breton coast practiced a complex, respectful form of burial. Our best evidence comes from the shell middens (ancient rubbish heaps) of two islands in the Morbihan region: Téviec and Hoëdic (Schulting, 1996).
· Burial Within the Living Space: Unlike Neolithic farmers who separated the dead into distant necropolises, Mesolithic people buried their dead directly into the middens. This placed the ancestors physically within the accumulation of daily life, keeping them close to the community.
· The "Nest" Burials: Bodies were placed in a crouching position within a pit. These pits were often lined with stone slabs to form small cists (stone boxes). This is a direct architectural precursor to the later megalithic chambers.
· The Antler Crown: The dead were sprinkled with red ochre and adorned with shell jewellery. Most strikingly, intricate arrangements of red deer antlers were placed over the bodies, creating a protective, tent-like structure.
The use of stone slabs in Mesolithic graves suggests the "megalithic impulse" was a local tradition. It was simply scaled up when social anxiety required a louder statement (Boujot & Cassen, 1993). The mobile hunter-gatherers had no need to mark the land with heavy stone, because they considered themselves part of the landscape, they did not claim to "own" it.
The Anxiety of Transition
To understand why they built, we must look at the pressures facing the Morbihan society. This was a frontier zone. Indigenous hunter-gatherers were interacting with, and transforming into, Neolithic farmers.
This transition was traumatic. Agriculture requires land ownership, forest clearance, and the defence of resources. These concepts were alien to fluid hunter-gatherer territories. As populations rose and land became a finite resource, social stress spiked (Pollard, 2017).
Here, the megalith emerged as a geopolitical weapon. A wooden marker rots in a generation; a 50-tonne granite block lasts forever. The intimate antler-grave was replaced by the aggressive granite tomb. By placing ancestral remains inside a stone chamber under a massive earthen mound, a clan issued a defiant legal statement: Our bones are in this hill. We were here first. This land is ours.
The dead were no longer family members to be mourned, they were title deeds to be preserved.
The timeline of European prehistory was rewritten in 2019. Using advanced Bayesian modelling of over 2,400 radiocarbon dates, archaeologist Bettina Schulz Paulsson demonstrated that the earliest megaliths in Europe appeared in Northwest France between 4790 and 4300 BCE (Schulz Paulsson, 2019). The builders of the Morbihan were erecting complex stone tombs two thousand years before the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Some adherents of the ‘Ex Oriente Lux’ theory were forced to perform a 180 degrees shift and came up with the ‘Ex Armorica Lux’ (Light from Brittany) theory, now insisting that the megalithic phenomenon was spread by Breton sailors sailing south to teach the Spanish. Replacing a Middle-Eastern missionary with a Breton missionary is still a myth. Ideas didn't build the dolmens; local crises did.
The Ideological Civil War: Solutions to Panic
Around 4800 – 4500 BCE, the coastal populations of Brittany panicked. As resources tightened and social friction peaked, the local tribes faced a crisis. Interestingly, the archaeological record shows that society fractured into two competing ideological responses to manage this anxiety.
In the South (the Morbihan Gulf), society surrendered to tyranny. They built exclusionary Giant Tumuli to elevate a few elite "Big Men," hoping powerful overlords could protect their territory. Conversely, in the North (Finistère), society chose confederation. They rejected the individual ruler and instead built massive, communal Passage Graves to bind their lineages together into a single, unified force. The stones of Brittany represent a battle between dictatorship and collective survival.
The Rise of the "Big Men" (The Tumulus Era)
In the south, as the Neolithic transition intensified, burial customs shifted from the communal to the hierarchical. This is the era of the tumulus carnacéens (Giant Carnac Tumuli).
These earliest massive monuments were not for the community; they were for the elite (Scarre, 2002). We see the emergence of "princely burials", giant earthen mounds covering a closed stone cist containing one or two individuals. These graves are famous for their incredible wealth. The jadeite axes found here were often too large and fragile for practical use. They were purely symbolic, meant to display the deceased's elite status. These burials represent powerful leaders, the "Big Men," asserting dynastic control over the land they farmed and managed.
When discussing the Giant Carnac Tumuli, we should distinguish between the thousands of general burial mounds in Brittany and this specific, elite class of monuments. These are not common graves; they are the pyramids of their time. In the immediate Armorican area, there are approximately 25 to 30 recognized "Carnac-style" tumuli. The immense size of a few warrants the title "Giant." They are characterised by lengths exceeding 50 to 100 metres and heights that alter the local topography.
The Tumulus of Tumiac: The Guardian of the Gulf (4790–4530 BCE)
Located at Arzon on the Rhuys Peninsula, Tumiac is a conical mound measuring 60 metres in diameter and 15 metres high. The central crypt is a rectangular box built of dry stone. It is roofed by a single, massive slab of quartz. Quartz glows white in the moonlight and is associated with "spirit-light." Using it for the roof suggests the occupant was sealed under a lens of spiritual power. The upright stones are carved with symbols, including the "Mother Goddess" motif and abstract crooks. It sits commanding the narrow strait where the Atlantic Ocean rushes into the Gulf of Morbihan. In the "Anxiety" framework, this is a border fort. If you control Tumiac, you control the sea lanes. This proves the anxiety was not just internal competition; it was likely external. The mound served as an early warning system. Excavated in 1853, the tomb contained 32 polished axes, including 11 made of Alpine jadeite, and over 249 beads of green variscite, imported from the Iberian Peninsula. Unlike other sites, Tumiac contained almost no pottery, suggesting a "Warrior-Priest" persona (Le Rouzic, 1935).
Tumiac is locally known as "Caesar's Butte." Legend says Julius Caesar stood here to watch the naval Battle of the Morbihan (56 BCE) against the Veneti tribe. While historically dubious, the legend underscores the site's function as the ultimate observation post.
Mané-er-Hroëk: The Potlatch of Power (c. 4500 BCE)
Translated from Breton as "The Mountain of the Woman," Mané-er-Hroëk is situated on a high point overlooking the Gulf of Morbihan, it is a massive territorial beacon measuring 100 metres long and 10 metres high. Archaeological cross-sections reveal a sophisticated internal architecture. The core consists of a stone cairn covered by layers of carefully packed mud (vase) and loam, which stabilized the structure and sealed the interior. The chamber is roofed by a massive stone slab bearing sculpted engravings, a fragment of an earlier, broken standing stone. The builders were cannibalising older sacred sites to empower the new leader (Cassen, 2000). The 1863 excavation revealed 106 polished stone axes, mostly Alpine jadeite imported over 1,000 kilometres from Italy (Pétrequin et al., 2012). Significantly, many were deliberately broken before being placed in the tomb. In our framework, this is a potlatch behaviour. The leader was so powerful he could afford to destroy immense wealth. It was a terrifying display of surplus intended to cow rivals (Cassen et al., 2019). The tomb also contained a rare Ring-Disk of jadeite and dozens of Spanish variscite pendants.
The Tumulus of Saint-Michel: The Artificial Mountain (4500–4300 BCE)
Located at Carnac, this is currently the largest burial mound in continental Europe. The builders sought to replace the landscape, constructing a hill 125 metres long and 10 metres high. Excavations reveal a sophisticated engineering technique using sods of turf and blocks of marine silt (limon) stacked like bricks. This was incredibly labour-intensive but created a water-resistant, stable structure. The central cist contained 39 polished axe heads of Alpine jadeite. Some are over 30 centimetres long, far too large for practical use. it also held hundreds of beads of green variscite (callaïs). Recent chemical analysis confirms these originated from Encinasola in Andalucia, Spain (Querré et al., 2014). This proves that the trade route connecting Brittany to the far south of Iberia, via the Rivers Loire and Rhone and then cabotage west, was fully active by 4500 BCE. The tomb also contained axes made of fibrolite (sillimanite) sourced from the eastern Pyrenees, reinforcing the southern connection.
Le Moustoir: The Fading Star (c. 4500 BCE)
Situated north of the Kermario alignments, we see the "Big Man" system beginning to fray. It is visually imposing, 85 metres of earth and stone, but excavation did not produce the massive hoards of Alpine jadeite or Spanish variscite found at Saint-Michel. It likely represents a fading star. The elite could still command the labour to build the mound, but they could no longer secure the god-stones from the Alps and Spain. The anxiety here is the anxiety of a failing regime (Galles, 1864).
Unlike the "pure" sealed mounds of Saint-Michel, Le Moustoir incorporates external signalling elements. A 2-metre-tall menhir stands on the eastern summit, acting as a pedestal marking the ancestor's presence. A larger 3-metre sentinel menhir originally stood to the west, implying a processional axis.
Building a Saint-Michel required mobilising an entire population. A society can only support a few such projects before the labour force revolts. This short-lived dynastic experiment lasted perhaps 200 to 300 years. Power was concentrated in the hands of a very small, very insecure oligarchy (Gouézin, 2022).
Nothing illustrates this ambition and failure like the Grand Menhir Brisé at Locmariaquer (c. 4500 BCE). Erected as a single 280-tonne block of granite, it stood over 20 metres tall. It toppled and broke only a few centuries later. Its destruction suggests that the southern "Architecture of Anxiety" was not enough to hold a fracturing society together (Cassen, 2009).
The Ancestral Host: The Communal Alternative
While the South experimented with "Big Men," the North adapted differently. The individual glory of the ruler was rejected, replaced by collective, accessible "houses of the dead", the Passage Grave (L'Helgouach, 1965). Evidence suggests bodies may have been left outside to decompose (excarnation) before the clean bones were moved into the stone chamber.
Skulls were grouped together, long bones were stacked. Individual identity was erased to form a unified, anonymous "block" of ancestors. You could kill a living person, but you could not kill the "Mega-Ancestor" residing in the stone cairn.
The interiors were often carved with geometric patterns, axes, crooks, and serpents. These were likely not decorative but functional, entoptic images seen during trance states, protecting the threshold between the living and the dead (Shee Twohig, 1981).
Barnenez (4800 – 4200 BCE): The Parthenon of Prehistory
The Cairn of Barnenez is located at Plouezoc'h, Finistère (Northern Brittany), and is a multi-chambered passage grave. It is one of the oldest and largest megalithic structures in continental Europe, predating the Pyramids by 2000 years (Giot, L'Helgouach, & Monnier, 1998). Its scale suggests that the "anxiety" regarding territory was felt just as keenly in the north as in the Morbihan.
The monument was built in two distinct phases.
Primary Cairn (Yellow Dolerite): The original structure, dated to c. 4800 BCE used local yellow stone.
Secondary Cairn (Pink Granite): Centuries later, between 4500 and 4200 BCE, the community expanded the structure, enveloping the old cairn in a new layer of pink granite sourced from nearby cliffs. This physical layering represents the continuity of the lineage, the living literally wrapping the dead in new protection.
The most striking feature of Barnenez is that it contains eleven separate passage graves running side-by-side. Why eleven? In the context of "Anxiety," this suggests a confederation. Eleven distinct families or lineages chose to build their tombs together within a single superstructure rather than apart. By binding their ancestors into one massive masonry block, they created a territorial marker that was impossible to ignore. It was a political statement: We are eleven, but we are one.
Mané-Lud: The Mound of Cinders (c. 4500–4000 BCE)
Translated as the "Mound of Ashes", Mané-Lud physically captures the violent moment the southern Big Men fell, and the northern Communal system took over. It is a hybrid monument. Hidden deep inside is a closed stone cist from the old exclusionary order. But at the western end, later builders broke into the mound and inserted a passage grave with a corridor, allowing the living to enter and exit. They colonised an old tomb, forcing the private monument to become a public sanctuary. Excavations revealed a freestanding arc of six large menhirs at the eastern end. At the foot of these stones lay a row of horse skulls. This is a distinct totemic barrier. The rare and valuable horse was placed as a spiritual guard at the back door of the tomb. Inside, the anxiety shifts from the land to the sea. The walls are covered in narrative scenes. The most prominent engraving has been brilliantly re-interpreted by Serge Cassen as a Sperm Whale breaching the water. The whale represents the wild chaos of the ocean, opposed by Boats and Axes (Culture). The tomb is a vessel keeping the wild at bay (Cassen, 2007).
Gavrinis (4200–4000 BCE)
Located on the island of Gavrinis in the Gulf of Morbihan. Gavrinis represents the zenith of the communal tradition in the South. A 14-metre long tunnel leads to a central square chamber covered in the most complex megalithic art in Europe. This is apotropaic magic (protective magic) designed to trap spirits (Le Roux, 1992). An astonishing discovery was made in the roof of Gavrinis. The massive 17-tonne capstone was found to exactly match with the capstone of the nearby Table des Marchands dolmen and the roof of the Er Grah tumulus (Cassen, 2009). These three stones were originally one single giant menhir (similar to the Grand Menhir Brisé) that stood 14 metres tall. The builders of Gavrinis deliberately took a piece of a broken "God" (or a monument to a failed "Big Man") and used it to roof their new communal tomb. The era of the individual giant was over.
The Ritual Enclosures (4500–3500 BCE)
While dolmens were the "Houses of the Dead," the stone enclosures were the "Parliaments of the Living." Stressed societies needed designated, sanctified spaces to gather, negotiate, and segregate the elite from the masses. We can identify six major enclosure complexes associated with the great alignments, plus several isolated geometric settings (Burl, 2000).
Le Ménec (West)
Located at the western terminus of the Le Ménec alignments. It is a roughly egg-shaped hemicycle (a flattened circle). It acts as a corral for the living, physically separating the "sacred inside" from the "profane outside." The 11 parallel stone rows act as a processional pathway leading to this ancestral meeting ground (Thom & Thom, 1972). This enclosure is the "head" of the great stone snake. In a time of social stress, large gatherings are dangerous. The Ménec enclosure is large enough to hold the entire population of the local clan, but the stone ring creates a psychological barrier. It is possible that only the initiated were allowed inside the stone ring, while the common people stood in the alignments outside. This reinforces the social hierarchy, a key symptom of societal anxiety. Much of what we see today is due to the restoration work of Zacharie Le Rouzic in the 1920s and 30s (Le Rouzic, 1930). He re-erected fallen stones and cleared vegetation. While he followed the original sockets, the "pristine" look is a 20th-century reconstruction of the Neolithic original.
Today, the most striking feature of Le Ménec West is that people are still living inside it. The modern hamlet of Le Ménec was built directly into the prehistoric footprint.
Le Ménec has two enclosures. The Western one is the famous village site. There was also an Eastern Enclosure at the other end of the lines, 2 kilometres away, but it has been almost entirely destroyed by agriculture and quarrying, leaving only a few stones to mark the "tail" of the system.
Le Ménec (East): The "Ghost Enclosure."
Its existence creates a "dumbbell" shape, showing that the alignments were closed circuits. In the "Architecture of Anxiety," this represents Total Containment. The ritual did not allow the crowd to disperse into the open landscape. They were marched from one stone pen to another. Why build two enclosures connected by a stone cord? The answer may lie in the social fractures of the Neolithic mind. Anthropologists call this a "Moiety" system (from the French moitié, or half). Tribal societies often split themselves into two complementary halves (e.g., "Summer Clan" and "Winter Clan"). This structure implies a deep, institutionalised anxiety. The community was too large and the environment too volatile for a single leader to hold it together. Instead, they engineered a balance of power. By physically building their society as two poles connected by a ritual path, they ensured that no single faction could break away. The alignment forced them to walk together, locking the two halves of the tribe into an eternal, stony embrace.
The modern destruction of Le Ménec (East) hides a potential shift in function. The stones in the Le Ménec alignments change size. They start massive at the West enclosure, up to 4 metres tall, and become smaller as they go East, down to 60 centimetres, before rising slightly again at the East enclosure. If the West Enclosure (Big Stones) was for the "Big Men" or the ancestors, the East Enclosure (Small Stones) might have been for the commoners or perhaps represented a "realm of the lesser spirits." The degradation of the site makes this hard to prove, but the hierarchy of stone size is undeniable.
Kermario (West)
If Le Ménec represents balance, Kermario, often called the "Locus of the Giants", represents escalation. The stones here are significantly larger (up to 5.5 metres). Rather than a closed circle, they form a funnel, aggressively channelling crowds toward the alignments. By placing their monument on the ridge, the builders ensured it was visible from the sea and the surrounding valleys. This is territorial broadcasting. It screams, "We hold the high ground." In an unusual twist, the Kermario lines run directly over the older Mané-Kermario burial mound (c. 4500 BCE). The new generation literally stomped on the bones of the old to erect a taller monument (Burl, 1993). This suggests a society trapped in a "stone inflation" spiral, where the effort required to maintain status became heavier and heavier.
Once the first system (Le Ménec) was built, it created a precedent. The next generation (or rival clan) could not go back to simple earthen mounds; they had to build alignments. But to distinguish themselves, they had to build bigger and higher.
Kermario represents the institutionalisation of stress. The society was locked into a cycle where legitimate authority could only be claimed by moving granite blocks bigger than the previous generation. This is an unsustainable expenditure of energy, a "Cold War" of stone that quite possibly contributed to the eventual collapse of the megalithic culture.
Kerlescan (c. 3600 BCE)
The builders rejected organic egg-shapes for a rigid "squircle" (a rectangle with rounded corners). The density of the stones suggests a restriction of access. The society retreated into rigid squares and dogmatic rituals. This suggests a society trying to impose absolute human order on a chaotic world. The 13 lines of the alignment fan out from the enclosure like rays from the sun. The enclosure itself appears to have been artificially levelled or slightly lowered. This feels less like the "Village Green" and more like a Temple Precinct. This is the anxiety of Internal Security. The walls were getting higher, and the geometry stricter, to keep the uninitiated out. After Kerlescan, the great alignment building stopped. The energy of the culture was spent.
All indications are that Kerlescan was last major phase of the Carnac alignment constructions. After Kerlescan, the great alignment building stopped. The energy of the culture was spent.
Stretching east from Kerlescan is a smaller, fragmented alignment known as Le Petit Ménec. It winds into the woods, chaotic and less impressive. It looks like the last vestige of the tradition, an attempt to continue the pattern without the manpower or the conviction of the past.
The Independent Enclosures
Er Lannic and Petit Rohu (c. 4200 BCE)
Situated on the Island of Er Lannic, the enclosure consists of two tangential horseshoe enclosures. Today, the Southern Ring is submerged. When built, sea levels were between 5 and 7 metres lower. As the Neolithic progressed, the ice caps melted and sea levels rose, a process known as the Flandrian Transgression. The ocean began to eat the land. Excavations revealed vast amounts of burnt wood, broken pottery, and flint tools at the foot of the Er Lannic stones. This was not a tomb, it was a site of intense ritual activity and deposition. Did the Neolithic settlers build these walls of stone in a desperate, magical attempt to "hold back the tide"? As the waters rose, did the anxiety increase, leading to more frantic rituals before the site was finally abandoned to the sea?
When we link the stone rings at Er Lannic with the nearby marismas of Petit Rohu, we see that this is exactly what was happening. The connection between the enclosure of Er Lannic and the submerged hoards of the Gulf, specifically Petit Rohu nearby, is one of production and sacrifice.
At Er Lannic, imported Spanish fibrolite and Alpine jadeite, was shaped and polished into divine axes. But these treasures were not kept. Excavations revealed that many of these same precious axes were deliberately broken. They were smashed, burnt, or shattered against the standing stones. Driven by the anxiety of the rising Atlantic, the priests took these objects out to the dying marshes and planted them in the mud, a desperate attempt to pin down the eroding landscape with the bones of the earth (Cassen et al., 2023).
At Petit Rohu, divers found jadeite and fibrolite axes planted vertically in the mud, often in pairs, with their cutting edges facing the sky. They were pristine, polished, and whole. This is a gesture of offering, planting "seeds of stone" into the encroaching marsh to stabilize the earth.
The "Anxiety" hypothesis suggests a cycle. You plant the whole axes in the wild at Petit Rohu, to sanctify the land, but you sacrifice (break) the axes in the at Er Lannic to appease a rising sea (Cassen et al., 2010; Cassen et al., 2023). The destruction of such immense value, the jadeite travelled nearly 1,000 kilometres, is the ultimate proof of the leader's desperation and piety.
We can expand the network and show a connection between the Carnac tumuli and the sacred cromlechs of Er Lannic. Grave goods at the Tumulus of Tumiac and Tumulus of Mané-er-Hroë included Alpine jadeite from the same source, whilst fibrolite axes found in the Tumulus of Saint- Michel were fashioned from the same fibrolite from Galicia as that found at Er Lannic.
The Neolithic tribes in the Morbihan, whilst sometimes in competition as evidenced by the enclosure at Kermario and the Mané-Kermario mound, found common cause with the threat from the encroaching seas and contributed to the rituals performed at Er Lannic and Petit Rohu.
Crucuno (c. 3600–3200 BCE)
Crucuno is an isolated rectangular enclosure. It abandons massive scale for a compact, mathematically perfect 3:4 Pythagorean rectangle, aligned to the solstices (Thom et al., 1973). If Kerlescan was the fortress of the tribe, Crucuno was the bunker of the priests. The elite retreated from political management to astronomical abstraction. It represents the final flourish of the "Stone Science" before the collapse (Lukis, 1875).
Unlike the alignments, Crucuno has not yielded a wealth of stratified pottery or charcoal for C14 dating. However, we can place it chronologically based on typology.
Early enclosures (Ménec) are egg-shaped. Transitional enclosures (Kerlescan) are sub-rectangular. Crucuno is a strict rectangle. This places it at the very end of the megalithic architectural sequence. It belongs to the same late phase as the stone circles of Er Lannic. It represents the final flourish of the "Stone Science" before the collapse.
Note:Zacharie Le Rouzic restored Crucuno in the 1920s. Before him, it was a ruin incorporated into a farm. Critics argue Le Rouzic may have "straightened" the lines to make it look more perfect. However, even the earliest surveys (19th century) describe it as rectangular. While the modern sharp corners might be 20th-century "tidying," the fundamental rectangular intent is Neolithic.
The Collapse: The Stone Silence
By 3200 BCE, the Great Era of Stone ended. The architecture of anxiety did not save them; the effort required to build it likely destroyed them.
Modern pollen analysis (palynology) reveals ecocide (Giligny et al., 2010). By 3000 BCE, the primary forest cover was decimated. The intense farming required to feed the "stone-building army" stripped nutrients from the granite soils, leading to podzolization (the land turned acidic and sandy). The agricultural base collapsed. The "Anxiety" we theorised was real, they were farming on borrowed time. When the soil died, the surplus food that supported the priesthood and the builders vanished.
The Return to the Earth (Burial Changes)
The way people were buried shifted from "Collective Glory" to "Individual Invisibility." The great communal tombs were sealed up and abandoned. By the end of the Neolithic (c. 2800 BCE), we see a return to simple individual graves or small cists. The "Collective Host" of the ancestors had been disbanded. When the Bell Beaker culture arrived around 2500 BCE with copper daggers and an individualist ethos, they found a wasteland. They did not build new temples. They squatted in the ruins of the alignments, treating the sacred enclosures as convenient windbreaks.
The Beaker folk didn't need stone to manage stress. Their social structure, based on mobile pastoralism, bronze weaponry, and individual wealth, allowed them to manage territorial anxiety through mobility and violence, rendering the "Stone Machine" obsolete.
The River Roads: Rejection of the Savage Sea
How did this "Cult of Stone" spread? Traditional views posit a maritime highway down the Atlantic coast to Iberia. But the Bay of Biscay (Golfe de Gascogne) is a treacherous death trap for Neolithic log boats. Furthermore, the 200-kilometre coastline of the Landes is a harbourless stretch of shifting sand. Not for nothing is the stretch of coast between Galicia and Finisterre in northern Spain known as the ‘Costa da Morte’.
The Aquitaine Gap: A ‘No Stress’ Zone
The Aquitaine Gap (historically known as the Landes de Gascogne) is located directly to the south of the Brittany megalithic sites.
If you trace a map down the western coast of France, starting from the dense stone alignments of the Morbihan Gulf in Brittany, you cross the Loire River, pass through the megalith-rich limestone plains of Poitou-Charentes, and then hit the Gironde estuary (near modern-day Bordeaux).
Everything south of that estuary, stretching for roughly 200 kilometres down to the foothills of the Pyrenees, is the Aquitaine Gap.
The "Architecture of Anxiety" requires only two ingredients, stone and stress. The Aquitaine Gap, for instance, offered neither. Because the sandy, acidic soil of the Landes de Gascogne could not support intensive cereal agriculture, it never supported a dense Neolithic population. Without farmers fighting over shrinking borders, there was no social friction. Without friction, there was no anxiety. Therefore, the people living there, likely sparse, mobile pastoralists, had absolutely no reason to waste thousands of calories dragging 50-tonne rocks around.
References and Further Reading
Bailloud, G. (1975). 'Les céramiques "cannelées" du Néolithique morbihannais', Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française.
Blanchard, A., Guyodo, J.N., et al. (2025). 'Le Plasker in Plouharnel: A newly discovered section of the megalithic complex of Carnac', Antiquity.
Boujot, C. & Cassen, S. (1993). 'A pattern of evolution for the Neolithic funerary structures of the west of France', Antiquity, 67(256), pp. 477–491.
Burl, A. (1993). From Carnac to Callanish. Yale University Press.
Burl, A. (2000). The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany.
Cassen, S. (2000). 'Architecture du tombeau, architecture du symbole'.
Cassen, S. (2000). Eléments d'architecture. Exploration d'un tertre funéraire à Lannec er Gadouer.
Cassen, S. (2007). 'La Table des Marchands (Locmariaquer, Morbihan): architecture et symboles', in L'Anthropologie.
Cassen, S. (2009). Exercice de stèle: une archéologie des pierres dressées. Errance.
Cassen, S. (2009). The Neolithic of Brittany. Oxford University Press.
Cassen, S. & L'Helgouach, J. (1992). 'Du Symbole de la Crosse: chronologie, répartition et interprétation'.
Cassen, S. et al. (2010). 'Un dépôt sous-marin de lames polies néolithiques... sur la plage dite du Petit Rohu', Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française.
Cassen, S. et al. (2012). JADE. Grandes haches alpines.
Cassen, S. et al. (2019). 'Haches du tumulus du Mané er Hroëck à Locmariaquer (Morbihan)'.
Cassen, S. et al. (2023). Er Lannic (Arzon, Morbihan): Les stèles gravées néolithiques et la folle image.
Galles, R. (1863). Manné-er-H'roëk: Dolmen découvert sous un tumulus à Locmariaquer.
Galles, R. (1864). 'Fouilles du tumulus du Moustoir-Carnac', Bulletin de la Société Polymathique du Morbihan (BSPM), Vol. 8, pp. 117–125.
Giligny, F. et al. (2010). La Bretagne du Néolithique à l'âge du Bronze. Revue Archéologique de l'Ouest.
Giot, P.R., L'Helgouach, J., & Monnier, J.L. (1998). Préhistoire de la Bretagne. Ouest-France.
Gouézin, P. (2022). Les mégalithes du département du Morbihan: Structures funéraires et pierres dressées. Archaeopress.
Joussaume, R. (1988). Dolmens for the Dead: Megalith-Building throughout the World. Cornell University Press.
Le Roux, C.T. (1992). The Art of Gavrinis.
Le Roux, C.-T. (2006). Monuments mégalithiques à Locmariaquer (Morbihan): Le long tumulus d'Er Grah dans son environnement. CNRS Éditions.
Le Rouzic, Z. (1927). 'Les monuments mégalithiques de Carnac et de Locmariaquer. Leur destination, leur âge', Bulletin de la Société Polymathique du Morbihan.
Le Rouzic, Z. (1930). Carnac: Restaurations faites dans la région (1920-1930).
Le Rouzic, Z. (1932). Les monuments mégalithiques de Carnac et de Locmariaquer.
Le Rouzic, Z. (1935). 'Tumulus de Tumiac'. Bulletin de la Société Polymathique du Morbihan.
Lefebvre, G. (1863). Rapport sur la découverte du dolmen de Mané-er-H'roëk. Bulletin de la Société Polymathique du Morbihan.
L'Helgouach, J. (1965). Les sépultures mégalithiques en Armorique: (dolmens à couloir et allées couvertes). Rennes: Travaux du Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Préhistorique.
Lukis, W.C. (1875). A Guide to the Principal Chambered Barrows and other Prehistoric Monuments in the Islands of the Morbihan.
Minot, R.S. (1966). Les Monuments Mégalithiques du Morbihan.
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The lyrics are in Hurrian, while the musical instructions use Hurrianized Akkadian technical terminology written in cuneiform. The tablet itself is about 3,400 years old and is dedicated to Nikkal, a Hurrian goddess of orchards, fertility, and the moon.The tablets were found at Ugarit in northern Syria, and this particular one is the oldest surviving substantially complete work of notated music in the world.
A series for anyone who has forgotten history, or never warmed to it. No dates to memorize: just how, and why, things turned out the way they did.
"An eye for an eye." Almost everyone knows the phrase. Rather fewer know it was carved into a slab of black stone some 3,700 years ago, on the orders of Hammurabi, king of Babylon: a monument that has been called the first law code in history. It is one of the most famous objects ever dug out of the ground (that's it in the photo below). And the awkward truth, which the last few decades of scholarship have made hard to avoid, is that it was probably not the first, and may not really have been a law code at all.
THE CITY THAT TOOK OVER
After the Akkadian empire of Sargon (see Part 1), Mesopotamia passed through a churn of rival powers. Then one city in the centre of the plain rose above the rest, a place whose name still carries a whiff of glamour and menace: Babylon.
Its maker was Hammurabi, who came to the throne around 1792 BC: an able general and a tireless administrator, the sort of ruler who conquers all morning and answers letters about irrigation ditches all afternoon. City by city (Larsa, Mari, Eshnunna) he pulled most of Mesopotamia under Babylon.
The empire he built was, in the long run, brief: it began to fray almost as soon as he died in 1750 BC, and his dynasty was finished by 1595 BC. But its cultural output outlived it by four thousand years. Two things above all: a monument about justice, and the first great story.
WHY CITIES NEED LAW
Before the stele, the interesting question: why did law appear at all?
Think of a village. Nearly everyone is related, or at least known by name. When two people quarrel, the elders settle it, and they settle it as people who know both families and every old grudge between them. It works because the community is small.
Now think of a city: thousands of strangers who must trade, lend, marry, build and argue with people they have never met. There are no elders who know everybody. Disputes have to be resolved by someone impartial, according to rules laid down in advance and applied to all alike. That is what written law is for, and it is why law and cities are born together. The rule replaces the relationship.
WHAT THE STELE SAYS
Hammurabi's laws, 282 of them, were cut into a pillar of black stone over two metres tall, in dense columns of cuneiform. At the top, a carved scene: the king standing before Shamash, god of justice, who holds out the rod and ring of authority. The message could not be plainer: this justice comes from heaven.
By our standards the content is harsh. Death is the penalty for a long list of offences. And people are not equal before it: the rules differ, usually though not always for the worse, depending on whether you are a nobleman, a commoner, a woman or a slave. Running through it is the principle of talion: what you do to another is done to you. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a formula the Hebrew Bible would later echo almost word for word.
It belongs to the mind of its own age, and has to be read that way. Even so, it was a leap forward: the rules were written down and fixed, knowable in advance at least in principle, which is more than power usually offers.
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🟫 DID YOU KNOW? THE STOLEN STONE
We can read the laws today only because somebody stole them. Around 1155 BC, six centuries after Hammurabi, the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte raided Mesopotamia and carried the stele off to Susa, in what is now Iran, as war booty. By then it was probably standing in Sippar, a little way upstream, rather than in Babylon itself. At Susa it lay until French archaeologists dug it up in 1901, broken into three pieces. Had it stayed in Mesopotamia, it would very likely have been ground up for building stone long ago. It now stands in the Louvre. ──────────────────────────────
BUT WAS IT REALLY A LAW CODE?
Here two things have to be said that older accounts, including most schoolbooks, still get wrong.
First: it was not the first. The laws of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur, are about three centuries older (around 2100 BC), and the laws of Lipit-Ishtar and of Eshnunna also come earlier. Hammurabi's is the longest and best-preserved legal text of the ancient Near East, which is not at all the same as the first.
Second, and stranger: it may never have functioned as law. Thousands of Babylonian court records survive, and not one of them cites the stele. Judges went on deciding by custom and precedent, as before. The monument was written in a deliberately archaic script that ordinary people could not read, and stood over two metres high in a temple. Scholars such as Marc Van De Mieroop and Norman Yoffee have therefore argued that we should read it less as legislation than as a royal monument: Hammurabi advertising himself, to his subjects and to the gods, as the just king.
Which leaves a genuinely open question, and a good one to sit with: is a law that nobody enforces still law? Or is it, as it was perhaps always meant to be, a statement about what a ruler wants to be seen to stand for?
GILGAMESH: THE FIRST GREAT STORY
Babylon's other gift is a poem: the Epic of Gilgamesh, among the oldest works of literature that survive. The tales themselves are older and Sumerian; it was Babylonian poets who wove them into a single epic. Gilgamesh is a king of Uruk, and a king of that name does seem to have really existed.
In the story he is a half-divine tyrant, until the gods send a wild man, Enkidu, to match him. They fight; the fight is savage and even; and out of it grows respect, then friendship. Together they hunt monsters and have adventures. Then Gilgamesh offends the gods, and the gods take their revenge by killing Enkidu.
Shattered, Gilgamesh sets out to find immortality, and fails. He must accept that human beings die. But coming home, seeing the great walls of Uruk rising ahead of him, he understands something: we cannot live forever, yet what we build can. Immortality is possible, but only through what we make and leave behind.
It is four thousand years old, and it remains a story about grief and friendship, and about coming to terms with death. Nobody has improved on the theme since.
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🟫 DID YOU KNOW? A TABLET THAT WENT HOME
One fragment of the epic, the "Gilgamesh Dream Tablet," was looted from an Iraqi museum during the 1991 Gulf War, smuggled into the United States, and in 2014 sold with false paperwork to the craft chain Hobby Lobby for about $1.6 million, for display in a Washington museum. US agents seized it in 2019; a court ordered its forfeiture in 2021; and later that year it was formally handed back to Iraq, part of some 17,000 artefacts returned. Gilgamesh's search for immortality took a four-thousand-year detour through an American gift shop. ──────────────────────────────
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🟫 DID YOU KNOW? MACHINES ARE READING BABYLON
Hundreds of thousands of cuneiform fragments sit in museums, most unread, because matching a scrap in London to its other half in Baghdad is nearly impossible by hand. Since 2018 a project between the University of Baghdad and LMU Munich, the Electronic Babylonian Library, has been digitising them and letting AI hunt for matches. The results are startling: in 2024 it turned up unknown lines of Gilgamesh, and in 2025 it reconstructed a lost 250-line "Hymn to Babylon" from around 1000 BC, once so popular that schoolchildren copied it out. It praises the city's spring meadows and its priestesses, and commends Babylonians for treating foreigners well. Thirty scattered manuscripts of it were identified by the machine in a task that, its editors reckon, would have taken scholars decades. ──────────────────────────────
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⏱️ IN 30 SECONDS
Around 1792 BC Hammurabi made Babylon the master of Mesopotamia. Cities, full of strangers rather than kin, need impartial written rules, and his stele of 282 laws is the great monument to that idea: harsh and unequal, an eye for an eye handed down by a god. But it was not the first law code (Ur-Nammu's is 300 years older), and no court is known to have cited it: it may be royal propaganda rather than statute. Babylon's other gift, the Epic of Gilgamesh, says that we die but our works can live. And AI is now recovering more of that literature every year. ──────────────────────────────
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This is Part 5 of a plain-language history series I'm writing for people who never warmed to history; corrections and additions from anyone who knows these periods better are genuinely welcome.
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Image credits:
• Stele of Hammurabi (Louvre): photo by Mbzt, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 3.0 (Creative Commons); image resized.
• Map: original, made for this series with the assistance of AI.
