The Locmariaquer megaliths, seen in Figure 10-13a, are a complex of Neolithic constructions in Locmariaquer, Brittany.
Figure 10-13a: Locmariaquer megalithic complex of Neolithic constructions with two tiers, a dolmen rock (Merchant’s Table), and the broken menhir, the largest single block of stone ever, c. 4500 BCE (Reference 61)
Figure 10-13b: Locmariaquer, mound entrance and the standing stone
Figure 10-13c: Locmariaquer, stone map looking like the North Atlantic Ocean
Figure 10-13d: Locmariaquer, stone with staffs and grid map with multiple staff looking like the North Atlantic Ocean
This complex has an elaborate two-tiered passage mound—one oval and one rose petal—a dolmen rock known as the “Table des Marchand” (Merchant’s Table), and the broken menhir, the largest known single block of stone to have been transported and erected by Neolithic man. The broken menhir was erected around 4700 BC and may have been broken around 4000 BC. The obelisk of 20.6 meters tall (67.6 feet) has a weight of 280 tons (Figure 10-13a).
The two-tiered mound, Figure 10-13a, suggests the mapping of two celestial bodies, probably the moon and Venus. The top level has a rose-petal shape. The design drawing of the two-tiered mound and its passageway is needed for decoding. This is a classic layout for the sun, moon, and Venus. Figure 10-13b is another mound at Locmariaquer with an entrance and a large standing stone.
Figure 10-13c is a map of the North Atlantic Ocean, with three nobs found in this Locmariaquer mound. The question is, where is the north-south axis? The assumption is made that north is up in Figure 10-13c, based on Reference 16. Thus, the top nob is the North Pole. The other two nobs represent the Mediterranean Sea (the Strait of Gibraltar) and the Caribbean region of North America. This is consistent with Figure 10-12d. A detailed layout of lines in Figure 10-13c shows increasing angles for the increasing latitudes.
Figure 10-13d shows on a Locmariaquer stone various examples of the Jacob’s staff used to measure angles and another detailed grid map showing the counts and the staffs used for measuring latitudes and longitudes. Brittany appears, also, to be a “land of measurement.”
The map in Figure 10-13c surely indicate that the seafarers of 3200 BCE were aware of North America. The actual trips for going to America will be described in Chapter 11.
Barnenez: Passage Mound, 4400 BCE
Latitude: 48.7° N
Longitude: 3.86° W
The multitiered Barnenez Mound, Figure 10-14a, is seventy-two meters long, up to twenty-five meters wide, and over eight meters high.
Figure 10-14a: Barnenez passage mound in two sections, eleven passageways, 4400 BCE (Reference 61)
Figure 10-14b: Barnenez, storage design with six vertical passageways and five right-rotated passageways
Figure 10-14c: Barnenez, far-left passageway A with many familiar symbols (Reference 14)
Figure 10-14d: Stone at Knockmany, Ireland, having the eleven passageways (Reference 41)
It is built of thirteen thousand to fourteen thousand tons of stone. It contains two sections with eleven chambers entered by separate passages, as seen in Figure 10-14b. The mound has steep facades and a stepped profile. Several internal walls either represented earlier facades or served the stability of the structure. The mound consists of relatively small blocks of stone, with only the chambers being truly megalithic in character. The monument overlooks the Bay of Morlaix, a fertile coastal plain at the time of its erection (i.e., a Garden of Eden).
The left section of the Barnenez Mound has six passageways with a thirty-degree counterclockwise angle from the north-south axis. The right section has five passageways angled with a thirteen-degree offset counterclockwise from north.
There are chambers at the end of the passageways having differing shapes.
The heads of the passageways A and B have five stones. This indicates a pentagram—specifically, Venus. A stone in the A passageway has some important symbols (Figure 10-14c): the top symbol represents a map with increasing latitudes that is similar to Figure 10-13c. The horns of Venus are a symbol for longitude. There should be five for the five petals of Venus. The cross and triangle symbols are the Northern Cross and the Summer (navigation) Triangle. The wavy zigzags represent the oceans. Last is the feather of Maat, a symbol in the Nile River dynasties for truth, balance, and weighing. This symbol is also similar to the Nile River dynasties symbol for 10,000.
These symbols were used in the design of the megalithic mounds, particularly, the Irish mounds as decoded in Chapter 9. The Barnenez Mound was used for storage of important commodities and is unique in that it has eleven chambered passageways containing basic navigation symbols. The oldest passageway designs may have been at Barnenez. The chamber designs of the eleven passageways at Barnenez need further study.
What really is amazing is that the eleven-chamber mound design at Barnenez is found at Knockmany, Ireland (Figure 10-14d).
A summary of passageway designs found at the megalithic sites of Brittany can be found in Appendix A.
Coustaussa: The Great Camp
The gold and copper trade route for the seafarers starting in Ireland and going back to the Eastern Mediterranean customers went through Carnac. Therefore, there should be storage facilities both in the northwest part of Brittany and the south coasts of France on the Mediterranean Sea. The southern storage facility was probably located near Coustaussa.
Coustaussa is located in one of the most beautiful and fertile locations I have ever seen.
Overlooking Coustaussa is the wonderful and isolated Rennes le Chateau. The view is magnificent. One precious moment that we had was sipping champagne and eating French pastries while watching the sun set over the snow-covered Pyrenees Mountains. In addition, Coustaussa is within a one-day trip to the harbors at Narbonne.
Figure 10-15a shows the connection of the trade route from northwest Brittany to the south coast of France (Reference 61, author’s annotations).
Figure 10-15a: Safe trade route through Southern France bypassing the Strait of Gibraltar
Figure 10-15b: Triangle connecting Coustaussa, Rennes le Chateau, and the Blanchefort Castle (author’s annotations)
Figure 10-15c: The pentagram location map to Coustaussa (Reference 32)
Figure 10-15d: Trade storage facility at Coustaussa, the Great Camp
This area in SouthernFrance became known as Occitania, Septamania, and is now called Languedoc. The route evolved because the gold, copper, and tin trade routes were expanded from the Iberian Peninsula to Ireland, and a quicker, safer route was needed. To reach the south harbor, the water route would go to Toulouse, down the Garonne River to Carcassonne, and ultimately to the harbor at Narbonne on the Mediterranean Sea.
The storage facility would be near Narbonne, probably, at what is called in the Key to the Sacred Pattern (Reference 31), the Great Camp in the Rennes la Chateau area. Figure 10-15b shows the navigation triangle, which connects the Great Camp at Coustaussa, Rennes la Chateau, and the Blanchefort Castle. The Latin meaning of Coustaussa is custodia: to watch or to guard. The triangle has angles of thirty and forty degrees, similar to the Boyne Valley mounds of Newgrange, Dowth, and Knowth.
To locate the Great Camp, the Venus pentagram could have been used (see Figure 10-15c, Reference 31). Figure 10-15d shows several of the restored beehive huts at the Great Camp used for storage.
Figure 10-16a shows a megalithic stone sitting outside at Rennes la Chateau and referred to as a “sacrificial” stone.
Figure 10-16a: The Rose Stone at Rennes le Chateau
Figure 10-16b: Symbol for the River of Gold
Figure 10-16c: A possible Venus rose pattern
Figure 10-16d: Petal-shaped basin with nubs
Figure 10-16e: The Rose Stone with zigzag, circle, and a man
Figure 10-16f: Fountain of Love at Rennes le Bain
I suggest that this is a “metal refining” stone similar to the slurry crushing facilities described in Chapter 4. The river near the stone’s orig
inal location is close to the Aude River, which is the river of gold, coming from the Pyrenees Mountains. Figures 10-16a, c, and e show eroded symbols of crosses, zigzags, triangles, and Venus roses. I will refer to this stone as the Rose Stone. The Rose Stone has many crosses carved into it. The crosses, seen in Figure C-5 in Appendix C, are aligned to the yearly pattern of the Northern Cross.
Figures 10-16a, d and f show rose-petal shaped basins near to the Aude and Salz Rivers. Given serious study of the Rose Stone, the symbols will probably indicate many navigation symbols consistent with all of the symbols discussed in this book.
The ancient developers of towns used a grid system, which included pentagrams, as a configuration to connect the various town locations. Towns were also laid out on parallel and perpendicular lines, called salt lines. See Figure C-7. Such a line (arrow line in Figure 10-15b) connects Coustaussa to Luc sur Aude and then to Alet les Bains. This is mentioned because alet translates to aleth and then to alloy in ancient Celtic (Reference 5). The original Aleth is in Brittany near Barnenez. A town near Aleth was Fines, or refining. Thus, the towns of Aleth, found on both ends of the ancient trade routes in France, relate to alloy refining. Storage locations, or mounds, are located near the towns of Aleth.
The trade route from northwest Brittany to the south region of Languedoc replaced the original Spain/Portugal route through the Strait of Gibraltar for trading that did not involve the great metal reserves on the Iberian Peninsula. From a seafarer’s perspective, the seafarer wanted safe sailing and safe storage and used the basic navigation symbols for map grids on the water, but the seafarer used the grid system for town locations and storage locations. The trade route in Figure 10-15a became the Roman trade route and the route that the Knights Templar used and on which they built their great castle fortresses. The French trade route was the shortest, quickest, and safest route. However, the Languedoc region of France is known for its high winds.
A sailor needed to know in the spring when the great winds, Le Vent Tramontane (Tramuntana en Catalan), would start coming from the Atlantic Ocean down along the Pyrenees Mountains and then to the Mediterranean Sea. We experienced these hurricane-force winds several years ago, and we could not stand up in them. I am sure one could sail from Narbonne to Carthage in a matter of days with these winds.
The roots of the names for Carnac, Carcassonne, Occitania, etc., are a separate study. The root of Brittany is brit, or covenant. The Gauls left their names throughout the trade routes: in Dingle, Galway; Donegal, Portugal; and Galicia, Spain. The base root is CR, for chi rho, GL for Gauls, and DN for dens and storage. The passageways had designs with variations of chi rho.
The basic Irish symbols and mound designs were seen in all of the Brittany locations in this chapter. The symbol emphasis was on the sun, moon, and Venus. The Northern Cross and the navigation triangle were built into the mound designs of the multitier mounds.
South from Ireland: Iberian Peninsula
Figure 10-17b shows the southern trade routes to the Iberian Peninsula. The seafarers following the sun west from the Nile Delta went through the Strait of Gibraltar, finding the great gold, copper, and silver mines of the Iberian Peninsula. The trading expanded to the north following the coast northward. The seafarers went to Ireland by either a direct sail to Ireland or by following the coast to Carnac and then to Ireland. For simplicity, this book calls this trade route the southern route to Ireland. The return trip from Ireland to the Iberian Peninsula ended in the megalithic sites.
The trade route from Ireland heading south goes to Spain, the Iberian Peninsula. Following the route, eventually named for the Gauls (Donegal, Galway, and Dingle), the seafarer would end at Galicia in the northwest corner of Iberia and then the ports of Gaul, Portugal. Figure 10-17c shows the Iberian Peninsula with the major rivers.
Figure 10-17a: Galicia, Campo la Meiro with stone with a spiral
Figure 10-17b: Map of the Iberian Peninsula
Figure 10-17c: Portugal, glyph showing map with five rivers (Reference 55)
Figure 10-17d: Rio Tinto, the red river
The trade route heading to the customers in the Eastern Mediterranean would need to sail to the mythical city of Tarshish and, then, through the Strait of Gibraltar. Figure 10-17c shows the five rivers on a scribed stone found in Portugal.
The seafarer would have one major concern: the safe passage through the Strait of Gibraltar. The northern harbor close to the Strait of Gibraltar would be close to present-day Cadiz, or the mythical city of Tarshish, the island of Tar (Tar, probably under water now). Tar also was the base of the sticky substance to waterproof a boat.
Irish kerbstone K67, shown in Figure 8-9, indicates that the seafarer sailed back and forth from Ireland and the Iberian Peninsula.
If the angle of the spirals in K67 is close to being accurate, the seafarers sailed from Dingle—maybe Cork—to Galicia, at an angle of seven degrees. The trip to Galicia would take seven days, and the trip to Dingle would take nine days. Reference 34 again indicates that the trip between the Iberian Peninsula and Ireland was nine days.
The seafarer expected to find symbols carved into the stones found in the Galicia region. They found these stones having similar symbols, which have already been described in previous chapters. A spiral is seen in Figure 10-17a at Campo la Meiro. Note the similarity between Meiro and Meroe.
What follows will concentrate on symbols representing the Iberian coastlines (maps).
Most importantly, the seafarer would create stones recording the coastline of the Iberian Peninsula. An example of this recording is Figure 10-17c, found at Chao Redondo, North Portugal, 2200 BCE. Figure 10-17c shows the major rivers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean compared to the actual rivers. The Río Tinto, (red river), is a river in southwestern Spain that originates in the Sierra Morena mountains of Andalusia (Figure 10-17d).
Cadiz and Tarshish
The importance of the Iberian Peninsula was the abundance of valuable metals, gold, silver, and copper, at much earlier times—4000 BCE. The quest for gold (i.e., follow the sun) took the seafarers west, and they discovered the great copper mines like Rio Tinto, near Cadiz, Spain.
By sailing into Cadiz and other southern Iberian harbors, which we did in 2014, I appreciated how well protected these harbors are based on the mountainous terrain. Getting into the harbors was the problem. Based on the high winds, even our cruise ship did not know until the last minute whether it would be safe to go into the harbor. In fact, the winds were so severe that a six-inch-thick line snapped when we were moored in a harbor in the Azores.
The Río Tinto (red river) is a river in Southwestern Spain that originates in the Sierra Morena Mountains of Andalusia (Figure 10-17d).
Figure 10-18a shows a mound near Cadiz having a stone circle with an offset opening with a large cover stone (Reference: Archeological Museum in Seville, Spain).
Figure 10-18: Comparing Iberian Stone Circles to Nubian Quartz Crushing Mills
At the top of the circle in Figure 10-18a is a petal-stone configuration with four additional stone configurations in apparent pentagon shapes. Each of these five pentagon configurations has a large stone at the center. Could these five configurations represent the five Venus years it takes to form the Venus rose? The largest petal on the left has about a fifty-degree angle. Because the petal is cut off where it meets the circle, could this indicate the fifty days in a Venus-year cycle when Venus disappears for fifty days? Should this mound be called the Rose Mound? A possible purpose for this stone configuration is that it was a quartz slurry crushing mill.
At Alhambra, near Granada, is a water staircase structure, Figure 10-18b, which looks similar to the Nubian gold crushing mills seen in Figure 10-18c. The Darro River feeds the Alhambra and is called the “river of gold”.
Forty miles west of Rio Tinto are the Tharsis mines, which brings us to the mythical city of Tarshish. Tarshish—reality or myth? A brief discussion on Tarshish follows because of the influence it had on the ancient seaf
arers. Tarshish was known for having great ship builders and for being a trading center for metals. The miners were called Tartessians. The roots of Tarshish are TR and ish, for island. TR is the tree of life, needing a Garden of Eden; it is the island of TR. There were many locations from Turkey to Spain having this name, even Carthage for Tarshish.
The Talmud links Tarshish to the Ocena—Atlantic Ocean. The Bible states that the “king’s ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold and silver, and apes and peacocks.” The three-year time period is a key seafarer’s symbol: one year to sail, one year to plant, and one year to return. “King Solomon and Hiram, King of Tyre, maintained ships of Tarshish.” Solomon had, at sea, a navy at Tarshish for gold and silver. A kingdom in the midst of the sea also was known as a much larger entity: “Atlantis.” The description of Atlantis given by Plato fits a possible region near Tartessos that was submerged under the sea. Plato also wrote that Atlantis was rich in copper and other metals.
At the root of Atlantis is anti, the Spanish word for copper in North America.
For the purposes of this book, Tarshish was a location close to the Strait of Gibraltar, having a harbor for large merchant vessels designed to carry ore and other types of cargo and capable of traveling very long distances. As such, the ships had to navigate through the Strait of Gibraltar. The phonic part is tar and ish; tar, which has the root TR, could mean tar, or tree, for boat repairs and ish for island.
Strait of Gibraltar
A map for navigation through the dangerous Strait of Gibraltar had to exist for the ancient seafarers. The Tablet of Paredes, Galicia NW Spain, 4100 BCE (Figure 10-19), was that map.
Figure 10-19a: Galicia, Tablet of Paredes, showing the grid from the Azores to the Strait of Gibraltar, c. 4100 BCE (Reference 55)
Figure 10-19b: Galicia, Tablet of Paredes, showing the grid through the Strait of Gibraltar, c. 4100 BCE
A Seafarer's Decoding of the Irish Symbols Page 15