French prehistoric site makes UNESCO world heritage list

The UN's cultural organisation on Saturday included the megaliths of Carnac and the banks of Morbihan, a vast area including famous alignments of menhirs in western France, on its World Heritage List.

Erected over more than two millennia during the Neolithic period, they cover an area of 1,000 km² with more than 550 monuments spread across the Morbihan region.

Among them are the Carnac alignments, with long straight avenues of menhirs -- "long stones" in Breton -- of different sizes, whose origin and purpose remain a mystery.

They are visited each year by close to 300,000 people.

These megaliths "constitute an exceptional testimony to the technical sophistication and skill of Neolithic communities, enabling them to extract, transport, and manipulate monumental stones and earth to create a complex symbolic space that reveals a specific relationship of populations with their environment," UNESCO said.

Carnac's inclusion takes the total number of French sites on the heritage list to 54.

Making the UNESCO's heritage list often sparks a lucrative tourism drive, and can unlock funding for the preservation of sites.

© Agence France-Presse