Menhir de l'Aurière
DatedEst. 2800–1800 BCE
Photo Kormin · CC BY-SA 3.0Source file on Wikimedia Commons
Overview
About this site
What the sources say
Le menhir de l'Orrière, appelé aussi Pierre sonnante de l'Aurière, et le dolmen de l'Aurière (ou Orrière) sont deux mégalithes, séparés d'environ 200 m , situés à Chigné, dans le département français de Maine-et-Loire en France.
Article in FrenchRead on Wikipedia3 min readCC BY-SA 4.0
Where it sits in time
The site's dated range, placed against world reference points.
The scale is logarithmic: each step to the left is about ten times older than the last.
The full article
Menhir de l'Aurière: the whole story
In briefSources for this section
Sources for this section
The Menhir de l'Aurière, also called the Pierre sonnante de l'Aurière, and the nearby Dolmen de l'Aurière are two megaliths separated by about 200 m at Chigné in the French department of Maine-et-Loire.
The menhir is a pyramidal sandstone monolith that rises 1,60 m above the ground. Measurements taken in the nineteenth century suggest that agricultural work gradually raised the surrounding soil. Because it stands close to the boundary between Maine-et-Loire and Sarthe, it was long mistaken for a boundary marker. Local tradition says the stone rings at noon, giving it its name.
The dolmen has now collapsed, but a photograph from the beginning of the twentieth century shows that it was a rectangular monument with a covering slab resting on three upright stones of unequal size. The south-west pillar collapsed, pulling the slab down and bringing down the south-east pillar, while the north slab stayed in place. Two holes visible in that north slab are probably natural. The two structures were listed as historic monuments in 1983.
The site dates from 2800 BCE to 1800 BCE, based on a typological estimate.
No English Wikipedia article exists for it; the full text below is the French article "Menhir et dolmen de l'Aurière", shown in the original language.
Summary in EnglishSources for this section
Sources for this section
Menhir de l'Aurière is a menhir (standing stone) in Chigné, France. A typological estimate: 2800 BCE to 1800 BCE. No English Wikipedia article exists for it; the full text below is the French article "Menhir et dolmen de l'Aurière", shown in the original language.
ProtectionSources for this section
Sources for this section
Les deux édifices sont inscrits au titre des monuments historiques en 1983.
Le menhirSources for this section
Sources for this section
C'est un monolithe en grès de forme pyramidale allongée, dépassant de 1,60 m au-dessus du sol. Selon Bousrez, il mesurait 1,70 m en 1894 et selon Millet 2 m en 1865, il est donc probable que progressivement le sol se soit surélevé du fait des travaux agricoles.
En raison de sa proximité avec la limite départementale séparant le Maine-et-Loire de la Sarthe, il a longtemps été confondu avec une borne départementale.
Selon la légende locale, la pierre sonne à midi, d'où son nom.
Le dolmenSources for this section
Sources for this section
L'édifice est désormais effondré mais on dispose d'une photographie d'avant son effondrement, datée du début du XXe siècle. C'était un monument de forme rectangulaire constitué d'une table de couverture (2 m de large sur 3 m de long et 0,70 m d'épaisseur) reposant sur trois orthostates de taille inégale : une longue dalle côté nord et deux piliers plus petit au sud-est et au sud-ouest. Ce dernier s'est écroulé entraînant le glissement de la table et l'effondrement du pilier sud-est, tandis que l'orthostate nord demeurait en place. Les deux trous visibles sur cette dalle nord sont probablement d'origine naturelle.
À l'époque où l'on croyait que les dolmens étaient des tables de sacrifices humains, on montrait « la protubérance servant d'oreiller aux jeunes filles immolées ».
AnnexesSources for this section
Sources for this section
Bibliographie
: document utilisé comme source pour la rédaction de cet article.
Michel Gruet, Mégalithes en Anjou, Le Coudray-Macouard, Cheminements, 2005 (1re éd. 1967, actualisation de Charles-Tanguy Le Roux), 417 p. (ISBN 2-84478-397-X, lire en ligne), p. 69-71
Articles connexes
Sites mégalithiques de Maine-et-Loire
Liste des monuments historiques de Maine-et-Loire
How this page was madeSources for this section
Sources for this section
The summary at the top of this page was written by MiniMax-M3 (2026-11-07) from the cited Wikipedia article “Menhir et dolmen de l'Aurière”, translated from French. The numbers in it were checked automatically against the source text. The rest of the page is the article itself, the structured records and computed distances.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Breton and French menhirs
A menhir is a large upright stone placed by humans. The word comes from the Breton maen and hir, "long stone", and entered archaeology through French antiquarians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; in modern Breton the word for such a stone is peulvan. Menhirs are most numerous in Western Europe, with about 1,200 in north-western France alone, and Brittany stands out for both the density of monuments and the variety of types.
The largest known menhir is the Grand Menhir Brisé at Locmariaquer. It once stood nearly 20.6 metres high, and now lies fractured in four pieces; whole, it would have weighed some 330 tonnes. Stones in the Carnac area were hewn from local granite by the pre-Celtic people of Brittany. At Carnac more than 3,000 prehistoric standing stones form the largest such collection in the world, arranged in groups of alignments that stretch for four kilometres. The stones were erected at some point in the Neolithic, probably around 3300 BCE, with some perhaps as early as 4500 BCE. Elsewhere, the Cham des Bondons in the Cévennes is the second largest concentration in France, and a menhir 4.5 metres tall stands against Le Mans Cathedral, moved there in 1778 when its dolmen was destroyed.
Dating a menhir is difficult, because standing stones are usually hard to date and were put up in many different periods.
Folklore: a Christian legend held that the stones of Carnac were pagan soldiers who had pursued Pope Cornelius and were turned to stone by him. Modern beliefs link the stones with Roman and Christian occupation, even though they date from 4500 to 3300 BCE.
When visiting, look at how the stones taper towards the top and at how the alignments run across the slope.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Menhir, Wikipedia: Carnac stones, Wikipedia: Locmariaquer megaliths, Wikipedia: List of menhirs · CC BY-SA 4.0
From the article
Dated moments in the story
- 1894
Selon Bousrez, il mesurait 1,70 m en 1894 et selon Millet 2 m en 1865, il est donc probable que progressivement le sol se soit surélevé du fait des travaux agricoles.
Source - 1967
1967, actualisation de Charles-Tanguy Le Roux), 417 p.
Source - 1983
Les deux édifices sont inscrits au titre des monuments historiques en 1983.
Source - 2005
Michel Gruet, Mégalithes en Anjou, Le Coudray-Macouard, Cheminements, 2005 (1re éd.
Source
See it in 3D
An interpretive reconstruction of the monument, standing on the real ground at its exact point, under the sun for that place and season. Drag to look around it.
The reconstruction is ours, not a survey: it shows what a monument of this type looks like, at the size the record gives for this one.
Photographs
2 photographs, each with its author and licence
More photographs
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 2800–1800 BCEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for menhirs in France; this site has not been dated itself. Standing stones are associated with the Beaker people of the European late Neolithic and early Bronze Age c. 2800-1800 BC.Source for this date
Where it stands
France
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 47°35′11″ N, 0°08′24″ EFor a GPS or map app: 47.58650, 0.14000
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q22962214wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
Image files
Report a correctionWrong date, name, photograph or source? Tell us and it will be put right.
Lore, kept apart
Legends and claims
These are stories and claims reported by the sources. They are not evidence, and they never stand in for the dating above.
- Tradition
The menhir is a pyramidal sandstone monolith that rises 1,60 m above the ground.
The menhir is a pyramidal sandstone monolith that rises 1,60 m above the ground. Measurements taken in the nineteenth century suggest that agricultural work gradually raised the surrounding soil. Because it stands close to the boundary between Maine-et-Loire and Sarthe, it was long mistaken for a boundary marker. Local tradition says the stone rings at noon, giving it its name.
Source - Tradition
C'est un monolithe en grès de forme pyramidale allongée, dépassant de 1,60 m au-dessus du sol.
C'est un monolithe en grès de forme pyramidale allongée, dépassant de 1,60 m au-dessus du sol. Selon Bousrez, il mesurait 1,70 m en 1894 et selon Millet 2 m en 1865, il est donc probable que progressivement le sol se soit surélevé du fait des travaux agricoles. En raison de sa proximité avec la limite départementale séparant le Maine-et-Loire de la Sarthe, il a longtemps été confondu avec une borne départementale. Selon la légende locale, la pierre sonne à midi, d'où son nom.
Source
Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Text from the Wikipedia article "Menhir et dolmen de l'Aurière" (French), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; authors are listed in the page history. Reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · Edit history and authors