The oldest building in the world* - In Brittany it only rains on the idiots. - CycleBlaze

August 14, 2018

The oldest building in the world*

*according to Wikipedia

I had one goal today and that was to see the oldest know building in the world. There are a lot of qualifiers there so let me be clear. I'm using the definition in Wikipedia with the allowance that there are older constructions which are not buildings (menhirs, for example) and known because there may be other buildings out there that have not been rediscovered yet. The current example was only released from layers of dirt and vegetation and recognized as a building in 1954, so it's possible that another even older exists. But to see it I had to ride there first. 

I left Morlaix following the road along the east side of the estuary. It was foggy enough to make one damp, but not enough to warrant a rain cape. Not much wind was stirring the waters and the sail boats I saw were just ghosting along. A few flat bottomed oyster boats were out working the beds. As the estuary broadened out I cane to the pretty village of Le Dourduff.

Le Dourduff
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From Le Dourduff there were indicators for a coastal cycle route which I followed. Most of the route is on little traveled back roads but there is an unpaved portion just north of the village that was slick from the fog and had some rather steep climbs. Soon enough I got to the main attraction Barnenez. It's on a small peninsula and the cairn of Barnenez can be seen from the mainland as it's at the summit of a small hill. The site is reached by a very steep, but thankfully short, climb. There is an entrance fee and the site is fenced off, but I don't mind given the unique character of the place.

So what is this cairn? It's a pile of stone placed so as to enclose and cover eleven tomb chambers. It appears to have been built in two phases, the first about 6500 years ago, and the second some six hundred years later. It's unusual in that it shows the evolution of tomb building from the first phasduring which the tombs were built using "false" domes, or corbeilles domes. These are made by piling flat stones upon each other in circles with each successive circle a little bit smaller that the one below. The weight of stone on top stabilizes the structure. The domed chambers made in this way were linked to the outside by a corridor of large stones stood on end and covered with large slabs. In the second phase of construction some of the chambers were constructed like dolmens. 

The oldest building.
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The newer part of the oldest building to the left.
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A local entrepreneur thought he might make some money selling the stone from the cairn and he started to demolish it before the archaeologists could put a stop to it. In a way that was fortunate because it revealed the methods of construction.

The back of the cairn with the cut away effect left by quarrying. Oldest on the far left.
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Inside one of the passages.
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The large stones are from an island about a kilometer away. When they were quarried it was still the end of the ice age and the island was still part of the mainland.
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The mist and rain began to fall in Ernest as I was leaving Barnenez but in a few minutes that too passed. I rode through a street market in the coastal village of Primel-Tregastel where I bought a sandwich for lunch. Continuing along the coast road I eventually got to Lannion. The town was full for à carnival and I followed signs for a campground out of town to Beg Léguer. The campsite was nice and calm and there was a restaurant serving a pizza buffet for supper. I strolled down to the shore to have a couple beers at a seaside bar before going back to the campground to eat. 

View from the deck of the Bar des Plages.
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Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles)
Total: 701 km (435 miles)

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