Megaliths of Brittany and Providence

Just a year ago this week -- just a year! - Susie and I joined friends Richard and Pauline in southern Brittany for a power tour through the neolithic stone passage graves and incredible stone alignments that dot the countryside around Carnac, just off the Golf of Morbihan. And what an experience that was!

The odd thing is, yesterday, New Year's Day 2012, Susie and I went for a casual stroll through Swan Point Cemetery on the east side of Providence. Beautifully secured along the banks of the Seekonk River, I found myself walking through a part of the cemetery I had never been to before, closer to the entrance and away from the river. Anyway, before I could say "Grand Menhir," I came face-to-face with the "Megalith of Swan Point," the centerpiece of a tranquil bit of green known as the Memorial Grove Garden.

The Swan Point stone is ancient to be sure but we know why it sits there brooding in its shadowy glen. But those thousands of stone standing like so many soldiers in line after line in southern Brittany, stones that were quarried, hauled and put into place some 5,000 years before the birth of Christ, they remain one of the puzzle of the ages.

Who did it? Why? How? When?