Carnac has more standing stones than almost anywhere else on earth, and local Christian legend already had an explanation for them centuries before archaeologists offered one.
Thousands of stones, several alignments
Carnac's megaliths are arranged across several distinct alignments, including Menec, Kermario and Kerlescan, together comprising several thousand standing stones spread over multiple kilometres, making the site one of the largest concentrations of prehistoric standing stones anywhere in the world, well beyond the scale of most other European megalithic complexes.
Soldiers turned to stone
A persistent local legend, reflecting later Christian reinterpretation of a pre-Christian monument, holds that the stones are Roman soldiers turned to stone by Pope Cornelius while fleeing pursuit, a story with no historical basis for the stones' actual origin but one that reflects how thoroughly later communities felt the need to explain, in their own religious terms, a landscape built long before their arrival.
Purpose still undetermined
Unlike some megalithic sites where astronomical alignment or burial function is reasonably well argued, Carnac's exact original purpose remains debated among archaeologists, with funerary, ceremonial and astronomical explanations all proposed and none conclusively established for a monument built and used across a span of centuries rather than in a single defined episode.