He had “followed the law”
Akin to “I was just following orders.”
Such a reason did not work before and people following the orders or the laws in this instance and other instances did not ask questions. The orders and the law gave an excuse to do otherwise. A story as taken from “Anger as pre-historic stones destroyed for French DIY store,” Le Monde,fr.
Around 40 standing stones thought to have been erected by prehistoric humans 7,000 years ago have been destroyed near a famed archaeological site in northwest France to make way for a DIY store, an angry local historian has revealed.
The stones in Carnac were between 50-100 centimetres (20-40 inches) high and stood close to the main highly protected areas of one of Europe’s largest and most mysterious pre-historic tourist attractions.
Local archaeologist Christian Obeltz told AFP on Wednesday, having read about the clearance of the land in the Ouest-France newspaper.
“The site has been destroyed,” for a commercial entity called a store.
He believes 39 standing stones — known as menhirs — have been lost, estimating their age to be around 7,000 years based on carbon dating conducted on stones nearby in 2010.
The land was granted a building permit from the local mayor’s office in August last year and DIY chain Mr. Bricolage is currently building a new store there.
Mayor Olivier Lepick told AFP that he had “followed the law” and pointed to the “low archaeological value” of objects found during checks before the construction process began. He added . . .
“The land was not situated in a protected area and had been earmarked for commercial use.”
Carnac is famed for its vast fields of stone megaliths which stand in long lines close to the Atlantic coast in the windswept Brittany region. There are around 3,000 of them in the two main protected areas which extend over more than six kilometers (four miles).
The stones are thought to have had a sacred and funereal function, although various theories exist. The Regional Office of Cultural Affairs (Drac) for Brittany, which is responsible for ensuring the law protecting cultural monuments is respected, played down the importance of the losses.
“Given the uncertain and in any case non-major character of the remains, as revealed by checks, damage to a site of archaeological value has not been established,” it said in a statement on Wednesday.
But local archaeologist Obeltz believes local authorities failed to properly investigate. He said . . .
“There weren’t archaeological excavations in order to know if the stones were menhirs or not.”
When contacted, the Mr. Bricolage’s group said it “sincerely regretted the situation” but pointed to authorizations for its store granted last year.
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Having sat on a Planning Commission for a decade, we were always careful in preserving monuments such as Landmark trees, etc. A survey of trees on a site was conducted. A builder had to commit to preserving identified monuments on the site before waivers for other things were granted. This is done under Planned Unit Development ordinance.
What a waste of history for commercialization.
Never bet against money getting what it wants.
Isn’t that what attorneys do, look for ways to break the law?
kind of like what happens to people of no archeological value. they have only common skills. the skills that enabled people like them survive about a million years of hard times. or perhaps only fifty years of working for a boss. but you see, those skills are common, not like say designing a web site, or running a DIY business, so their work is worth less, and so are they.
actually, i started out to say something like “history is like that” meaning we can’t expect to preserve the things of the past while building the now. but the real tragedy here is that we don’t value anything that doesn’t make money, and some of us seem to get pleasure from destroying things of beauty or mystery or 0nly sentimental value.
you don’t belive in hell, so you have no word for what you see being built right in front of you.
Well the French love DIY to a pretty surprising degree. Had it been just another supermarche they might have slowed down the construction to look a little harder.