In a first of its kind discovery in the region, around 30 prehistoric monoliths and a human skeleton have been found in a 150-metre-long excavation in central France ahead of the widening of the A75 motorway near Veyre-Monton, about 360 kilometres south-southeast of Paris.
     This is the first time that menhirs have been found in Auvergne, or anywhere in the centre of France.
     The menhirs were toppled into pits and buried some time in prehistory, remaining hidden until now. The stones measure between 1 metre and 1.6 metres, and likely extend beyond the excavation area. They are in a north-south alignment, in the style of megalithic Armorican monuments. Similarly to Carnac, the largest stones atood at the top of the slope towards the north, and the smallest stones closer together towards the south. One group is bordered by another alignment, of which five stones are arranged in a horseshoe curve. Six other regularly spaced blocks form a 15-metre diameter circle. One stone is more sculpted, and largely anthropomorphic - the only example known in the Auvergne. It has a rounded head, rough shoulders, and two small breasts.
     The excavation also revealed a burial with the remains of a tall man covered by a quadrangular cairn 14 metres long and 6.5 metres wide. Like the alignments of monoliths, this too had been deliberately erased from the landscape.
     There appears to be little to help date the stones precisely, but a series of analyses are planned. Early estimates suggest that the finds could date to the Neolithic or Bronze Age - anywhere from 6,000 to 1,000 BCE.

Edited from France Info (26 August 2019), The Connexion (27 August 2019)