Menhir dit La Haute-Borne
MonumentHidden Treasure
Menhir dit La Haute-Borne, located in Saint-Germain-sur-Moine (Maine-et-Loire), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Saint-Germain-sur-Moine, Maine-et-Loire, Pays de la Loire
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.1047, -1.0932
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00109272
A stone sentinel since the Neolithic period, La Haute-Borne dominates the hedged farmland of Maine-et-Loire. Listed as a Historic Monument since 1889, this menhir embodies the age-old mystery of the megaliths of western France.
History
In the heart of the Maugeois bocage, in the commune of Saint-Germain-sur-Moine, stands the menhir known as La Haute-Borne. A solitary standing stone in the middle of a landscape of hedges and lush green meadows, this megalithic monument belongs to the family of silent witnesses that Neolithic populations erected all along Europe's Atlantic arc, from the Morbihan to the Iberian shores. Its sheer vertical presence, defying the passage of millennia, is enough to unsettle even the most distracted visitor. La Haute-Borne takes its name from a widespread custom in rural Anjou: menhirs, with no memory of their sacred or ritual origins, were used as remarkable markers to demarcate territories, parishes or properties. This semantic shift - from cult monument to functional boundary marker - says a lot about the way in which medieval and modern societies have tamed the prehistoric heritage without always understanding it. Here, the "high boundary marker" has become an essential part of the local topographical memory. The experience of visiting the site is that of an intimate confrontation with time. Unlike the great megalithic sites at Carnac or Bagneux, La Haute-Borne has no museum or mass tourism. And that's precisely what makes it so appealing: you're left alone with the stone, in an unspoilt, hedged farmland environment reminiscent of the Anjou of yesteryear. The low-angled morning or evening light reveals the grain of the rock, its natural striations, and gives the whole an almost sacred atmosphere. The setting of Saint-Germain-sur-Moine - an area of gentle hillsides and small streams that feed the Moine before its confluence with the Sèvre Nantaise - heightens the contemplative dimension of the visit. Hiking enthusiasts will be happy to incorporate this menhir into a wider walking circuit to discover the megalithic and hedged farmland heritage of southern Anjou, a region that boasts dozens of standing stones still in place.
Architecture
The Haute-Borne is a menhir, a single stone, uncut or very roughly squared, set vertically into the ground by human action. The rock used is probably local granite or schist, materials characteristic of the subsoil of the Maugeois bocage and the Armorican massif, of which this region forms the eastern fringe. The choice of rock was never insignificant for Neolithic builders: they selected blocks whose natural shape was suitable for erection, sometimes freeing them from their rocky gangue with the help of wooden wedges and fire. The typical morphology of a menhir like La Haute-Borne is that of a slender monolith, whose visible height can vary from two to several metres, with the buried part generally representing a third to a half of the total height to ensure the stability of the whole. The cross-section is often irregular, wider at the base and tapering towards the top, and the surface retains the natural roughness of the rock, bearing witness to the absence of systematic polishing. The orientation of the raised stone may reveal an astronomical intention - alignment with the summer or winter solstice, for example - a hypothesis that would merit a precise archaeoastronomical study at this site. The setting of this menhir in the hedged farmland of Maine-et-Loire gives it a particularly striking silhouette: standing alone in a field or at the edge of a path, it emerges from the low vegetation like a statement of human presence in this land, a silent dialogue between the hand of the ancestors and the sky of the Pays de la Loire.
Related Figures
Communautés néolithiques du Mauges (Ve-IIIe millénaire av. J.-C.) — bâtisseurs anonymes du menhirProsper Mérimée (1803-1870) — inspecteur général des Monuments Historiques, artisan des premières politiques de protection des mégalithes en FranceArcisse de Caumont (1801-1873) — archéologue normand, fondateur de la Société française d'archéologie, promoteur du recensement des mégalithes de l'OuestÉdouard Jacquot (XIXe siècle) — érudit angevin ayant contribué au recensement des monuments préhistoriques du Maine-et-LoireCommission des Monuments Historiques (1889) — instance ayant classé La Haute-Borne lors de la première liste nationale de protection
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Menhir dit La Haute-Borne located?
Menhir dit La Haute-Borne is located in Saint-Germain-sur-Moine, Maine-et-Loire department, Pays de la Loire region, France.
Is Menhir dit La Haute-Borne open to visitors?
Menhir dit La Haute-Borne is currently closed to visitors.