Little Britain still keeps Europe’s oldest stone monuments
Brittany, the peninsula at France's north-western tip, was once an independent kingdom and then a duchy before joining the French crown in 1532. One of six Celtic nations, it guards some of the oldest standing buildings on Earth, such as the Cairn of Barnenez, raised early in the fifth millennium BC.
The region spans 34,023 square kilometres between the English Channel, Normandy, the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic, and is sometimes called Little Britain, sharing its root with Great Britain. Historic Brittany counted about 4,475,295 people in 2010, with Nantes, Rennes and Brest its biggest urban areas. Its five historic departments are now split, since Loire-Atlantique sits in Pays de la Loire, and about half the residents back reuniting them, a step nationalists see as key to wider autonomy.
The name goes back through Latin Britannia to a Greek word used by Pytheas of Massalia, who toured the British Isles around 320 BC. Under Rome the area formed part of Armorica, probably a Gallic word for near the sea. Neanderthals left one of the world's oldest hearths at Plouhinec, and modern humans arrived roughly 35,000 years ago. Neolithic farmers raised cairns, princely tombs and stone rows, including the Carnac alignments and the Broken Menhir of Er Grah, the largest single stone Neolithic people ever stood upright.
Five Celtic tribes held the land before Rome, among them the Namnetes, Redones and Veneti, who lent their names to Nantes, Rennes and Vannes. Rome defeated the Veneti at sea off Morbihan during the Gallic Wars and absorbed the region in 51 BC, building grid-plan towns and three main roads. In the third century AD Franks, Alamanni and pirates raided the coast, the farm economy collapsed, and towns such as Nantes, Rennes and Vannes threw up walls.
Late in the fourth century, Britons from Devon and Cornwall began crossing to Armorica, which explains why Breton is closest to Cornish, and by around the sixth century the name Britannia had displaced Armorica. Armorican archers fought for Aetius against Attila at the Catalaunian Plains, loosing arrows that broke a Hunnic night attack. Breton itself splits into the KLT and Vannetais dialects, and the official spelling Breizh blends their two pronunciations.
Source: Brittany
