Jade for the Gods (English translation)

Alpine jade axes were among the funerary offerings of god-kings offered, consecrated, or sacrificed to supernatural forces buried beneath the massive mounds of the Carnac region. Along with other long-distance imports – intense green variscite ornaments and opalescent fibrolite axeheads from Spain – jade became part of various religious practices that developed around the Gulf of Morbihan. The success of these beliefs is illustrated by the spread of menhirs and the architecture of stelae in Western Europe in the second half of the 5th millennium BC.