THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC STELES

Other formations sat alongside the line of wooden poles, altering and increasing the general visual and emotional impact. Solemn stone steles with an anthropomorphic profile brought to the site, for the first time, depictions of the human figure. These steles, true masterpieces of prehistoric sculpture, are the earliest example of megaliths at Saint-Martin-de-Corléans. The human figure is rendered in its basic form and it is not possible to distinguish their gender from sex organs, but only from the depiction of the type of clothes and from other related objects. We still do not know exactly who they were: living or dead chiefs, high priests, heroes or divinities? Both their original formation and precise arrangement according to pre-established sequences and connections suggest that the more than 40 steles discovered at the site may have been a sort of pantheon of deified figures, simulacrums used for worship.