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NEWS October 2024
OCTOBER 2024 The recent cyber attack on the Internet Archive is deplorable and can be reasonably compared with the repeated burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. I have used the Wayback Machine extensively, but, until the full extent of the permanent damage is clear, I am unable to assess its effect on Atlantipedia. At […]Read More »
Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Aubrey Burl
Woods, Anthony
Anthony Woods is the author of Atlantis Ireland, published under the auspices of the unaccredited Keystone University(a) in Dublin, with Woods listed as CEO(b). To be blunt, for me as an Irishman, in spite of such an interesting title, I was greatly disappointed. In fact, I was by turn uncertain whether I should laugh or cry.
Woods engages in a generous level of speculation, which was certainly attention seeking. He selectively uses some mythological stories as if history whenever it suits his purpose [p.71]. The content is irritatingly repetitious throughout, references should have been numbered, which along with a few typos, all cry out for an editor.
His core contention is that Stone Age Ireland was a cultural hyperdiffusionist centre. He claims that megalith building, language and religion, all spread globally from Ireland, also known as Atlantis!
Among his many outlandish claims are that:
1.The ancient Irish language is the oldest in the world and is the most extensive with almost a million words [p.142], which is completely wrong by about a factor of six!
2.Irish megaliths are the most spectacular – obviously Woods has never heard of Brittany!
3.Megalith construction spread from Ireland to the world. However respected archaeologists such Aubrey Burl, Mike Parker Pearson and Robert Hensey [1766.6] burst that particular bubble with the their shared view that megalith building originated in France.
According to Woods, “the high concentration of megaliths on the west cost of Britain and France proves that Ireland was the fountainhead, the source of the megalithic mother culture.” The ‘logic’ here eludes me!
4.For some reason Woods thinks islands are ideal for evolution(p139), and that Cro-Magnon Man evolved in Ireland[p.103]!
5.Although Ireland was the island of Atlantis, the city of Atlantis (Cerne) was in Mauritania and is known today as the Richat Structure!
6.The Celts didn’t come to Ireland, they came from Ireland![p.99]
7.Woods makes the modest claim that the Irish visited America thousands of years before Columbus. Which may or may not be true, but what has that to do with Atlantis? [p.93]
In all, this book is not just an Hibernocentric rant. Woods also offers a lengthy diatribe against British imperialism and Vatican political interference, which, although probably justifiable, has also nothing to do with Atlantis
He introduces a range of subjects such as giants, Machu Picchu, Gobekli Tepe and the Garden of Eden, all with Woods’ imagined connection with ancient Ireland!
Apart all the nonsense about ancient Ireland, he barely touches on Plato’s dialogues, except to rubbish his narrative with “It’s clear that Plato’s legend is useful but unreliable, that it combined two separate related places, a lot of exaggeration and several historical errors.”[p.13] and twice patronisingly refers to Plato’s account as “useful but unreliable.”[p.50]
Woods did quote from Ulf Erlingsson, who made a more valliant attempt to link Ireland with Atlantis some years. Erlingsson matched the dimensions of 2000 x 3000 stadia (340 x 227 miles) given by Plato with the diagonal dimensions of Ireland [319.16]. Unfortunately, Erlingsson got it very wrong and Woods copied his error. Plato’s figures were the dimensions of the Plain of Atlantis, while the Central Plain of Ireland is just a fraction of its size(c), being very roughly 150 x 100 miles in extent. Now, who’s unreliable?
At which point, I could take no more and gave up.
Megalithic Yard, The
The Megalithic Yard is a controversial unit of measurement originally proposed by Alexander Thom following a study of hundreds of megalithic sites in Britain and Brittany. Very many attempts have been made to verify his conclusions but to no avail. Wikipedia(d) offers an interesting overview of the wide-ranging theories that the controversy has thrown up.
Humans have used their body parts as measuring tools right up to the present day, e.g. foot, finger or hand, so it was not surprising that the human pace provided a unit of measurement that has been suggested by many as the original megalithic ‘yard’.
Paul Screeton in his Quicksilver Heritage [1882.48] noted that “the first person to write on prehistoric standard distances was Edward Milles Nelson (1851-1938).” He concluded that the megalith builders used a unit of measurement of 12.96 inches.
Not unexpectedly, some researchers, such as Ulf Erlingsson(a), Sylvain Tristan(b) and Jim Allen(c) have endeavoured to link the megalithic yard with their interpretation of Plato’s Atlantis, sometimes using convoluted associations with ancient Egyptian and/or Sumerian metrics!
>>Christopher Knight and Alan Butler in Civilization One [623.48] set out to “demonstrate that the Megalithic Yard was real, being derived directly from the polar circumference of the Earth using a system of geometry that was based on the revolutions of the planet in a year”<<
There is also an ancient unit of measurement known as the ‘long foot’ of 12.7 inches (32.2 cm). In 1889, a set of small carved chalk drums were discovered near the village of Folkton in Yorkshire. In early 2019, archaeologists from the University of Manchester and University College London concluded, after a study of three of the ‘drums’, that they “could be ancient replicas of measuring devices used for laying out prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge.” They found that “a string wound 10 times around the smallest of the drums would give a measure of exactly 10 long feet — a length used to lay out several ancient henge monuments“(e). A similarly engraved fourth drum was discovered in 2015 in Burton Agnes, also in Yorkshire(g) and is thought to be 5,000 years old.
Douglas C. Heggie [1837], an astronomer and mathematician as well as the late Aubrey Burl (1926-2020) [1838], arguably the leading authority on British stone circles, have both expressed the view that Thom’s evidence was at best ‘marginal’.(f)
The Academia.edu website has a 2020 paper by Robert Carl that reexamines some key arguments concerning the validity of the Megalithic Yard’s existence and some of the specific critiques that have been aimed at it(h).
(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20200217205938/http://spcov.free.fr/site_nicoulaud/en/article.php
(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20190730190157/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/elcastillocubits.htm
(d) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalithic_Yard
(g) https://the-past.com/news/elaborately-carved-burton-agnes-chalk-drum-goes-on-display/
(h) https://www.academia.edu/43164917/A_Brief_Reconsideration_of_Alexander_Thoms_Megalithic_Yard
Hyperboreans *
The Hyperboreans in Greek mythology lived to the far north of Greece in a land called Hyperborea, which means beyond the North Wind or Boreas, which has been linked by a number of writers with the Atlanteans. Even more exotic is the claim on one loony website that the Hyperboreans were an ancient extraterrestrial race (see end)! (j)
Researchers have variously identified this land of Hyperborea with Iceland, the British Isles, and the North Sea. Like many classical references and later commentators, there is no clear consensus on a precise location. Hecataeus of Abdera, a 4th century BC Greek historian, noted that the Hyperboreans were located “in the lands of the Celts, in the ocean, (where) there is an island no smaller than Sicily.”
Diodorus Siculus described Hyperborea as a northern island with a temple to which the god returns every nineteen years. This was initially thought by many to be a reference to England’s Stonehenge, but the renowned Aubrey Burl considered Stonehenge to be 500 miles too far south and instead proposed the Hebridean island of Lewis home to the famous Callanish megalithic site, which includes the ability to record the return of the stars to the same position every nineteen years(c).
Olof Rudbeck‘s over-enthusiastic nationalism not only brought him to associate Atlantis with Sweden but also linked the writings of Homer and other classical writers with the prehistory of his homeland. This inevitably led him to declare ancient Sweden as Hyperborea. David King outlines how Rudbeck came to this conclusion [530.71].
However, Homer reportedly(h) placed Boreas in Thrace, and therefore Hyperborea, according to him, would be located north of Thrace, in Dacia, modern Romania!
Jürgen Spanuth based his Atlantis theory[0015] on an unambiguous identification of the Atlanteans with the Hyperboreans of the Baltic region, specifically nominating Jutland, part of today’s Denmark, as the land of the Hyperboreans [p.88].
The renowned Flemish cartographer, Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594), showed a large archipelago near the North Pole on one of his charts. This inclusion by him and other cartographers of the period stemmed from a now-lost book by an English Franciscan friar entitled Inventio Fortunatae (The Discovery of the Fortunate Isle).
Based on ancient maps and the work of other researchers such as Emilio Spedicato, Stuart L. Harris has proposed(e) that Hyperborea was also known as Atland to the Frisians. He further suggests that this land disappeared in 2194 BC as noted in the controversial Oera Linda Book, and that today’s Faroe Plateau topped by the Faroe Islands are its remnants.
It also appears that in the 18th century, the Russian Empress Catherine II organised an expedition in an attempt to find Hyperborea in the vicinity of the North Pole, in a pathetic attempt to discover ‘the elixir of eternal youth” allegedly invented by the Hyperboreans. She was apparently captivated by the descriptions of the classical writers who related that the Hyperboreans lived in total happiness for a thousand years.
It was reported in 2006(a) that a Russian scientist, Valery Dyemin, inspired by the work of Jean-Sylvain Bailly and William Fairfield Warren was attempting to prove the reality of Hyperborea in the Arctic region. Another Russian, Sergey Teleguin has also attributed a North Pole origin to both the Maya and the Indo-Europeans(b).
J.G. Bennett, a British philosopher, has opted for a Hyperborean origin for the Indo-European culture, a claim that has resonances with the Nazi claim that Hyperborea has been the ancestral home of the ‘master race’. He also supported the idea of an Arctic Hyperborea(i), inspired by the ideas of Bal Gangadar Tilak, although at the same time, he was critical of Warren’s reasoning.
Luciano Chiereghin, who promotes the idea of Atlantis being situated in Italy’s Po Valley, also claims that the same river valley and its plain were also previously known as Hyperborea! The authors of The Three Ages of Atlantis, Marin, Minella and Schievenin, also refer to “the Hyperboreans of the Po Valley” [972.181].
Wikipedia includes some of the more bizarre ideas regarding Hyperborea(h).
“Robert Charroux first related the Hyperboreans to an ancient astronaut race of “reputedly very large, very white people” who had chosen “the least warm area on the earth because it corresponded more closely to their own climate on the planet from which they originated” [766.29]. Miguel Serrano was influenced by Charroux’s writings regarding the Hyperboreans.”
An extensive internet article outlines the mythology associated with Hyperborea and recent efforts to determine its location(d). The Theoi.com website(g) offers a list of all classical references to Hyperborea.
(a) http://english.pravda.r science/mysteries/29-11-2006/85697-paradise u/science/mysteries/29-11-2006/85697-paradise-0/
(b) https://mayanarchaeology.tripod.com/id23.html
(c) A Hyperborean Temple? The Stone Circles of Callanish | Humans Are Free (archive.org) *
(d) Mysterious Hyperborea | Earth Chronicles News (archive.org)
(e) https://www.academia.edu/36044603/Identification_of_Hyperborea_with_Atland_and_Frisland
(f) History, 3a.264. F.7.5.
(g) https://www.theoi.com/Phylos/Hyperborea.html
(h) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperborea
(i) THE HYPERBOREAN ORIGIN OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN CULTURE by J. G. Bennett from SYSTEMATICS I/3
(j) Hyperboreans: An ancient alien race that lived on Earth – Infinity Explorers
France *
France has had little mention in connection with the Atlantis mystery except by Marcel Mestadgh who was convinced that 
France was the centre of an ancient civilisation with its capital in the city of Sens. The late Philip Coppens discussed Mestdagh’s theories in two of his books[0240][1275], which in turn led to a two-part essay(f)(g) by Bruce Jeffries-Fox.
However, in the early years of the 20th century Jean-Léopold Courcelle-Seneuil, a French writer, is reported to have proposed that the Auvergne region of Central France had been associated with Atlantis.
Another mysterious feature of ancient France is centred on the town of Alaise from which it was discovered that 24 radial ley lines emanated. These were identified by Xavier Guichard (1870-1947) a former Parisian police chief(e). In 1936, he self-published the heavily illustrated Eleusis Alesia [1699] outlining his research in great detail. John Sase, in his Curious Alignments [1589], confirmed Guichard’s findings.
However, in the 1990s Emile Mourey developed a theory that saw the Atlantean ‘Empire’ covering most of western Europe and all of North Africa as far east as Egypt. He places its capital at what is now the village of Gergovie(b) in the départment of Puy-de-Dôme. This Atlantis, according to Mourey, was not destroyed but after 509 BC was known as Gaul!
Brittany, in northwestern France, is the centre of some of the most spectacular megalithic monuments in Europe. From the middle of the 20th century onwards several researchers have striven to link Atlantis with these remarkable structures. In this connection the work of Deruelle, Tristan, Helmut Tributsch and Hank Harrison must be mentioned. French ethnologist Jean-Michel Hermans has recently joined the ranks of these supporters of a megalithic Atlantis.
In February 2019, a report in the Smithsonian Magazine told us that “Bettina Schulz Paulsson, an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg, reexamined some 2,410 radiocarbon dating results that have been assigned to Europe’s megaliths and put them through Bayesian statistical analysis. Based on the picture the data present, Schulz Paulsson believes that the megaliths were first constructed by dwellers of northwest France during the second half of the fifth millennium BC.”(h) Mike Parker Pearson, the leading Stonehenge expert, has endorsed this idea of a French origin for megalith building(i) as has Aubrey Burl and more recently Robert Hensey [1766.6].
However, a note of caution has been expressed by Walter Willems in Der Spiegel, who has rightly pointed out that “there also exist megalithic structures in North Africa, as in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco. These have hardly been dated up to now and were not taken into account in the analysis.”(j) I should add that similar monuments are to be found in the Caucasus, Jordan and Korea in great numbers and at many other locations around the globe, which should be included in a broader study.
Additionally, the ever-modest Dean Clarke has written(a) of a series of extensive prehistoric floods in France that he links with the flooding of Atlantis.
Timagenus, the Greek historian, noted that there were French tribes who claimed that Atlantis had been the home of their ancestors.
Returning to the matter of Atlantis, we find that Didier Coilhac has published an extensive paper in which he claims that statuary and paintings at the Palace of Versailles held encoded details of the story of Atlantis!(k) He has applied his theory to a number of other historical buildings and monuments(l).
(a) http://atlantisite.com/francetheory.htm (link broken) *
(b) https://www.agoravox.fr/tribune-libre/article/l-epopee-des-atlantes -capitale-125152
(d) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/xavierguichard.htm
(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20171005192548/https://www.jiroolcott.com/blog/archives/7
(f) Atlantis in France 1 (archive.org)
(g) Atlantis in France 2 (archive.org)
(k) The Palace of Versailles codes Atlantis. (didiercoilhac.com) (French) (link broken)
(l) Home – Didier Coilhac (French) (link broken)
Megalith Builders
The Megalith Builders, who date mainly from the Neolithic Period, are frequently identified with Plato’s Atlanteans. Their remarkable structures were built between the middle of the fifth and second millennia B.C., a period that is compatible with the final days of Atlantis according to Plato. The building of megalithic structures in Western Europe appears to have ended just before the beginning of the Bronze Age – coincidence? Emmet Sweeney, however, contends that “the great Megalithic-building culture of Atlantic Europe and North Africa commenced around 1100 BC or perhaps a little earlier”! [700.208]
Proponents of the idea of a megalithic building in Atlantis see the location and extent of the megalithic structures as agreeing with Plato’s description, particularly his reference to Atlantis being ‘beyond the Pillars of Heracles’. However, the location of the ‘Pillars’ at the time of Solon’s visit to Egypt, is strongly disputed. In fact, the only territory unambiguously named by Plato as Atlantean was in southern Italy and North Africa along with several islands of which there are many in that region.
However, there are many features in Plato’s narrative that do not conform to our current knowledge of the megalith builders. There is no evidence that they had writing, irrigation technology or navigational skills to mount an attack on Egypt/Athens or any other characteristics ascribed to the Atlanteans by him.
On the other hand, if these attributes are just literary flesh applied to a skeleton of historical truth there is the possibility of a link between the Atlanteans and the megalith builders remaining.
Atlantis enthusiasts are quite happy to associate the megalith builders with Atlantis, as it provides something tangible to enhance the credibility of Plato’s narrative pointing to sites such as Stonehenge or the Maltese Temples. British researcher Robert John Langdon has gone further and proposed that the megalith builders originally came from Africa and settled in Doggerland at the end of the Ice Age, where they established Atlantis[919]. When Doggerland was submerged they migrated to what is now mainland Britain, where they built Stonehenge as a memorial to Atlantis.
Manuel Vega, who places Atlantis in the Atlantic has some novel ideas regarding Stonehenge as well as Ireland’s Newgrange [0868].
Megalith building in North Africa has been documented for over a century. The Hill of Graces[1566] by H.S. Cowper in 1897 concentrated on describing the megaliths in the region of Tripoli. The Mzora Stone Circle is a huge megalithic monument in Morocco and is considered to be the largest stone ellipse in the world. Further east the stone circle of Nabta Playa in Egypt had its importance further highlighted in a 2010 book by Robert Bauval & Thomas G. Brophy, Black Genesis[1508]. A 2012 illustrated paper reviews the range of megalithic monuments found across North Africa(af).
We must, of course, not omit the greatest megalithic monuments of all, namely, the Egyptian pyramids and particularly those at Giza. The apparent sophistication of their builders was greatly enhanced by the introduction of the Orion Correlation Theory (OCT) by Robert Bauval.
In a paper(at) published on Graham Hancock’s website in 2022, Freddy Silva proposed an additional OCT – in Scotland. He suggested that the Pyramids of Giza, and by extension, Orion’s Belt matched the layout of the three stone circles of Stenness, Brodgar and Bookan. In the same paper, he goes further identifying other megalithic monuments in Scotland with counterparts in Sardinia and Armenia! OCT is not without critics.
The megaliths of North Africa are not the only monuments to adorn that continent Atlantisforschung drew my attention to a number of short articles by William Corliss (al)(am)(an) highlighting what has become known as the Senegambian Complex and are now a UNESCO World Heritage site(ak).
Paul Dunbavin in his Atlantis of the West [0099] and Towers of Atlantis [1627] promotes the idea of a megalithic Atlantis centred off the coast of Wales in what is now the Irish Sea. In 2022 Dunbavin recorded(ao) that “In a review of the “Pathways to the Cosmos” conference held at Dublin Castle in September 2018, Liz Henty makes some perhaps surprising comments. She notes that this is the first such conference where archaeologists and archaeoastronomers have combined to broadly agree that some Neolithic monuments in Britain and Ireland were astronomically aligned(ap).
While not a new idea, a megalithic connection with Atlantis has recently been given further attention by the French writer Sylvain Tristan who was inspired by Jean Deruelle and Alan Butler. More recently, Jean-Michel Hermans, a French ethnologist, also added support for a megalithic Atlantis. Alfred deGrazia also joined this club as well as the German author Helmut Tributsch who has added his support to the idea of a megalithic Atlantis, specifically locating its capital on the island of Gavrinis in Brittany. A similar claim has been made by Hank Harrison, who also believes that the Morbihan region was an important Atlantean centre if not the location of its capital. Further support for a megalithic Atlantis has been given by Walter Schilling who places Plato’s city in the Bay of Cadiz. Robert Temple has recently offered grudging support for the concept of Atlantean megalith builders(ac).
Iberia is also home to very many megalithic structures of varying types. Recently, lower waters in a Spanish reservoir revealed once more the impressive 144-stone Dolmen-de-Guadalperal, situated roughly halfway between Madrid and the Portuguese border(z). Efforts are being made to ensure its preservation before the water levels rise again.
The most recent (2022) attempt at linking the megalith builders with Atlanteans has come from a disappointing book by Thomas Sheridan and Neil McDonald [2070], in which their starting point is the magnificent megalithic remains found in the Orkneys that are situated just north of the Scottish mainland.
As far as I am aware classical writers make no obvious reference to the megalith builders, nor has this omission been commented on by modern writers. However, the numerous indirect references to Atlantis by the same ancient writers are deemed inadequate, which seems consistent with a dearth of information regarding early history.
It appears to me that other questions that have not been definitively answered relate to the identity of the megalith builders, why they stopped building and what happened to them. Another thought is that if the megalith builders lived at the same time as the Atlanteans, is it not strange that both disappeared around the same time or did they? My opinion is that we are probably confronted with two unrelated mysteries – the disappearance of the megalith builders and the demise of Atlantis.
Parallel with the megaliths of the eastern Atlantic seaboard are the megaliths of North America(ab), particularly those of New England(ag). Who built them and when? Are they evidence of very early pre-Columbian voyagers from Europe?(b) Nobody seems to have put forward the idea that megalith building might have spread from America to Europe! Is it such a wild suggestion?
Johnni Langer has published a lengthy paper on the prehistoric megaliths of South America and in particular Brazil. Generally speaking references to South American megaliths focus on Tiwanaku or Cuzco, considered to be relatively recent. However, Langer’s article has drawn attention to structures further afield in Brazil that suggest astronomical alignments(ar). Brazil continues to reveal more megalithic structures, unfortunately, in some cases only because of deforestation(au). The Brazilian discoveries have only added to the who and when questions relating to megaliths generally and whether there is any possible connection between the megalith builders and Atlantis.
A 2024 report has drawn attention to a stone circle in Peru. Although it has been known for over 60 years, it was only systematically studied from 2015. It has been dated as 4,700 years old at a location known as Callacpuma(aw).
An interesting article combining all the strange aspects of megalith building can be read online(c) which certainly offers food for thought. A paper(d) published in September 2013 gives a good overview of megalithic studies during the past few decades. Walter Haug’s well-illustrated website(k) offers a range of previously ignored megalithic sites in Germany.
Much nonsense has been written about the megalith builders, particularly on the Internet, where you find daft ideas such as attributing their construction to aliens(a). The suggestion that extraterrestrials had the technology to travel in space but when they land on earth they have to build observatories with stone is just silly. Why would they even need such crude observatories if they had the technology and astronomical knowledge to travel across the cosmos?
A valuable website dealing with the global spread of megalithic monuments is The Megalithic Portal established by Andy Burnham(g), which has regular updates. Other useful sites are Stone Pages(h) and Megalithic Ireland(i). Another site worth a look at is that of Sjur C. Papazian(l). There is also a site(j) dealing specifically with the dolmens of Corsica and Sardinia.
In the Middle East dolmens stretch in a line from the Caucasus(s)(p) to Yemen with a remarkable concentration of them in modern Jordan(m), a fact which prompted a former Dutch ambassador to Jordan, Gajus Scheltema, to write Megalithic Jordan[1206]. Jordan is also home to an ancient mysterious 150 km wall, which was 1-1.5 metres high(u).
Dolmens are also found in more distant lands such as India(r), Korea(n)(v) and Japan(o). It is difficult to look at the worldwide distribution of dolmens and not consider the possibility of some form of global cultural diffusion! Rarely discussed are the widely dispersed megalithic remains found throughout the Pacific islands(q).
A remarkable theory is presented by John M Jensen Jr to explain the function of dolmens throughout the globe, namely that they were constructed to protect from attacks by dinosaurs! This suggestion is part of a paper that claims that humans and dinosaurs co-existed(ad).
Another unusual claim comes from Yair Davidiy, a Brit-Am promoter, who wrote on their website – “Dolmens and Megalithic Monuments originated in Ancient Israel. Jeremiah 31:21 says that the Lost Ten Tribes will construct a trail of Megalithic Monuments from Israel to their places of exile and evidence of this path will enable them to return. Such a trail exists! It is the Trail of the Dolmens from the Middle East to the West.”(ae) As far as I’m aware Davidy has not explained the huge numbers of dolmens in places such as Korea and Japan! Professor W.A. Liebenberg has written a longer piece(aq) on the ‘Lost Tribes’ as the builders of the megaliths. However, since the megalithic building period is generally accepted to have lasted from around 4000 BC until 1500 BC, this created a problem for Davidy and Liebenberg. The disappearance of the Lost Tribes is dated to around 700 BC leading to their dispersal and proposed megalith building as they travelled. D & L include Newgrange (3200 BC) among their monuments and that is where their difficulties begin. Both claim that before 700 BC the year was 360 days in length (after Velikovsky [037.128]) rather than our present 365 days. They argue that if Newgrange (among other monuments) had been built when we had a 360-day year the sun would not still light up the interior at the winter solstice. Therefore, they conclude that most megaliths were erected AFTER 700 BC! An alternative conclusion is that the idea of a 360-day year is flawed and that a date BEFORE 700 BC must be correct!
There is a well-illustrated website offering an overview of the megalithic culture of Western Europe and the Mediterranean(t).
In February 2019 the Smithsonian Magazine had a report telling us that “Bettina Schulz Paulsson, an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg, reexamined some 2,410 radiocarbon dating results that have been assigned to Europe’s megaliths and put them through a Bayesian statistical analysis. Based on the picture the data presents, Schulz Paulsson believes that the megaliths were first constructed by dwellers of northwest France during the second half of the fifth millennium BC.” (w)
Some years ago, the renowned English archaeologist, Aubrey Burl, concluded after twenty years of study that French immigrants had built Stonehenge(aa). More recently, Mike Parker Pearson, a leading Stonehenge expert, has also endorsed this idea of a French origin for megalith building(x).
Archaeologist, Robert Hensey in his insightful First Light [1766.9] has also noted that “Construction of Breton passage tombs is likely to have ended by 3900 BC, almost certainly by 3800 BC, and the most recent evidence from Ireland suggests that passage tomb construction had not yet begun on this island by that time.”
Archaeologist Ashleigh Murzewski published a 2012 paper (av) on the significance of megalithic monuments in Atlamtis Europe and noted that “the construction of megalithic monuments in Atlantic Europe are not restricted to a single purpose, nor how they reflect one aspect of the community that built them.”
Jean-Michel Hermans contends that the megalith builders of Brittany had originated in the Caucasus and after a sojourn in what is now Bulgaria moved to Brittany after 5000 BC(aj).
Antequera is a city in Spain’s region of Andalucia. It is home to three megalithic structures (1) the “Dolmen de Menga”, (2)the “Dolmen de Viera” and (3) the “Tholos de Romeral” of which de Menga has been described as the largest and heaviest in Spain. They are collectively designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and described by that organisation as “These three tombs, buried beneath their original earth tumuli, are one of the most remarkable architectural works of European prehistory and one of the most important examples of European Megalithism.” The limited carbon dating that has been carried out would seem to indicate that construction took place sometime in the fourth millennium BC. Richard Cassaro has visited the site and posted an interesting report with many illustrations(ai).
The interesting claims of Schulz Paulsson, who places the origins of megalithic construction in Brittany in the fifth millennium BC, may be challenged by a little-known counterclaim that tombs in the Ox Mountains in the west of Ireland have been dated to the seventh millennium BC(y). However, my personal view is that it would be more likely that the practice of megalith building would have spread from the east or south rather than from Ireland westward!
A number of megalithic sites situated around the world are reviewed on the illustrated megalithic builders website. Contributions from popular writers, such as Hancock, Bauval and Schoch are included(ah).
A rational explanation for the construction of cyclopean masonry has been offered by Professor of Architecture Jean-Pierre Protzen and demonstrated on a YouTube clip(f).
(a) Unexplained Mysteries around the world (archive.org)
(b) https://web.archive.org/web/20171105055925/http://planetvermont.com/pvq/v9n2/megaliths.html
(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20140625091115/http:/www.bibleufo.com/ancconstmono.htm
(d) https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.ie/2013/09/whats-significance-of-megalithic.html
(e) https://www.paranormalpeopleonline.com/cyclopean-masonry-a-mystery-of-the-ancient-world/
(f) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkze3WUvHz4
(g) https://www.megalithic.co.uk/
(h) https://www.stonepages.com/about_us.html
(i) https://www.megalithicireland.com/
(j) http://www.museodeidolmen.it/englishdefault.html
(l) https://aratta.wordpress.com/megalith-culture/
(m) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20161113074338/https://www.jordan-solidarity.org/74+special-dolmens.html
(p) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmens_of_North_Caucasus
(q) https://davidpratt.info/easter1.htm (section 10)
(r) Megalithic tombs in Tadvai forests of Telangana (archive.org) *
(s) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/25000-year-old-buildings-found-russia-006215
(t) https://aratta.wordpress.com/megalith-culture/
(v) Dolmens of Ancient Korea – Ancient History Encyclopedia (archive.org)
(y) https://www.newgrange.com/european-megalithic.htm
(z) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/dolmen-de-guadalperal-0012487
(aa) https://archive.archaeology.org/9707/newsbriefs/stonehenge.html
(ab) Megaliths in America | Stonestrider (archive.org)
(ac) Uncovering the lost ‘Stonehenge’ of Spain – BBC Reel
(ad) https://www.academia.edu/11703016/Earth_Epochs_Overview
(ae) https://www.britam.org/Proof/Attributes/roleDolmen.html
(af) https://www.academia.edu/6584373/Megalithism_and_monumentality_in_prehistoric_North_Africa
(ag) The Mysterious Megaliths of New England (archive.org)
(ah) Megalithic Builders – index of ancient megalithic sites from around the world (archive.org)
(aj) Amazon.fr
(ak) https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1226/
(al) http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf004/sf004p01.htm
(am) http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf018/sf018p01.htm
(an) http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf021/sf021p01.htm
(ao) e5604c_e9edea4f2c6f4777ae3928593180a77a.pdf (third-millennium.co.uk)
(as) Discovered: The birthplace of Europe’s ancient megaliths – Big Think
(at) Scotland’s Hidden Sacred Past – Graham Hancock Official Website
(av) Significance of Megalithic Monuments in Atlantic Europe? (heritagedaily.com)