OK -- own up to it. You have always wanted to be a film star, playing the part of a little hairy man sweating away in a curragh, or on a raft, trying to deliver a lump of bluestone from one side of the Bristol Channel to the other. Well, this is your lucky day! A friend has just sent me this.....
Darlow Smithson make big spectacular films for the Discovery Channel -- and when you are in that business there is, I imagine, no room for doubt as to the rightness of your theories. So, having decided that our Neolithic ancestors were a pretty smart bunch, the film makers are now going to find out how it was all done. No harm in that -- I'm all in favour of experimental archaeology, having done a bit of stone-pulling myself, back in the year 2000.
Speaking for myself, I would prefer to ask "Was it all done?" and sort that out first, before asking "How was it done?" But I understand that archaeologists -- and maybe film-makers -- come from a different direction. None of them wants to spoil a good story.
Start your training regimes now, folks.... a beard and a tan will probably help too.
----------------------------------------
How were stones weighing up to 45 Tons moved to form Stonehenge in a time before the wheel was invented?
How were some of the stones transported 150 miles across water?
In August an ambitious, unique project will take place in the UK to try to find out.
AND WE NEED YOUR HELP
The Discovery Channel is making a documentary to test theories about the construction of Stonehenge. We are looking for experienced rowers to help recreate the journey that some of the stones took – over 150 miles by sea – from Wales to Wiltshire.
We need rowers who can be in the UK in August this year.
You need to be fit, healthy and prepared to face a massive challenge!
To find out more about the project email:
Stonehenge@darlowsmithson.com
Or call 020 7482 9674
www.darlowsmithson.com
===============================================
Here is the info sent out to prospective paddlers:
Hello,
Thank you very much for your email about our Stonehenge boat project. Please be assured that we have registered your interest and logged your contact details. If you didn’t send us a telephone number in your original email (and are willing to) please send that by return. It is also helpful for us to know what relevant experience you have.
We are attempting to test archaeologists’ theories about how bluestones weighing between 2 and 4 Tonnes might have been transported from the Preseli hills to Stonehenge around 2500BC. The project will be filmed to make a one hour long documentary for the Discovery Channel that will be broadcast towards the end of this year.
At the moment a replica Neolithic boat is being built and we plan to launch it in early August. There will not be a sail on the boat and it will have to be paddled using the tides and currents and steered with a steering oar. Support vessels will accompany the boat throughout its journey.
Ideally we are looking for a minimum commitment of one week from each of the paddlers but there will be some flexibility about this. We will provide food and basic accommodation during the journey but are asking people to volunteer their time.
Previous attempts to recreate the bluestones’ journey have not been successful and there is no doubt that this will be a very tough challenge, physically and mentally. We also hope it will be good fun but please seriously consider if it’s something you want to commit to.
We will be in touch again with full details as soon as we have definite dates for the voyage to see if you’re still interested and available.
Thanks again for your email.
Best wishes
Lynda
Darlow Smithson Productions
Shepherds Building Central | Charecroft Way | London | W14 0EE
T: +44 (0)20 7482 7027 | www.darlowsmithson.com
60 comments:
Hope all the Volunteers will be sturdy swimmers! Ben Fogle, of BBC TV fame, might just be fit enough to endure the consequences of this 'Quest', as he intends to swim the Atlantic by all accounts, and has taken on other ripping intrepid causes. And then there's always David Walliams, who withstood the polluted English Channel crossing and thr River Thames.............what about Sir Tom Jones, he possesses the tan AND the beard, and seems to like a raised profile, celebrity-wise. Lemmings need NOT apply.
Good idea lets get lots of people with no idea how to transport stones and film them sinking - great dumb down TV.
I think if they were serious you would ask these guys who could do it blind folded:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27987936@N07/3239238358/
this one has about 12 tonnes of stone on a single boat:
http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Commerce/1988-trans-40.html
Its not rocket science!!
RJL
Nice pictures, Robert. Relevance?
Brian
I thought you would like to see how easy it is for a boat to carry heavy stones.
Sorry no idiotic academics students to topple over the stones - so you can say 'I told you so'.
RJL
You really do have a problem with academics, don't you, Robert? Not sure why. have they been nasty to you? In my experience, most academics are perfectly nice people, and some of them can even row a boat without falling over.
Remind me again what the press call July August and September the ..... season.
What a pity the jubolympics will in London they could have had a torch clutched by some archie(long list supplied of possibles on application,please specify amateur or professional) at the helm shouting "see I am right".
I note the size of the bluestones goes down 2- 4 tonnes.
Italian jade axes <2kg and bluestone orthostats >3tonnes in a boat.... hardly comparable.
I await the water and Stuart Hall
giving his breathless views -sadly no 'big girls' seem to have been invited to row.
This has sooooooo cheered me up.
M
Talking of Stuart Hall, Myris, I particularly liked his nickname for John Humphries in a recent 'Today Programme' interview, which was:-
"Humph"!!
Hmmm.....
How to burst a Welshman's rather inflated balloon!! And it's quite a nice nickname, which can be seen to have been passed on, like an Olympic relay baton, from the late Humphrie Littleton to JH.
Ah there must be a special Jubolympics "Stonehenge" edition of Mornington Crescent,
Sadly no Humph to act as judge and hanging-stone jury.
May I start with the classical Grimme opening of .....Steepholme.
Follow that boys..
M
I see that our Neolithic craft has what appears to be rowlocks. So how would they have been constructed pre-Bronze and Iron Ages? Assuming they were not some simple gate mechanism, i.e. a gap between two pegs with lots of rattling and friction, then maybe there was a more sophisticated construction, using,say, a dowel in socket. (Am not sure how the socket could have been made without a drill, or even a red hot poker).
It was thinking about dowels in sockets that got me thinking yet again about the transport of those bluestones, a topic on which I still try to keep an open mind. If Neolithic folk could make dowel-in-socket joints, then is there not a means of transporting those stones on rollers? In other words one creates a flat bed of rollers, like the ones at airport security, each supported and turning on a dowel-in-socket at each end. One has, say 40 or so slim pine trunks (rollers) spaced a foot apart. One lifts the bluestone onto the flat bed, tows it to the opposite end, and then brings up an identical flatbed to do the next 40 feet, then bringing up the original flatbed (in other words a development of the rolling log system that must have preceded the wheel).
Such a system might well have been able to cope with marshy ground, provided not too deep, simply by placing one's flatbed sections on a wide wooden raft and relying on buoyancy to prevent the entire shebang from sinking into mud.
Apologies if this idea has previously been discussed - and rejected...
Sciencebod
I know Brian will find this revolutionary and will dismiss it as fantasy - as he did the last suggested it but look here...
http://youtu.be/ASQywH1DF6U
They just picked them up and walk with them - if you use oars you should understand the principle of levers and mechanical advantage (see my web site for details).
The simplest solution are always the most probable. Sorry to kill the innovation.
RJL
HI Sciencebod, nice to see you back.
Everybody agrees the stones would have had to be transported manually for some distance but nobody knows how. My favorite theories would be the A-frame described by Phil on this blog (search A-frame), or the Cunningham theory "Walk like an Egyptian" linked recently by Robert on his blog post "The Ultimate Civilization". However, in the case of Cunningham I am puzzled why his article in Nature in 1988 seems to have died an academic death - perhaps I am missing something. Flat beds of rollers are perhaps feasible but would be more complicated than the other alternatives or even a simple sled.
In all cases the main problem is the terrain. For overland transport you would need a path, maybe only a few metres wide but at a time that Britain was well forested. In any case it would have involved enormous time and effort and why do it?
- I have not seen that the Prescelli stones have sufficiently special qualities.
- The "civilization" in Prescelli was several times more primitive that in Wiltshire so what were they, whoever they were, trying to prove?
For several reasons I think Brian is right that glaciation is the most plausible transport theory.
Look forward to your ideas.
From what I can gather, the craft will be a planked boat based on the Ferriby design. It won't be a big curragh like the one in the photo. That means holes in the planking, and stitching. Possible in the Neolithic?
Hello Chris
There is much food for thought in your comment, and I shall certainly read up on A-frames and the like.
My own gut feeling is that something extraordinary was invented to transport those standing stones, and I don't just mean tjose fabled bluestones from west Wales that somehow missed the Brian's glacial bus so to speak. Getting the even more massive sarsens from the Marlborough Downs was a feat in itself, assuming they too were not glacial erratics littering Salisbury Plain.
You see, while it's understandable that one should think in terms of simple technology - like a sled say - the physics are against one. One is up against the problem of weight and friction when there are no wheels.
Even a flat bed of static non-rotating tree trunks is better than ground contact, if only that contact between sarsen/bluestone and timber is then restricted to the points of contact on a cylinder - the latter having a relatively small surface area. It is then relatively simple matter to keep those small areas of contact lubricated, e.g. with beef tallow or pig fat.
But it occurs to me since writing my previous comment that the logs could be made to roll without needing a complicated axle arrangement. Simply by having logs rest in a V-shaped notch that was also well lubricated might also allow for some rolling as the sarsen passed over. The tendency to roll could be greater if the ends of the trunks that sit in the notch were stripped of bark - to make as smooth as possible - while keeping the bark on the main span of trunk to maximise friction between rock and timber.
The inevitable objection to any fancy technology would be that the technology has left no trace ("why not?"). But that is perhaps not surprising, if the task of moving monoliths had been a once-only operation, and given that the wheel came along at some point in the Bronze Age making any cumbersome technology based on logs seem old hat.
Brian
What have I done now?
When I put a link to 'walk like an Egyptian' you block it, when Chris repeats the link you allow it?
Are your feeling insecure in your old age? Censorship of sensible and relevant information is a device for people who have things to hide!
RJL
@Brian. For stitching look at Oetzi's bear skin hat. Question is more whether they WOULD have done it - cost benefit - not whether they COULD have done it.
@sciencebod. Plausible explanation is that Sarsens were closer to Stonehenge than Marlborough downs. Still they would have had to be moved 10 metres or more and erected.
I think the exact method is a second-order issue, but then I am not a mechanical engineer. When you can move a many ton weight for 10 metres, then you can move it 100 kilometers should the spirit be willing.
Mechanical efficiency is a modern obsession - when you have enough volunteers or pressed men then it becomes a second or third order problem. Did the owners of a Roman lead mine worry overmuch about efficiency? I am glad someone worries about exactly which fat to use as lubrication or how to trim the logs but it would not have been me even in a former life.
Don't get upset, Robert. I haven't blocked anything. I have been out at a meeting this morning, and have another this afternoon -- just waiting to find the time to look at the video. Don't get your knickers in a twist.
I thought we had given up on this old idea that the sarsens came from the Marlborough Downs? Even EH now seems to be accepting that they were probably collected up in the immediate vicinity of Stonehenge?
Sure. Chris, there's a lot that can be achieved by pure manpower, with little if any attention to art or science. But if one sees evidence for the latter in other respects, then it's a mistake, is it not, to imagine that everything was done by brute force? Take the jointing of the lintels to the uprights. There one sees a high level of attention to detail, combined with a belt-and-braces approach to safety - using both a tenon and mortice AND a tongue-in- groove joint, treating hard silicified sandstone rock almost as though it were soft deal for the sawing and chiselling thereof in a school woodwork class. So why go to all that trouble? Most folk, myself included, would surely have imagined that gravity alone would have been enough to stabilise a trilithon structure.
I've been puzzling those meticulously-prepared joints for some time, and think I may have an explanation - something else for my new specialist Stonehenge/Silbury site - which will get its first proper post in a day or two (having so far got no further than the "Hello World" stage).
I'd be interested to hear other folk's explanations for the woodworking joints - but any suggestions that our Neolithic ancestors were preoccupied with Elf 'n' Safety considerations will be studiously ignored...
Looked at that fine video, Robert. Er, what is that supposed to prove?
Apols RJL - I failed to spot your earlier comment with the video link.
The stretcher idea looks admirably simple - but is I believe simply not up to the task where Stonehenge is concerned. Even with some 2 dozen or so lifting handles, the structure snapped when they tried lifting just 3000 pounds, which is less than a third of a bluestone - never mind a sarsen.
Why lift when one can slide? I was forgetting earlier that the sled system runs on rails - the latter making it a whole lot more feasible, at least when there is a reasonable firm and level surface. Rough countryside might be another matter.
However, my money is not on sleds, but on logs laid like sleepers between tracks, engaging into slots to keep them in place and thus providing a surface along which the boulders can be slid and towed (without needing to waste energy in supporting their weight once lifted onto the track).
Someone is bound to point out that frictional force is independent of area of contact, but I remember at least that bit of my school physics. Keeping the area of contact small does not reduce friction, but does make for easier, quicker more economical lubrication - it being the latter which is the clincher. Sliding along a lubricated surface makes a lot more sense if you ask me than stretchering for mile after mile.
I don't know about you, but I was puzzled initially by the claim that accompanied the video that the stretcher provided a mechanical advantage. I can only suppose that it's something to do with the flexing of the handles - one is having to input some work initially into flexing the handles before the load is elevated, thus allowing a smaller force to operate over a larger distance (reminiscent of a lever).
Sciencebod
If it required 20 men you may have a case.
But the 'megalithic builders' were Cro-magnon's and this species was twice the size of a 'student' - consequently it will need only 8 to lift a 4 tonne weight using Cunningham's mechanical advantage.
This would allow speeds of up to 6 - 8 mph which is much quicker than dragging and could be done over all terrains.
RJL
Crikey! Those Cro-Magnons were some fellas! Only 8 of them needed to just pick up a 4 tonne bluestone and to carry it across country, regardless of terrain, travelling at a steady trot. Who needed wheels, sledges, rollers, boats and so forth when the world was populated by such super-heroes! I am truly gob-smacked in admiration......
PS Was Superman a Cro-Magnon? He surely must have been.
Cro-Magnons would surely have disappeared long before Stonehenge was constructed, RJL. They are reckoned to have been an early form of Homo sapiens who co-existed after a fashion with Neanderthals 40,000 years ago (not 4000-5000).
A sceptic - excellent!
The reminisce of Cro-magnon's are found throughout history since the first 6' skeleton was discovered in a rock shelter at Les Eyzies, Dordogne, France.
The most famous (a part from Goliath) is Emperor Maximinus who was reported to be eight foot tall.
Whether these stories are exaggeration is open to interpretation, but clearly Cro-Magnon's were taller and stronger than Homo Sapiens and the strongest Homo Sapien today can 'dead lift' 460.4kg.
A bluestone weight is 4000kg - if we divide by 8 that's 500kg each minus the mechanical advantage of the poles that act like levers.
The reality is just 6 Cro-Magnons could lift and move a Bluestone - but for longer distances, eight would do it with ease.
Not exactly rocket science!!
RJL
Sciencebod -- you must appreciate that in Robert's world time, sea level and human evolution (not to mention the operation of physical processes) are governed by a different set of rules. It's a sort of parallel universe in which anything is possible.... but he does give us some wonderful images to cherish.
You don't suppose, do you Brian, that Obelix, he of Asterix comic book fame, with the trademark menhir slung across his back, was the last of RJL's throwback Cro-Magnons?
Good thinking, that man! that is what progress is all about -- seeing connections where others do not.
Trotting, Brian? I doubt it. The food would have been moving at six miles per day according to Shirley Toulson and Caroline Forbes - pigs, you understand.
Any mechanical system that could keep pace with the larder would have been sufficient.
Historical postcedent - droving. Cost-benefit of moving pigs from Wales to England well established in the historical record. Smile :)
No no -- Robert is quite insistent that his heroic Cro-Magnon stone carriers could move at 6-8 mph. A good walking pace is 4 mph, so 8 mph (in good conditions) is a pretty steady trot. Just do the mathematics -- these sturdy fellows could have trotted a stone from Preseli to Stonehenge in just a couple of days (allowing time for sleep at night, enabling them to have a quick barbie and then to trot back home immediately to fetch another one. What are we talking about here? The transport of at least one stone a week per trotting gang? All is explained. I am amazed.
Old men like you Brian walk at 4mph, us somewhat younger and fitter walk at 6 mph - someone over 6' 3" with long legs 8 mph.
Green berets in full kit (and somewhat smaller than Cro-Magnon's) 9-10 mph.
And the quote " in Robert's world time, sea level and human evolution" gives you no credit to distraught the facts about ground water - as you have now admitted, you did not study hydrology.
RJL
I am mortally offended! I may be 71, but I can still get from the house to the top of Carningli in 34 mins, leaving most people trailing in my wake.....be that as it may, 4 mph is still regarded as steady normal walking pace.
And by the way,I have given enough lectures on fluvial geomorphology in my time to know a bit about rivers, sea levels and water tables.
Mmm. Just do the mathematics. Robert's heroes would have reached Stonehenge in a single day, being somewhat stronger than a Green Beret. Thereby avoiding the need for their Welsh Blacks to keep up (eat on arrival) and being much faster than those poor sods who were trying to row the boat up the Bristol Channel.
Glad we solved this one before the boat pageant starts on telly.
Chris
Although mathematically true, this species had larger brains than us, so they would go for the boat route - carrying the stones to and from the boats that lay on the higher water levels of the Mesolithic.
Brian will give you details of the 'Holocene Evolution' Jane Sidell et al 2000 as he's the expert on Hydrology.
Too many sabre toothed tigers in the bushes to risk carrying such a weight, over distance.
RJL
This gets more exciting by the minute. What about all those hungry pterodactyls swooping down on those poor unsuspecting stone trotters?
It would appear that when you live in a Mesolithic time warp, your stone carriers are able to move at warp speed...
Sorry Sciencebod missed your erroneous comment from Thursday.
"Cro-Magnons would surely have disappeared long before Stonehenge was constructed, RJL. They are reckoned to have been an early form of Homo sapiens who co-existed after a fashion with Neanderthals 40,000 years ago (not 4000-5000)."
Cro-magnon never disappeared - that was something believed some 20 years ago (Old Science Bod) - 60% British (80% in Ireland) have Cro-magnon DNA (Haplogroup). That's why is now politically correct to call them 'modern man'.
Victorians found hundreds of them (heads only as they were disarticulated) in Barrows and called them 'long skulls'.
RJL
RJL , "Cro-magnon never disappeared - that was something believed some 20 years ago (Old Science Bod) - 60% British (80% in Ireland) have Cro-magnon DNA (Haplogroup)."
What haplogroup ?
Yup, percentage DNA correspondence does not mean a lot, given the conservatism in DNA sequences in the course of evolution. (We and chimps share 99% of our coding DNA sequences).
Guys
I didn't make this up - its not my research!!
If you 'scientists' think better than the geneticists then that's your problem not mine. You spend so much time trying to prove me wrong, you forget that I base my hypothesis on scientific fact not speculation.
Haplogroup R1b (M343)
/genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html?card=my050
NB. Did you know you both share 50% of your DNA with a Banana (no surprise there really!) as 95% of DNA has no useful purpose or is still unknown.
RJL
"......I base my hypothesis on scientific fact..." We all say that, don't we. It's an easy phrase to trot out. the trouble is not "the science" itself, but the manner in which it is understood / misunderstood or cited / mis-cited. How many times have I heard people claiming that they are quoting"the science" when they are doing nothing of the sort, but just selectively quoting a little bit of some paper or other simply because that little bit of it happens to suit their hypothesis?
RJL ,it's an imprecise science that is changing quite quickly but is no longer considered that Cro magnons belonged to haplotypes R1b .For the past four years at least haplotype I and IJ have been seen seen as more likely . The main reasons are phylogenetic and the obvious one that R1b is only 26,000 years old and Cro -Magnons are another 15-20 years older than that .
Geo
You better write to national geographic and tell them that their wrong - I'm sure they will appreciate it !!
Don't forget wiki from our previous conversation (constellations in caves) - I've just checked and its not changed either?
It seems everyone is wrong but you?
RJL
Mr Langdon
READ the primary literature. National Geographic is at best tertiary.
I dread the day the Reader's Digest version of this debate is aired in all seriousness and weighed against Nature/Science.
Its use (RD not Nature)within a post-apocalyptic ironical context is, however,then fine.
M
M. Can you recommend some primary sources on this?
I have been browsing since I read Oppenheimer's book "The Origins of the British" but get increasingly confused the more I try and decode the expert opinions. Actually the experts seem so divided about the small amounts of evidence that a ferocious debate appears to be taking place. Plenty of grey areas for Robert to advance a new theory about 8 foot tall Atlanteans.
In my area there is an active group of serious people digging into dna. In their opinion, r1b m343 is closely linked to the farmers. These guys have progressed beyond Reader's Digest so I take their collective views fairly seriously. Anyway, M, interested to hear your view even if it is not your speciality.
RJL , No, not everyone is wrong but you generally are . As M says and as you have often been told , read the literature . Interesting you didn’t actually respond or attempt to refute the content of the comments .
No because I know nothing about this I have no views and would not be so foolish as to pretend I did.
Experts pontificating outside of their field(s) of knowledge are a total nightmare and should be racked until they recant. Ditto but with flaming extras go for amateurs using third hand sources- as we often see here.
I took vertebrate palaeo as a final year special option in 1969 and answered a question on human evolution in finals but that was the last time I could claim any knowledge and it was pretty slight.
I suspect all that I was taught then has been proven to be wrong-certainly all the Northwest European Prehistory I was taught (by a guy obsessed with Bronze Age metal work and putting his slides upside down) has left me with nothing but a few place names and a love of Wessex II and a determination to have my name co-joined with SH.
M.
RJL ,Here is a wiki that is up to date with little speculation . Note the changes over the last few years and also the lack of any mention of Cro -magnon ..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_%28Y-DNA%29#cite_note-12 .
Geo
Cro-magnons are refereed to as 'modern man' in publications as anthropologists now accept we are the same species (as 60% to 80% of us have the same haplogroup and marker M343) including probably Brian if he's Welsh.
However, what no-one has explained to date is why they were taller, stronger and lived longer than Neolithic Man, Bronze Age Man, Iron Age Man and even The Romans.
Back to the point of the blog!! - I'm glad everyone now accepts they pick up the stones and walk them to the site!!
RJL
RJL , the percentages you mention are in relation to the haplogroup R1b not Cro Magnons . Did you not understand the Wiki entry ?. You are similarly mistaken about what everyone accepts .
There is a good site on www.haplogroups.eu for dna in Europe.
Chris , that site looks a bit superficial and way out of date . This subject is moving fast with both professional and amateur experts transforming our knowledge on an almost monthly basis. A web site that is generally considered to be reliable and up to date is .
http://www.isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_HapgrpR.html
Thanks for link Geo, this looks professional.
Do you happen to know if the beaker graves are associated with R1B1?
“Around 30,000years ago, a descendant of the clan making its way into Europegave rise to marker M343, the defining marker of haplogroupR1b. These travelers are direct descendants of the people whodominated the human expansion into Europe, the Cro-Magnon"
Advances in Anthropology 2012. Vol.2, No.2, 87-105.
Elementary my dear Geo.
Sherlock
Chris ,only last month Y DNA from two males a bell beaker site in Kromsdorf came up R1b with the further refinement of R1b1b2 from one .
Yes elementary RJL . If you had read the paper you would have noticed that what you have quoted is given as an example of the erroneous thinking of those who asserted that R1b arose in Europe some 30,000 years before present . Note that the quote was prefaced with “
Such data never existed. Nevertheless, statements and claims such as “ followed by your quote and in quotes , and post scripted with “
This and similar claims, such as R1b (and its M269 subclades) were “well established throughout Paleolithic Europe”, “contemporaneous with Aurig- nacian culture”, “the earliest expansion into Europe, during the Upper Paleolithic ~30,000 years ago” by Wells, Semino, Un-derhill, Cavalli-Sforza, Cinnioglu, Kivisild, Wiik and many others (e.g., Semino et al., 2000; Wells et al., 2001; Cinnioglu et al., 2004; Wiik, 2008) were essentially based on “thoughts” that if people lived in Europe some 30,000 years ago, they nec-essarily were of the R1b haplogroup, and not of I, G, J, E, F or any other haplogroups. Were any haplotypes analyzed? Their mutations counted? Any chronological evaluations? There was nothing of the above. “
Did you really not manage to understand that ?
" (e.g., Semino et al., 2000; Wells et al., 2001; Cinnioglu et al., 2004; Wiik, 2008) were essentially based on “thoughts” that if people lived in Europe some 30,000 years ago"
Based on "thoughts"... how novel!
What do you base your analysis on, tablets of stone? Are you suggesting that your are better qualified than the above academics in genetics?
If your 'deductions' are correct you are contradicting the current anthropological argument that Cro-Magnon's were 'Modern Humans' (as they will no longer share the same Haplogroup). Any academic papers to back up that 'thought' my dear Geo?
If that is the case, I'm sure RJL would approve!
Sherlock
Apologies, folks, if there are some glitsches in the system over the coming weeks. I am out in the wilds of the Stockholm Archipelago, dependent upon finding a wi-fi signal here and there -- so when I do find a broadband contact it is very slow. So some incoming messages might go missing and others which I think I've sent might not actually have gone anywhere..... I'll do my best to keep the communications moderated and posted!
RJL , It gets worse , not only did you post a quote that effectively showed you didn't read the paper or understand the context of the quote but now you are disagreeing with the quote , when only yesterday you were espousing it . It is clear from your comments you don't know anything about genetics . Read the primary literature , the Klyosov paper is a good start , but if you don't understand that then read the basics on the subject first . Read what I have said , if you think you have found something wrong , directly quote it , don't make stuff up .
Hi geo, wondering whether the bones found in the long barrows were r1b1, your know long heads in long barrows, round heads in round barrows?
Chris , I'm pretty sure that there is no Y dna from any of the long barrows .Rick Schulting dated both the long and round skull(s) from Belas Knap and found that they were both from 4000-3700 bc .
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