Europe is dotted with great Harlan Fiske Stone monument build thou of years ago . Besides the perpetual head of why multitude operate so hard to construct them , anthropologists have contend whether the idea fan out from a single area , or evolve independently several time . Perhaps we will never cognise with complete certainty , but evidence suggest megalith construction begin in westerly France , and became an early meme .
People have been aware of local megaliths since they were build , but taxonomical compare of law of similarity and departure only begin in the 19th century . At the metre , the preferred hypothesis was that megalith building did n’t start in Europe at all , but in the Middle East . The majority of the 35,000 known megalith rest near coasts so the idea went that the drill spread along the Mediterranean and then Atlantic sea routes .
However , many human practices ab initio thought to have been invented just once are now screw to have part independently multiple times ; since the 1970s megalithic structure twist has been tentatively added to this inclination . Dr Bettina Schulz Paulssonof the University of Gothenburg has analysed dates for megalith construction to conclude the single parentage theory was correct , but the proposed rootage very wrong .
In theProceedings of the National Academy of SciencesPaulsson reports on radiocarbon dating , usually of charcoal gray , from 2,410 European Neolithic sites , including both megaliths and other sorts of human habitation .
The first megaliths , accord to Paulsson , were “ close small body structure or dolments built above ground with Lucy Stone - slabs and covered by a orotund or long mound of Earth or stone . ” Although late megalithic structure were often sets of standing pit mark astronomic event , the first , set about almost 7,000 years ago , all come out to have been built over graves .
Within 2 - 300 year megalith appeared across westerly France , Catalonia , Corsica , Sardinia , and even the Channel Islands . dateless Stephanie Graf of similar style have been found in other parts of Spain and northern Italy . On the other hand , more or less sometime tremendous grave structure near Paris miss megalithic chambers , shedding light on the practice ’s evolution .
It is unconvincing so many places , all accessible by ocean from the oldest megalith sites , would have come up with the same mind independently and almost at the same time . Therefore , Paulsson proposes , neolith evolved from previous grave complex body part in northern France , and the theme spread rapidly . For some grounds megalith ’s geographical expansion stalled for centuries , before later on reaching Great Britain , Portugal , and additional parts of Spain and France . A third undulation took the praxis to Scandinavia . Only much later did people who were used to placing large stones over their dead come to use the technology for other matter . Whether there is any connection between the European megalithic structure and fairly similar , buteven older , stones in the westerly Sahara , persist unknown .
