Who built the Megalithic structures of Neolithic Britain and Ireland?

New discoveries in archaeology and ancient DNA have provided fascinating insights into the mysterious people who built Newgrange and Stonehenge. 2020 has seen the discovery of the world's largest prehistoric monument, a massive Mega-henge right next to Stonehenge at Durrington. At the same time, scientists have looked at the DNA of dozens of skeletons from Neolithic people of Britain and Ireland and realised that, far from being egalitarian, these megalith building societies had an elite caste comprised of what appear to be closely related, and in one case severely inbred, god-kings. Whilst looking through the new data, I came to realise that there was an interesting correlation among the phenotypes of this Neolithic elite - and I have a theory that the inbreeding may be related to a deliberate attempt to preserve archaic phenotypes from Mesolithic hunter gatherers, who the Neolithic invaders intermixed with when they first arrived in Britain and Ireland.

In this new documentary you will learn all about megalithic people and their monuments; from passage tombs, to long barrows, dolmens and stone circles. Never before has such revealing light been shone into the darkness of this mysterious stone age culture.

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Music in order:
Theme song: Wolcensmen - Sunne
Xurious - Steppe expansion
Halindir - The Weave
Halindir - Hedelandet II
Bark Sound Productions - Eld
Tom May - Atlantis falling
Bark Sound Productions - EGD
Chris Zabriskie - Candlepower

Sources:
-Cassidy el al (2016) https://www.pnas.org/content/113/2/368|
-Cassidy et al (2020)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2378-6.epdf
-Horton’s Neolithic houses (2014) https://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/hortons-neolithic-houses.htm
-Olalde et al (2018) https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25738
-Paulsson, B. S., (2018) https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/9/3460.full.pdf
-Rivolatt et al (2020) https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/22/eaaz5344
-Rivolatt et al (2015) https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0125521
- Shennan, S. “The First Farmers of Europe” (2018)
- Info on SUERC-9172 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/suppl/2017/05/09/135962.DC1/135962-1.pdf