{"id":6552,"date":"2019-02-13T14:02:35","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T14:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potbanks.wordpress.com\/?p=6552"},"modified":"2019-02-13T14:02:35","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T14:02:35","slug":"megalithic-sailors-a-new-paper-in-pnas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2019\/02\/13\/megalithic-sailors-a-new-paper-in-pnas\/","title":{"rendered":"Megalithic sailors? A new paper in PNAS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a fascinating new paper on ancient sea-travel routes in northern Europe, and a resulting coherent diffusion of stone-circle building&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/early\/2019\/02\/05\/1813268116\">&#8220;Radiocarbon dates and Bayesian modeling support maritime diffusion model for megaliths in Europe&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Now we have to be a little sceptical here, because&#8230; i) it seems increasingly easy to get questionable headline-grabber papers past peer-review and into the <em>PNAS<\/em> journal, judging by other recent examples; ii) the study is partly based on computer-modelling and statistical re-shaping, a method which has its own inherent problems; and iii) stone circles in remote coastal areas are far more likely to have survived into the historical record.<\/p>\n<p>That said, the new paper does present an intriguing prehistoric proposition and has good evidence to support it&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;We argue for the transfer of the megalithic concept [of stone circles] over sea routes emanating from northwest France, and for advanced maritime technology and seafaring in the megalithic Age.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a fascinating new paper on ancient sea-travel routes in northern Europe, and a resulting coherent diffusion of stone-circle building&#8230; &#8220;Radiocarbon dates and Bayesian modeling support maritime diffusion model for megaliths in Europe&#8221;. Now we have to be a little sceptical here, because&#8230; i) it seems increasingly easy to get questionable headline-grabber papers past peer-review [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}