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>... his teeth prove that he grew up in Switzerland ...<

Yes, his teeth prove that he grew up in Switzerland but they do not prove that he was born there nor that his parents were originally from continental Europe.

Intriguing questions still remain. Why would a man travel vast distances over mountains and seas from Switzerland to Stonehenge? Was he returning to the land of his forefathers? Was he a member of a religious order? Was he on a pilgrimage to Stonehenge or a member of a returning family of emissaries <i>from</i> Stonehenge? Did he have a special and valued knowledge or skill? Was he an outcast nobleman or a travelling minstrel?

Who knows; the bottom line is that he came to these islands from afar and there must have been a very special and a very powerful reason for him to do that.

Mysteries, mysteries and I love them all :-)

>Why would a man travel vast distances over mountains and seas from Switzerland to Stonehenge?<

Maybe he had the 'chocolate shop concession' at the building of Stonhenge ;-)

But why are you so anxious to prove that he was a Brit? It is always dangerous to look at any aspect of British prehistory in isolation. If you read something like Cunliffe's "Facing the Ocean" which considers the people of the Atlantic seaboard as having a common culture, then the idea of people moving around by sea and by river is no longer strange.

Just compare any of the many cup and ring designs on our northern rocks with those in Galicia, for example. Or, coming back to our Swiss archer, those in Carschenna Switzerland. (No I'm not suggesting he carved them as doodles while designing Stonehenge) What are they? Such widespread distribution does suggest a continental religion. The point is that there were seagoing boats (Dover boat) and the megalithic culture can be traced through Germany into Croatia etc and also all the way down the Atlantic coast and into the Mediterranean and on to Mallorca, Menorca, Corsica, Sardinia, Tunisia, Sicily and most impressively of all - Malta and Gozo.

Earlier archaeologists maintained that everything came to Britain from the east by waves of migrations. Then that theory was rubbished and we were told of parrallel but unconnected developement and then the current one of diffusionism. Reputations are made and lost as theories come and go and sometimes even the most respected archaeologists are selective about evidence if they wish to protect their own theory or attack that of a rival.

Maybe the prehistoric Swiss did make more than cuckoo clocks and chocolates, but that doesn't mean that the archer was Nestles' King of Stonehenge as Spivey seemed to state. Forget national boundaries - they didn't exist.

I'm completely new to this, but getting fascinated. I'm I right in thinking that the English Channel was much narrower (and therfore navigable) at the time of Stonehenge due to the weight of ice on Scotland during the last Ice Age tipping the South Coast upwards. (I believe it's still sinking back today!)