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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.

>But why are you so anxious to prove that he was a Brit?<

Not anxious to prove he was a Brit at all Peter. One of the delights of Forums such as these is that ideas and theories that might otherwise be tossed out by the 'Establishment' are given a little more attention. The fact that our archer appears to have spent his childhood in Switzerland does not prove that he or his parents were originally from there. They may have been from any number of countries including Britain - simple as that.

I like your suggestion below, by the way, when you ask whether it is -

>... likely that they (the Phoenicians) travelled via the channel? Is it not more probable that they sailed up from Gibralter, along Spain, across Biscay to Britanny and then over to Cornwall?<

I think it very probable. People, especially traders, would almost certainly prefer the safer route over the faster one - the Ridgeway is another example of that.