I'm sure that not even Messrs B&H can always be wrong but, as they say, the devil (or God -- depending on your perspective) is in the detail. When you look at the specifics of what Messrs B&H proposed (Mr B specifically proposed significantly earlier dates for various Egyptian monuments, Mr H specifically proposed an advanced global master-race, both around 12,500 BP) they have exactly nothing in common with the recent discoveries in Central Europe, either in the nature of the discoveries or in the period of construction.

Firstly, anyone who cannot see a serious discrepancy between 4600BC and 10500 BC needs to take some basic history lessons. However, I suspect that it is not an inability to see a discrepancy, but an intent to mislead, coming, as it does, with a somewhat crass choice to misrepresent the orthodox position on the chronology of human activity in Central Europe (which, to take a few snapshots, is that farming was established in the Balkans by 6500 BC, and that by 6000 BC there were villages around the Mediterranean and that settled farming communities had been established as far north as modern day Belgium and Holland; and that megalithic tombs in Western Europe date at least as far back as 5000BC).

What these recent discoveries suggest is that the date for European monumental architecture needs to be pushed back a thousand years or so (not the 2000 as another post falsely suggested) so that it is approximately contemporary with the beginnings of monumental architecture around the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. The provisional dates of construction of these new discoveries is contemporary with the date for which it is already known that copper was being worked in the same region.

And just to pre-empt any future attempts to misrepresent the orthodox position, let's all try to remember that it is that there have been settled agricultural communities dating at least as far back as 10000 BP. When Messrs B&H can provide unequivocal and un-cooked evidence of advanced civilisations or global master-races prior to that, I may start giving them some credence.

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Stephen