Un récent article de Bettina Schulz Paulsson du Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, en Suède, intitulé « Radiocarbon dates and Bayesian modeling support maritime diffusion model for megaliths in Europe » vient d’être proposé par les Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS February 26, 2019 116 (9) 3460-3465).

Sur base d’une analyse des datations radiocarbone, l’auteur suggère que les sites mégalithiques d’Europe occidentale et méditerranéenne plongeraient leurs origines dans la culture de groupes de chasseurs-cueilleurs installés sur les côtes atlantiques il y a quelque 7000 ans, particulièrement en Bretagne. Il y aurait alors eu propagation du phénomène le long de sites littoraux de la côte atlantique et de la Méditerranée

Le Courrier International relaie cette hypothèse dans une courte présentation en français.

Ci dessous le résumé anglais de l’article de PNAS :
« There are two competing hypotheses for the origin of megaliths in Europe. The conventional view from the late 19th and early 20th centuries was of a single-source diffusion of megaliths in Europe from the Near East through the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic coast. Following early radiocarbon dating in the 1970s, an alternative hypothesis arose of regional independent developments in Europe. This model has dominated megalith research until today. We applied a Bayesian statistical approach to 2,410 currently available radiocarbon results from megalithic, partly premegalithic, and contemporaneous nonmegalithic contexts in Europe to resolve this long-standing debate. The radiocarbon results suggest that megalithic graves emerged within a brief time interval of 200 y to 300 y in the second half of the fifth millennium calibrated years BC in northwest France, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic coast of Iberia. We found decisive support for the spread of megaliths along the sea route in three main phases. Thus, a maritime diffusion model is the most likely explanation of their expansion ».