There's traditionally been a very strong connection between Megalithic monuments and the arrival of farming. The 4000 BC date that we've been talking about at the beginning of the Neolithic is when people come to Britain with the first domestic crops, he says. And these people bring with them traditions of building monuments which are then adapted and changed but in effect implemented in Britain.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss megaliths - huge stones placed in the landscape, often visually striking and highly prominent.
Such stone monuments in Britain and Ireland mostly date from the Neolithic period, and the most ancient are up to 6,000 years old. In recent decades, scientific advances have enabled archaeologists to learn a large amount about megalithic structures and the people who built them, but much about these stones remains unknown and mysterious.
With
Vicki Cummings
Professor of Neolithic Archaeology at the University of Central Lancashire
Julian Thomas
Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester
and
Susan Greaney
Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Exeter.