Euan MacKie has supported Thom's analysis, to which he added an archaeological context by comparing Neolithic Britain to the Mayan civilization to argue for a stratified society in this period.

Widespread decrease in elm pollen across Europe between 8400 – 8300 BC and 7200 – 7000 BC, starting in southern Europe and gradually moving north to Great Britain, may represent land clearing by fire at the onset of Neolithic agriculture.

Low roads connect Neolithic ceremonial sites throughout Britain.

The complex including Maeshowe, the Ring of Brodgar, the Standing Stones of Stenness, Skara Brae, as well as other tombs and standing stones represents a concentration of Neolithic sites that is rivalled in Britain only by the complexes associated with Stonehenge and Avebury.

Low roads connect Neolithic ceremonial sites throughout Britain.

Low roads connect Neolithic ceremonial sites throughout Britain.

Euan W. Mackie asserts that no simple late Neolithic tribal structure as usually imagined could have sustained this and similar projects, and envisages an authoritarian theocratic power elite with broad-ranging control across southern Britain.

David MacRitchie was a prominent proponent of the euhemeristic origin of fairies, a theory tracable to the early 19th century that considers fairies in British folklore to have been rooted in a historical pygmy, dwarf or short sized aboriginal race, that lived during Neolithic Britain or even earlier.

A notable proponent of the theory who had read MacRitchie's earlier works published in the Celtic Review was Grant Allen, who became convinced that fairies were modeled on an indigenous population of Britain, specifically the Neolithic long barrow makers.

In both Haddon's and Waddell's view the fairies or other beings of British folklore were based on the Neolithic inhabitants of Britain.

There is evidence that the area was occupied during the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age ; analysis of peat cores from areas with similar geology and patterns of settlement elsewhere in southern Britain would suggest the heathland on Chobham Common was created at some time during these periods.

Excavation of some Megalithic monuments ( in Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and France ) has revealed evidence of ritual activity, sometimes involving architecture, from the Mesolithic, i. e., predating the Neolithic monuments by centuries or millennia.

* Malone, C. ( 2001 ) Neolithic Britain and Ireland, Tempus, Stroud.

( 2005 ) The Neolithic Period in The Archaeology of Britain, Hunter, I. and Ralston, J.

The construction of the earliest earthwork sites in Britain began during the early Neolithic ( c. 4400 BC – 3300 BC ) in the form of long barrows used for communal burial and the first causewayed enclosures, sites which have parallels on the continent.

It has given its name to some of the earliest Neolithic pottery in southern Britain.

It is as important to the Mesolithic period as Stonehenge is to the Neolithic period or Scandinavian York is to understanding Viking-age Britain.

There is archaeological evidence of violence and warfare in Early Neolithic Britain from such sites as West Kennet Long Barrow and Hambledon Hill, with some groups constructing fortifications to defend themselves from attackers.

The Early Neolithic people of Britain placed a far greater emphasis on the ritualised burial of the dead than their Mesolithic forebears had done.

The Coldrum Stones represent the surviving remnants of a chambered long barrow, a style of architecture found across much of Early Neolithic Britain.

Bowl barrows were created from the Neolithic through to the Bronze Age in Great Britain.

There are also many differences, with some Neolithic communities in southeastern Europe living in heavily fortified settlements of 3, 000 – 4, 000 people ( e. g., Sesklo in Greece ) whereas Neolithic groups in Britain were small ( possibly 50 – 100 people ) and highly mobile cattle-herders.

There is archaeological evidence of violence and warfare in Early Neolithic Britain from such sites as West Kennet Long Barrow and Hambledon Hill, with some groups constructing fortifications to defend themselves from attackers.

The Early Neolithic people of Britain placed a far greater emphasis on the ritualised burial of the dead than their Mesolithic forebears had done.

In Europe, a flint mace-head was one of the artifacts discovered in excavations of the Neolithic mound of Knowth in Ireland, and Bronze-age archaeology cites numerous finds of perforated mace-heads.

" O ’ Kelly believed that Newgrange, alongside the hundreds of other passage tombs built in Ireland during the Neolithic, showed evidence for a religion which venerated the dead as one of its core principles.

The Dundalk area has been inhabited since at least 3500 BC, when Neolithic farmers first came to Ireland.

The Neolithic tombs of Northwestern Europe, particularly Ireland, were built by the Neolithic ( New Stone Age ) people in the period 4000-2000 BC.

Other cases of coffin birth at archaeological sites have been described, such as in 1978 at a Neolithic site in Germany, at a medieval site in Denmark in 1982, and in 2009 at an Early Christian period site at Fingal, Ireland.

The entrance graves of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and south east Ireland are megalithic chamber tombs of the Neolithic and early Bronze Age in the British Isles.

Cruciform passage graves describe a complex example of prehistoric passage grave found in Ireland, west Wales and Orkney and built during the later Neolithic, from around 3500 BC and later.

* The genetic makeup of Britain and Ireland is overwhelmingly what it has been since the Neolithic period and to a very considerable extent since the Mesolithic period, especially in the female line, i. e. those people, who in time would become identified as British Celts ( culturally speaking ), but who ( genetically speaking ) should more properly be called Cro-Magnon.

The island was important in the Neolithic period in Ireland as a ground stone axe quarrying and production site.

The quarry site is unusual in Ireland for being the only Neolithic stone axe quarry with evidence for all stages of production, from quarrying to final polishing.

Dowth () is a Neolithic passage tomb which stands in the Boyne Valley, County Meath, Ireland.

Professor Mallory's research has focused on Early Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe, the problem of the homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, and the archaeology of early Ireland.

Knowth (; ) is a Neolithic passage grave and an ancient monument of Brú na Bóinne in the valley of the River Boyne in Ireland.

In recently published books ( Blood of the Isles by Bryan Sykes and The Origins of the British-A Genetic Detective Story by Stephen Oppenheimer ), both authors propose that ancient inhabitants of Ireland can be traced back to the Iberian Peninsula, as a result of a series of migrations that took place during the Mesolithic and to a lesser extent the Neolithic Age.

Megalithic art across much of the world uses a similar mysterious vocabulary of circles, spirals and other curved shapes, but it is striking that the most numerous remains in Europe are the large monuments, with many rock drawings left by the Neolithic Boyne Valley culture in Ireland, within a few miles of centres for Early Medieval Insular art some 4, 000 years later.

During the Neolithic period, starting about 6, 000 years ago, the first people living in Ireland whose ancestors had hunted and gathered along the coastlines of Erris from about 9, 000 years ago, began to cut down the forestry to clear land for growing crops and grazing livestock.

* Neolithic Britain & Ireland.

No written records exist for the Neolithic people of Britain and Ireland.

It is suggested the late Rössen culture may be ancestral to the Neolithic cultures of Britain and Ireland ( a group of cultures previously known as Windmill Hill culture ), but there is no great similarity in the form of houses or pottery.