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The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Barry Cunliffe, Penguin, £6.99, ISBN 0140297847 Reviewed by Mark Pitts

A TRAVELLER publishes his experiences on a website. It is so popular that other sites around the world link to it, translating his work into many languages. Years pass, however, and the original story fades. Sections are copied and pasted into other sites, sometimes acknowledged, sometimes not. The author is remembered, occasionally with affection, often in heated arguments, but the original website disappears.

More than 2000 years later – here our analogy demands a little imagination – when the Internet as we…

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