Ancient Scotland, Brochs & Skara Brae

[Ewan]

What is a broch?

A typical broch stood from five to 13 metres high. It was a circular, two-storey, drystone, structure, accessed by a single door at ground level.

Inside was a main inner "chamber" from which smaller cells - either built into, or up against, the wall - branched off. A winding, stone staircase, housed within the broch's double walls, led upwards to elevated floors and finally the top of the structure.

Although, like the earlier roundhouses, it is possible that some brochs were no more than fortified dwellings, a widespread belief is that they had a defensive function and are characterised by immensely thick outer walls.

It is now believed, however, that, although defence may have played some part, they were more likely to have been built to impress - a monumental marker in the landscape, highlighting the owner's social status, wealth and power. (Absolute rubbish - imo - who, trying to survive in a bleak environment, build to impress?)

Orkney's brochs were feats of considerable architectural and engineering expertise, the key to which was the principle of double-skinned walls. (Maybe why they were so thick?)

Stronger and more stable than a single wall, the brochs had two parallel walls built with a hollow space between. These two outer "skins" were bonded at certain heights by stone lintel slabs - a method that allowed the broch's constructors to build to greater heights than could be achieved with solid walls. (So that's confirmed then, the reason for building such impressive constructions was architectural reasoning).

"To construct stable walls of such height, in unmortared masonry or undressed stones shaped only by splitting, called for an engineer's understanding of force and stress."
Dr Raymond Lamb

*from Brochs

Please forgive my interjections, but one has to be so alert to what one is reading or your entire thinking can be influenced to the detriment.

I visited a Broch a few years ago. Once through the entrance it opened into a cavernous interior - but the living quarters were above this on platforms. In order to access the living quarters one had to back into the entranceway and turn sharp left (or perhaps right) into a circualr tight staircase. If you were an invader the cost of reaching those living quarters would have been high indeed.



The following is but a rambling stream of thought, I do love to ramble.

The Brochs of Scotland are stone ruins found throughout the highlands and islands of Scotland. At some point, someone, somewhere, declared them to be iron-age forts and as is the way of academia this is the default position that everyone repeats. They are also commonly referred to as defensive structures, and it easy to see why, yet no-one can explain who they would be defending themselves from as a great many of the locations are overseeing coastal locations and the then (supposing iron-age) threat would have been the Romans who were inavading from the south and not by sea. Although it is accepted that Agricola, then Roman governor of the invaded Britain, sent a fleet to survey and map Scotland’s coast the Brochs are mostly small constructions more capable of sheltering extended families than whole communities fearful of invasion. Small isolated groups of people would not have been capable of constructing such fortifications in a short time scale, (an impending Roman attack we must defend ourselves), as the necessities of life, just living, would get in the way of a protracted building schedule.

Look at that concentration of red dots above.





Brochs Introduction

Some beautiful imagery in vid below, but nothing of real interest. If you want lovely scenery, watch; otherwise ignore.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AmU9Bc8szE0

I remember reading many years ago, and am quoting vaguely from that hazy memory, that one of the dating methods in establisihng the age of Brochs was from the refuse and remains found in and nearby the Brochs. It would certainly fit the pattern of dating often cited so I'll accept that memory as reasonable. The problem though is this within this memory there also lies the first I read of the Beaker people. (aka the Grooved-ware people).



Their remains, or more specifically, their distinctive potteries, were often found scattered throughout Broch sites. (I cannot verify this, it is but a memory which may be garbled). Accepted Archeology lists the Beaker folk as being Bronze age, which is a lo-oooong 2500 years before the supposed date of the Brochs. One of the distinctive markings of the Beaker potteries was a lozenge shaped design. More on that later*.
So, did the Broch builders select prior Beaker sites to build upon, or perhaps, were the builders actually the Beaker folk?

There could be a major flaw in the preceding two paragraphs in that my memory is entirely faulty but lets just stick with it for now. If the Broch builders chose previous building sites of the Beaker folk then just who were they.

For the moment resist the temptation to search the term "Beaker People/Folk". I've developed a lack of trust in established/accepted thinking as it is becoming increasingly apparent that everyone quotes from one another and few bother to really delve into something. Group-think is, alarmingly, the way of the majority. But there are huge swathes of data on them, in the accepted fashion of established data. (You get the pattern?)

not important

not important

Now lets skip backwards another 1,000 years give or take a century to Skara Brae

Skara Brae is one of the most fascinating prehistoric sites in Scotland. It is on the western facing, Atlantic coast of Orkney. The remains of this prehistoric settlement were found in 1850 after a particularly bad storm had ripped turf away from the sand dunes on the edge of Skaill Bay. The fury of the storm revealed the remains of a group of remarkable stone houses. For the first time in almost 5,000 years the village was once more exposed to the light of day.

Nobody is quite sure when Skara Brae was first inhabited, as it is clear from the excavations that the earliest of the surviving buildings (radio carbon dated to 3,215 BC) have been built on the foundations of much earlier ones.

Skara Brae - Lomas




Sharp-eyed readers will recognise the name Robert Lomas, author, or co-author, of many books such as...

The Invisible College
Freemasonry and the Birth of Modern Science
The Man Who Invented the Twentieth Century
The Hiram Key
The Second Messiah
Uriel's Machine (highly recommended by me)
The Book of Hiram
Mysteries of the Ancient World
The Holy Grail

The key point in the quote above, as I bolded it to stand out, was that the foundations of Skara Brae had been built on much earlier ones. We know so little about pre-history, (the time before HIS [HER if you prefer] STORY, or written records). I once suggested to a nephew that 'the problem with pre-history is that it is a five million piece jigsaw and you have a couple of hundred people running around today who have each found a few disparate pieces of that jigsaw - and they are adamantly trying to tell you what the whole picture looks like.

In the images of Skara Brae we can see a clear depiction of dry stone building, stones that have been split and stacked to form walls etc., exactly the same construction techniques of dry stone, split, stacking, that were used in the building of the Brochs.

Now, according to Uriel's Machine, and later independent work from Graham Hancock, there is a (good?) possibility that around 5,500 years ago there was a (mini?) catastrophe in the shape of a comet impact that inundated the region with tsunami's. I just speculate on the possibility that 2,500 years pass and the Broch builders are employing the same building methods as the Skara Brae builders. Assuming there was a catastrophic inundation inbetween times - we hardly know anything about our great grand parents today and we have written records, how do you preserve knowledge over 2500 years? Or are the Brochs perhaps much older than advertised?

*Ooh, almost forgot. The lozenge shaped pottery design of the Beaker/Grooved-ware folk. It was found carved into the very stonework of Skara Brae.

In closing, for I have nothing stunning to add - unfortunately, I leave you with the writings of somebody (Lothar?) which I just stumbled upon whilst researching this mish-mash of a post. (I spent an absorbed hour reading it. ).

Good read

PS: I can confirm the bit about the sharpness of Aboriginal eyes, I swear they can see in the dark.

[uzn]

I always thought Skara Brae was a fairy Tale land because it was named in so many Computer role playing games. Thanks Ewan, now I know better.

[CurEus]

I believe Graham Hancock's research suggests catasphrophe ( comet impact and an incredible deluge ) about 12,000 and 11,000 years ago. The sudden evacuation of Skara Brae seems consistent with water levels rising swiftly and quite suddenly. I wonder if there are traces of tsunami washing in....or other reasons for surprising high water levels? Apparently there once was a Island off of Ireland that sank.

[leavesoftrees]

Laird Scranton's latest book connects the Dogon with Skara Brae

There are many interviews on youtube done with Laird talking about this

Here is a recent one with Jimmy Church

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6NEc_0iLaT8

[Zampano]

The Callanish Stones and Surroundings:
Some years ago I spent a month at the Outer Hebrides for some Hiking & Fishing. I did visit the Callanish Standing Stones, which are dated about 5.000 bc. A place of heathenism and for their worship by the druids. Unfortunately I didnt see the Brochs, because at that time I didnt know abot them. Here are some pictures I took back then.

Wikipedia:
The Callanish Stones consist of a stone circle of thirteen stones with a monolith near the middle. Five rows of standing stones connect to this circle. Two long rows of stones running almost parallel to each other from the stone circle to the north-northeast form a kind of avenue. In addition, there are shorter rows of stones to the west-southwest, south and east-northeast. The stones are all of the same rock type, namely the local Lewisian gneiss. Within the stone circle is a chambered tomb to the east of the central stone.

It was a great experience to see Palmtrees there on the Islands and other mild climate plants and flowers.

[uzn]

Here is a nice Megalith from Scotland
The Aberlemno Serpent Stone

[uzn]

Found a good Book about megalithic sites and their astronomical allignments in Britain. That fits here quite well and might be interesting to you.

Megalithic Sites in Britain
by A. Thom 1971

in 4 parts:
http://www.spirasolaris.ca/sbb8a.pdf
http://www.spirasolaris.ca/sbb8b.pdf
http://www.spirasolaris.ca/sbb8c.pdf
http://www.spirasolaris.ca/sbb8d.pdf

some spirals on Stones from Scottland
The 'Westray Stone', from Pierowall





The Eday Manse stone, Isle of Eday

[Billy]

I think the ongoing excavations at the Temple site named the Ness of Brodgar on the Isle of Orkney has to be mentioned in this thread.
Now discovered to be older that any megalithic sites across all of the UK. If fact where it all began.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...ncient-britain
Drive west from Orkney's capital, Kirkwall, and then head north on the narrow B9055 and you will reach a single stone monolith that guards the entrance to a spit of land known as the Ness of Brodgar. The promontory separates the island's two largest bodies of freshwater, the Loch of Stenness and the Loch of Harray. At their furthest edges, the lochs' peaty brown water laps against fields and hills that form a natural amphitheatre; a landscape peppered with giant rings of stone, chambered cairns, ancient villages and other archaeological riches.

This is the heartland of the Neolithic North, a bleak, mysterious place that has made Orkney a magnet for archaeologists, historians and other researchers. For decades they have tramped the island measuring and ex- cavating its great Stone Age sites. The land was surveyed, mapped and known until a recent chance discovery revealed that for all their attention, scientists had completely overlooked a Neolithic treasure that utterly eclipses all others on Orkney – and in the rest of Europe.

This is the temple complex of the Ness of Brodgar, and its size, complexity and sophistication have left archaeologists desperately struggling to find superlatives to describe the wonders they found there. "We have discovered a Neolithic temple complex that is without parallel in western Europe. Yet for decades we thought it was just a hill made of glacial moraine," says discoverer Nick Card of the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology. "In fact the place is entirely manmade, although it covers more than six acres of land."

Once protected by two giant walls, each more than 100m long and 4m high, the complex at Ness contained more than a dozen large temples – one measured almost 25m square – that were linked to outhouses and kitchens by carefully constructed stone pavements. The bones of sacrificed cattle, elegantly made pottery and pieces of painted ceramics lie scattered round the site. The exact purpose of the complex is a mystery, though it is clearly ancient. Some parts were constructed more than 5,000 years ago.


The people of the Neolithic – the new Stone Age – were the first farmers in Britain, and they arrived on Orkney about 6,000 years ago. They cultivated the land, built farmsteads and rapidly established a vibrant culture, erecting giant stone circles, chambered communal tombs – and a giant complex of buildings at the Ness of Brodgar. The religious beliefs that underpinned these vast works is unknown, however, as is the purpose of the Brodgar temples.

"This wasn't a settlement or a place for the living," says archaeologist Professor Colin Richards of Manchester University, who excavated the nearby Barnhouse settlement in the 1980s. "This was a ceremonial centre, and a vast one at that. But the religious beliefs of its builders remain a mystery."

What is clear is that the cultural energy of the few thousand farming folk of Orkney dwarfed those of other civilisations at that time. In size and sophistication, the Ness of Brodgar is comparable with Stonehenge or the wonders of ancient Egypt. Yet the temple complex predates them all. The fact that this great stately edifice was constructed on Orkney, an island that has become a byword for remoteness, makes the site's discovery all the more remarkable. For many archaeologists, its discovery has revolutionised our understanding of ancient Britain.

"We need to turn the map of Britain upside down when we consider the Neolithic and shrug off our south-centric attitudes," says Card, now Brodgar's director of excavations. "London may be the cultural hub of Britain today, but 5,000 years ago, Orkney was the centre for innovation for the British isles. Ideas spread from this place. The first grooved pottery, which is so distinctive of the era, was made here, for example, and the first henges – stone rings with ditches round them – were erected on Orkney. Then the ideas spread to the rest of the Neolithic Britain. This was the font for new thinking at the time."

It is a view shared by local historian Tom Muir, of the Orkney Museum. "The whole text book of British archaeology for this period will have to be torn up and rewritten from scratch thanks to this place," he says.

Farmers first reached Orkney on boats that took them across the narrow – but treacherously dangerous – Pentland Firth from mainland Scotland. These were the people of the New Stone Age, and they brought cattle, pigs and sheep with them, as well as grain to plant and ploughs to till the land. The few hunter-gatherers already living on Orkney were replaced and farmsteads were established across the archipelago. These early farmers were clearly successful, though life would still have been precarious, with hunting providing precious supplies of extra protein. At the village of Knap o'Howar on Papay the bones of domesticated cattle, sheep and pigs have been found alongside those of wild deer, whales and seals, for example, while analysis of human bones from the period suggest that few people reached the age of 50. Those who survived childhood usually died in their 30s.

Discarded stone tools and shards of elegant pottery also indicate that the early Orcadians were developing an increasingly sophisticated society. Over the centuries, their small farming communities coalesced into larger tribal units, possibly with an elite ruling class, and they began to construct bigger and bigger monuments. These sites included the 5,000-year-old village of Skara Brae; the giant chambered grave of Maeshowe, a Stone Age mausoleum whose internal walls were later carved with runes by Vikings; and the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, two huge neighbouring circles of standing stones. These are some of the finest Neolithic monuments in the world, and in 1999 they were given World Heritage status by Unesco, an act that led directly to the discovery of the Ness of Brodgar.

"Being given World Heritage status meant we had to think about the land surrounding the sites," says Card. "We decided to carry out geophysical surveys to see what else might be found there." Such surveys involve the use of magnetometers and ground-penetrating radar to pinpoint manmade artefacts hidden underground. And the first place selected by Card for this electromagnetic investigation was the Ness of Brodgar.

The ridge was assumed to be natural. However, Card's magnetometers showed that it was entirely manmade and bristled with features that included lines of walls, concentric pathways and outlines of large buildings. "The density of these features stunned us," says Card. At first, given its size, the team assumed they had stumbled on a general site that had been in continuous use for some time, providing shelter for people for most of Orkney's history, from prehistoric to medieval times. "No other interpretation seemed to fit the observations," adds Card. But once more the Ness of Brodgar would confound expectations.


Test pits, a metre square across, were drilled in lines across the ridge and revealed elaborate walls, slabs of carefully carved rock, and pieces of pottery. None came from the Bronze Age, however, nor from the Viking era or medieval times. Dozens of pits were dug over the ridge, an area the size of five football pitches, and every one revealed items with a Neolithic background.

Then the digging began in earnest and quickly revealed the remains of buildings of startling sophistication. Carefully made pathways surrounded walls – some of them several metres high – that had been constructed with patience and precision.

"It was absolutely stunning," says Colin Richards. "The walls were dead straight. Little slithers of stones had even been slipped between the main slabs to keep the facing perfect. This quality of workmanship would not be seen again on Orkney for thousands of years."


Slowly the shape and dimensions of the Ness of Brodgar site revealed themselves. Two great walls, several metres high, had been built straight across the ridge. There was no way you could pass along the Ness without going through the complex. Within those walls a series of temples had been built, many on top of older ones. "The place seems to have been in use for a thousand years, with building going on all the time," says Card.

More than a dozen of these temples have already been uncovered though only about 10% of the site has been fully excavated so far.

"We have never seen anything like this before," says York University archaeologist Professor Mark Edmonds. "The density of the archaeology, the scale of the buildings and the skill that was used to construct them are simply phenomenal. There are very few dry-stone walls on Orkney today that could match the ones we have uncovered here. Yet they are more than 5,000 years old in places, still standing a couple of metres high. This was a place that was meant to impress – and it still does."

But it is not just the dimensions that have surprised and delighted archaeologists. Two years ago, their excavations revealed that haematite-based pigments had been used to paint external walls – another transformation in our thinking about the Stone Age. "We see Neolithic remains after they have been bleached out and eroded," says Edmonds. "However, it is now clear from Brodgar that buildings could have been perfectly cheerful and colourful."


The men and women who built at the Ness also used red and yellow sandstone to enliven their constructions. (More than 3,000 years later, their successors used the same materials when building St Magnus' Cathedral in Kirkwall.) But what was the purpose of their construction work and why put it in the Ness of Brodgar? Of the two questions, the latter is the easier to answer – for the Brodgar headland is clearly special. "When you stand here, you find yourself in a glorious landscape," says Card. "You are in the middle of a natural amphitheatre created by the hills around you."

The surrounding hills are relatively low, and a great dome of sky hangs over Brodgar, perfect for watching the setting and rising of the sun, moon and other celestial objects. (Card believes the weather on Orkney may have been warmer and clearer 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.) Cosmology would have been critical to society then, he argues, helping farmers predict the seasons – a point supported by scientists such as the late Alexander Thom, who believed that the Ring of Brodgar was an observatory designed for studying the movement of the moon.

These outposts of Neolithic astronomy, although impressive, were nevertheless peripheral, says Richards. The temple complex at the Ness of Brodgar was built to be the most important construction on the island. "The stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar and the other features of the landscape were really just adjuncts to that great edifice," he says. Or as another archaeologist put it: "By comparison, everything else in the area looks like a shanty town."

For a farming community of a few thousand people to create such edifices suggests that the Ness of Brodgar was of profound importance. Yet its purpose remains elusive. The ritual purification of the dead by fire may be involved, suggests Card. As he points out, several of the temples at Brodgar have hearths, though this was clearly not a domestic dwelling. In addition, archeologists have found that many of the stone mace heads (hard, polished, holed stones) that litter the site had been broken in two in exactly the same place. "We have found evidence of this at other sites," says Richards. "It may be that relatives broke them in two at a funeral, leaving one part with the dead and one with family as a memorial to the dead. This was a place concerned with death and the deceased, I believe."

Equally puzzling was the fate of the complex. Around 2,300BC, roughly a thousand years after construction began there, the place was abruptly abandoned. Radiocarbon dating of animal bones suggests that a huge feast ceremony was held, with more than 600 cattle slaughtered, after which the site appears to have been decommissioned. Perhaps a transfer of power took place or a new religion replaced the old one. Whatever the reason, the great temple complex – on which Orcadians had lavished almost a millennium's effort – was abandoned and forgotten for the next 4,000 years.

[findingneo]

I lived in Scotland for close on 20 years, went to all the ancient sites in Orkney, and anywhere else in Scotland I ventured. I had my first past life regression there, having just watched "Dead Again" at the movies, and then proceeded to have a number of ancient Scottish past life memories spontaneously surface, and I had one surface as Deja Vu, when I passed a grand house near where I bought a house. In that life it seems I was a pilot or crew member on the second world war X-craft submarine training missions in that part of Scotland. I was a man in those lives and I could not be less interested in submarines this time around. Perhaps I was a navigator or something. I was an excellent navigator in wilderness when I was a young person.

I lived smack dab in the middle of those yellow ancient site clusters. More often than not, they are easily missed and weathered worn, or the stones have been pilfered for farmers dry stane dykes that keep their sheep and highland cooes in. They are most often seen as mounds, a few standing stones, a handful of monoliths or ruins in a scrubby patch of shrubs in a field or on a moor, a handful of graves at the back of a local kirk, the kirk itself, or the ruins of an ancient castle. A carving in a large buried stone just above the surface in a field, etc, etc. It never ceased to amaze me that these sites held little value to the locals, and were scattered about in the least expected places, most not even land marked, but only found via maps especially printed with the ancient site location. So I don't remember any such clusters. I could have walked past some of them and not even known they were there.

[greybeard]

Craig Phadrig Vitrified Hill Fort

Modern archaeological investigation took place at the site in 1971 and although only small areas were excavated a fascinating narrative was uncovered. It seems the first significant human activity on the hilltop occurred in the Iron Age, with the construction of the ramparts around the 300’s BC. They were timber laced and up to 6m thick and 8m high with an estimated 25,000 tons of stone used. It is unclear what may have been going on inside the walls but no evidence was discovered for occupation before the walls’ monumental destruction. The act of vitrifying a large rampart is notoriously difficult as many modern reconstruction attempts have shown. It is estimated that at least parts of the walls at Craig Phadrig reached 1200 degrees Celsius, melting certain types of rock. The effort to produce this effect and its purpose can only be speculated at, but its visual impact would have been immense. It is only after this event that occupation layers were discovered by excavators dating to 200-300 AD.
The final stage of occupation at Craig Phadrig and the finds from it have made it most famous. This is the Pictish occupation of the site estimated at around 400-600 AD. During this phase excavators discovered evidence of high status metal working, including an escutcheon bowl mould. This implied a high status Pictish site and it is due to this that it is often linked to King Bridei and St Columba’s visit to his capital somewhere in this area. The dates could just fit (although they are a little stretched), so it is just possible that when standing on the hill today you could be standing in the fortress of a Pictish king and where St Columba stood over 1000 years ago.
Further reading: 


http://archhighland.org.uk/news.asp?newsid=179


The heat require to Vitrified this, as stated in the article, is immense.
There are records of "Weapons of mass destruction " used in India " The Bagavad Gita"---also areas in India that are still radio active--cause unknown.
So what could have cause the damage in this case?
Its just up the road from where I live in Inverness but the site is neglected and over grown--not even sign posted.

So little known pre history--much assumed-little known.

Thanks for the thread Ewan and all who posted here--very interesting.

Chris

[findingneo]

Well, Greybeard, I was a park ranger in Scotland for a good while, and I put together a guided walk that included a an Iron Age Hill Fort that had vitrified (glass) material surface, even as we stood there, on top of that hill, looking at the site, we picked up recently surfaced vitrified black glass from rabbits digging their burrows. The reason why the forts were burned was due to their enemies burning the wooden beams and flooring. I have a kiln myself and would not think it would be too difficult to get the temperature to burn very hot in an enclosed stone kiln of sorts, fired with the wood that would make up it's internal structure. I must have found that out from very old books in the restricted section of the Ardrossan library. Of course these places are very often near the sea, hence the right material, such as sand that will vitrify under intense heat. It was 20 years ago I did that.

[Jayke]

Why the Orkney isles? That's a lot of Neolithic building going on in a very remote area of the earth...

The authors of 'Uriels machine' mention that Orkney was possibly a main naval centre; and from there you can travel by boat to islands further to the northwest and effectively island-hop all the way to the American continent, without ever losing sight of land...which would make Scotland a great land base for trade between the Americas and Europe in the Neolithic past.

The use of red ochre in ancient burials would be a possible link to prove this theory. Red ochre has been in use for at least 250,000 years by Neanderthal man, a tradition that could have been passed down to their homosapien cousins (red ochre has also been found at Orkney sites), and a tradition that was also in use in the pyramid building cultures of the Americas, as Robert Sepehr points out in his video:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5I72iDcjHD0

[Zampano]

Some years ago I did a past life regression and wanted to see "my happiest past life". I actually saw myself at a place which was clearly Scotland to me and I was a peat cutter and farmer.
I lived with a beautiful brown haired, pale skinned woman and had a terrible amount of kids ;-) Life was not easy, but very joyful. The cloth we wore seems to indicate the 18th century.

Nowadays, I dont pay that much attention on past lives, because the future is more important. I dont even know if it was "my past life" or I picked something else up.

[Foxie Loxie]

How interesting to learn of the Red Paint People!! Thanks, Jayke!

[findingneo]

Zampano, if that memory surfaced, there was probably something significant about it to this life. Well, it was your happiest life. Past Life Regression is real. You will have done a wee bit of time traveling to see that. Sounds very Scottish, peat cutting.

[Zampano]

Note that I did not do a past life therapy, just the regression...out of curiousity.
It was fun to see and experience that, but nothing of value. But what do I know.
Only the experience of it, that I see somebody (maybe me) running around with lots of kids.
The idea of past lives got somehow replaced by the experience, that there is no individual soul-just One Infinte Self expressing itself in a myriad of ways.

[uzn]

Scottish Stoneballs (from 2 - 7,5 cm)

Carved Stone Balls are up to 5200 years old, coming from the late Neolithic to at least the Bronze Age.
Nearly all have been found in north-east Scotland, the majority in Aberdeenshire, the fertile land lying to the east of the Grampian Mountains. A similar distribution to that of Pictish symbols led to the early suggestion that Carved Stone Balls are Pictish artefacts. The core distribution also reflects that of the Recumbent stone circles. As objects they are very easy to transport and a few have been found on Iona, Skye, Harris, Uist, Lewis, Arran, Hawick, Wigtownshire and fifteen from Orkney. Outside Scotland examples have been found in Ireland at Ballymena, and in England at Durham, Cumbria, Lowick and Bridlington. The larger (90mm diameter) balls are all from Aberdeenshire, bar one from Newburgh in Fife.
By the late 1970s a total of 387 had been recorded. Of these, by far the greatest concentration (169) was found in Aberdeenshire. By 1983 the number had risen to 411. By 2015 a total of over 425 balls were recorded. A collection of over 30 carved balls from Scotland, Ireland and northern England is in the British Museum's collection.
But only 6 have been found outside of Scottland.
Their use is unknown and purely speculative. Some said ammo for Ebolas (not favored anymore). Some said used by oracles.

Several have been found in Skara Brae.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=D-F8qu3P4no

Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carved_Stone_Balls

[Ewan]

Posted by Billy (here)
I think the ongoing excavations at the Temple site named the Ness of Brodgar on the Isle of Orkney has to be mentioned in this thread.
Now discovered to be older that any megalithic sites across all of the UK. If fact where it all began.

Thanks for this Billy. The image I have isolated out made me sit forward in my chair - it looks almost exactly like an artist reconstruction of a site found in the Arctic circle I saw, last year I think. It was on an island north of the Russian mainland and the perma-frost was melting revealing these ruins beneath. As I recall it was found by ivory/mammoth hunters who are exploiting the thawing tundra. It was a documentary on these people, that were hunting the frozen mammoths, I'd been watching from a link from Avalon in the first place but now I cannot seem to find it again.

Anyway, if I am right these two ancient sites had to have been built by a people who were deeply connected and there is a lot of information out there that suggests these regions were once quite temperate. The fauna (then) especially points to such a fact.

As previously mentioned in the thread, Uriel's Machine suggests a possible culture that, at least, left its knowledge to peoples that followed covering a widespread region from the far north of Scotland to as far south as Egypt and eastwards into the Caucasus and possibly beyond.

[uzn]

Ewan you probably mean Por Bajin / Siberia.

Official Dating 1300 years ago. If that´s correct it´s much younger than the scottish site. Russian president Vladimir Putin visited the island with Prince Albert of Monaco in 2007 and said: 'I have been to many places, I have seen many things, but I have never seen anything of the kind'

Thats how they found it:










That´s after the excavation:
The Bridge is new.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DeTgVkpQQ9g

[Ewan]

Cup and Ring marks

What are they meant to represent? Achnabreac

Achnabreac forest near Lochgilphead is the site of the latest prehistoric art to be discovered in the Argyll area. Cup and ring marks were revealed on a rock in the forest following storms in January 2008.

Believed to be around 5,000 years old, the rock is a rare discovery and is inscribed with a dice-like carving. It sits high above the mouth of Kilmartin Glen and directly overlooks other rock art at Cairnbaan.

These markings can be found all over Europe, and beyond, in prehistoric sites. I believe it is always worthwhile checking up with Wiki in order to discover what it almost certainly isn't. (big grin)

Cup and ring marks or cup marks are a form of prehistoric art found mainly in Atlantic Europe – Ireland (Complete), Wales, England (North), France (Brittany), Portugal, Finland, Scotland[1] and Spain (Galicia)[2] – and in Mediterranean Europe – Italy (North-West, Sardinia), Greece (Thessalia) as well as in Scandinavia (Denmark and Sweden) and Switzerland (Caschenna site - Graubunden). Similar forms are also found throughout the world including Australia,[3] Gabon, Greece, Hawaii, India (Daraki-Chattan), Israel, Mexico and Mozambique.[4]

They consist of a concave depression, no more than a few centimetres across, pecked into a rock surface and often surrounded by concentric circles also etched into the stone. Sometimes a linear channel called a gutter leads out from the middle.

The decoration occurs as a petroglyph on natural boulders and outcrops and also as an element of megalithic art on purposely worked megaliths such as the slab cists of the Food Vessel culture, some stone circles and passage graves such as the clava tombs and on the capstones at Newgrange.

We see that it is emphatically art, and to be so widespread it must have been all the rage at the time - a kind of youtube hit of the latest Miley Cyrus video that all the teens wanted to inscribe their version of it in the hardest rock they could find. Leaving aside my cynicism it had to mean something, and presumably something important, something that had meaning. I don't prescribe to the theory that everything in the past was a dumber version of our smatness today. (In fact I'm quite convinced we're dumber today in a broad perspective!)

In the quote above I've underlined the Food Vessel culture which I'd certainly never heard of before.

Food vessels are an Early Bronze Age, c. 2400-1500BC (Needham 1996), pottery type. It is not known what food vessels were used for and they only received their name as antiquarians decided they were not beakers (regarded as drinking-vessels) and so it provided a good contrast. Recently, the concept of the food vessels was questioned by many archaeologists in favour of a concept of two different traditions: the bowl tradition and the vase tradition. Vases are tall vessels with their height being greater than their largest diameter, while bowls are short vessels with their height being less than or equal to their greatest diameter (Gibson 2002, 95).

I'm kind of hoping that people spot that this is all speculation; but note, by people who are supposed to have a clue about what they are talking about - it was Archaeologists that are telling us this and not Joe Bloggs down the pub on a sunday evening. So who are Archaeologists, or any other expert you care to think of. Well, they're people who have been to university of a good number of years to learn their chosen field and become knowledgeable about that field. Herein lies the problem, any encounter/discovery in the field has to be explained within the framework of their knowledge. If they cannot make it fit that framework it will not make sense to them, in short they have to fit it into a pre-existing framework of knowledge which they hold to be true.

Which is why it always pays to be skeptical of expert opinion, 'expert' opinion cannot help but be influenced by all the 'schooling' that led to the label 'expert'. Time and time again we can see that the previous experts in their field are displaced with new ideas that become the new accepted 'dogma'. Previously it was almost a criminal offence to question the outgoing consensus, much as it is now laughed at that you would question the current accepted consensus.

So, what are 'Cup and Ring' marks, what do you think they might represent?

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Posted by uzn (here)
Ewan you probably mean Por Bajin / Siberia.

By the way Vladimir Putin visited the site with prince Albert of Monaco.
Official Dating 1300 years ago. If thats correct it´s much younger than the scottish site.

Damn you're good. That looks like it, but I doubt the official dating.