The Stone Age - The History of Scotland

How Was Scotland Formed?

Fifteen Thousand years ago

Around fifteen thousand years ago the whole of northern Europe, including what is now Britain was covered with ice and glaciers.

Ten Thousand years ago

These glaciers had been moving for millions of years, gouging out the flat land beneath them to create the mountains that are now Scotland's landscape. When these glaciers eventually melted they caused huge amounts of water to come flooding into the largest and deepest of the holes in the land which the glaciers had created, to form the lochs that are scattered around Scotland's landscape, and the seas that surround everything.

What's a loch?

A loch is the Scottish name for a lake.

Why did the earliest people come to Scotland?

Scotland was full of forests and animals, like the red and roe deer, the wild boar and wild ox. These were all good for eating so the first hunters settled in Scotland.

These people took shelter in the mouths of caves, or constructed windbreaks and 'tents' by driving wooden stakes into the ground and placing the hides of the animals that they had killed for food on top of these makeshift struts.

But these people could not stay in one place for long. They had found no other way to feed themselves and families other than hunting and gathering (collecting roots, wild grains and berries), and the animals they hunted never stayed in one place for long enough for these simple people to create a proper settlement. They were condemned to follow the food trail. Wherever their prey went, they went.

Why did people start to farm?

But things started to change. The numbers of the animals that had roamed the earth for so long, and had been people's only source of food, were depleting. These animals could not survive in the deep, dark forests that were taking over the land. Those great herds of bison, wildebeest, and ox, were all dying, fast.

Early Scottish people would have to find some other way of providing themselves with food, and that way, they decided, was farming.

People already knew how to tame animals as they had used trained dogs in their hunting.

Man thought to himself that, if he could tame a dog, why couldn't he tame other animals, and maybe even learn to cultivate plants, and that would also mean the ability to stay in one place for years, instead of just weeks. However, early man didn’t simply change from being a hunter to becoming a farmer, it was a very gradual process during which man grew crops, continued to hunt where possible and gathered food also. You might say that man still grew food and also hunted for food up to modern times.

When the farmers arrived.

The knowledge of how to cultivate crops and keep animals began to spread across Europe.These new farmers created farms in many different places, going north, east, south, and west. Eventually they arrived in the Northwest of Europe, including the far off distant lands of what would be called Scotland much later. Of course, this all took time, centuries of it, in fact. By the time these people reached the British coasts around nine thousand years had passed.

'But how did these people get there?'

They just upped and left. One day an early farmer and his family may have been bored or may have been involved in a domestic dispute. They took animals and enough food for a long trip, some seeds for planting, and packed it all in a sturdy little boat, and sailed off into the distance. When they reached land they stopped travelling and began to clear a settlement. The farmer found plenty space for a cave or perhaps built a temporary tent. (Perhaps the farmers were already competent 'stone' house builders like the peoples of Skara Brae - see another issue for more on this) The people would have used "slash and burn" techniques to prepare the land for use. They would have used a stone axe, the earliest effective tool used by man.

The farmer planted seeds, built enclosures for animals and developed primitive Scottish farming.

'Fix sharp stone on long wooden handle - AXE!'

A flint axe head.

Generation by generation these farmers developed their land, making larger farms. However, their utensils and buildings were all made of wood and that meant over time their carefully constructed buildings rotted.

The farmers had to abandon their farms after about ten years when the soil became worked out so we still have early people moving and exploring. They would have to start again clearing the land, planting new crops and building enclosures for the animals they bred and had moved to the new lands.

When they left their settlements to move to new, fertile soil, they rotted away, leaving no trace that these people had ever lived there. We would have known very little about early farmers if some had not settled in Orkney.

Developments in Trade

The early farmers began the idea of trade and enterprise by needing to find a source of stone suitable for making the axes they depended on to clear the land and build their settlements. The stone that made the best quality axe-heads could only be found at Creag-Na-Caillich in Perthshire and some people set up a Stone Age 'axe factory'. The finished axe-heads were sent to the Northeast, where Aberdeenshire now lies. There the axes were traded. Although nobody knows how this trade operated it is probable that they were exchanged for useful items such as pottery, hides, seed or food.

The early farmers introduced sheep, cattle and goats to Scotland. They brought crops such as barley and wheat; they built boats that were safer and superior to the ones built by the hunters, and sledges that could run on smooth ground as well as snow. Most importantly, they brought the axe, a tool that enabled people to clear their own land to live on and grow crops on. They began the idea of trade to acquire what they needed by bartering what they had.

CASE STUDY

Skara Brae

Over four thousand years ago a small group of farmers took their families and sailed north. Eventually these farmers reached land, a group of islands known as Orkney. To the rugged farmers who must have been used to the unfertile and hilly forest areas, this place was amazingly flat. Despite the strong winds that howled through these islands, they were to prove fertile and secure homelands for the small farming communities who settled there.

The flimsy leather tents that they had been used to making could not withstand the strong winds for any length of time, they would have to build stronger homes.

They chose the place known today as Skara Brae, overlooking the fabulous Bay of Skail, to form a more secure and permanent shelter.

To be more precise they dug deep holes into the sandy ground, so that their homes were half submerged for protection against the winds. They used whalebone to make frames and lined the walls and floors with drystone, because obviously with no trees, stone was an accessible alternative.

This is where they stayed, tending to their livestock and crops, fishing, feasting on beached whales and occasionally hunting the red deer that inhabited the islands at that time. We know this because of the precious archaeological finds from Skara Brae. The settlement had been abandoned after gales had overwhelmed it, probably in the New Stone Age.

The houses were discovered in 1850 after a strong blizzard left them open to the elements. Early this century archaeologists began to investigate the find. Ten houses at Skara Brae have been uncovered and minutely studied. The experts discovered a half eaten meal next to a bed and a string of beads in a passageway where they had presumably been dropped in an apparent rush to evacuate the underground shelters in 1500 BC.

These buildings had not perished as they were made of stone, they were also fully furnished, and contained many Stone Age tools. Study of the Skara Brae settlement has given historians a wealth of insight into the way of life of Stone Age farmers.

Stone Age Death

We know that death was treated seriously, with activity and pageant, for the Stone Age people of Skara Brae. The people had obviously devised a religion, with gods to worship to look after loved ones that had died, and to pray to for good weather and ideal circumstances to allow crops to flourish and the settlement to survive.

They built giant memorials, with one of the most amazing at Maeshowe, a mere nine miles from Skara Brae.