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Scotland - Prehistoric Settlement
At times during the last interglacial period (130,000 – 70,000 BC) Europe had a climate warmer than today's, and early humans may have made their way to Scotland, though archaeologists have found no traces of this.
Glaciers then scoured their way across most of Britain, and only after the ice retreated did Scotland again became habitable, around 9600 BC.
People lived in Scotland for at least 8500 years before recorded history dealt with Britain.
Mesolithic hunter-gatherer encampments formed the first settlements, and archaeologists have dated an example at Cramond near Edinburgh to around 8500 BC. Numerous other sites found around Scotland build up a picture of highly mobile boat-using people making tools from bone, stone and antlers.
Neolithic farming brought permanent settlements, and the wonderfully well-preserved stone house at Knap of Howar on Papa Westray dating from 3500 BC predates by about 500 years the village of similar houses at Skara Brae on the Mainland of the Orkney Islands.
The settlers introduced chambered cairn tombs from around 3500 BC (Maes Howe offers a prime example), and from about 3000 BC the many standing stones and circles such as the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney and Callanish on Lewis.
These form part of the Europe-wide Megalithic culture which also produced Stonehenge in Wiltshire, and which pre-historians now interpret as showing sophisticated use of astronomical observations.
The cairns and Megalithic monuments continued into the Bronze age, and hill forts started to appear, such as Eildon hill near Melrose in the Scottish Borders, which goes back to around 1000 BC and which accommodated several hundred houses on a fortified hilltop.
Brythonic Celtic culture and language spread into Scotland at some time after the 8th century BC, possibly through cultural contact rather than through mass invasion, and systems of kingdoms developed.
From around 700 BC the Iron age brought numerous hill forts, brochs and fortified settlements which support the image of quarrelsome tribes and petty kingdoms later recorded by the Romans, though evidence that at times occupants neglected the defences might suggest that symbolic power had as much significance as warfare.
Article is provided courtesy of Wikipedia.org and distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
Click here for the Scotland360.com History of Scotland Index page.
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