Friday, April 10, 2009

Scottish Settlement Dates Back 14,000 Years

Amateur archaeologists have uncovered Scotland's oldest human settlement, dating back 14,000 years. It’s the first proof that humans lived in Scotland during the upper paleolithic period, when nomadic humans hunted with bows and arrows and when mammoth and rhinoceros roamed the land.

Flint arrowheads were discovered in a field by the Biggar Archeology Group. The tools had been made in a way that identified them as belonging to about 12,000 BC. At that time, the North Sea was an expanse of land, over which nomadic humans roamed. Similar tools had been found in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany, but never in Scotland.

Dr Alan Saville, a senior curator at the National Museum of Scotland, who helped identify the objects, said he was "very excited" when he saw them. "This is the breakthrough," he said. "Now we are able to say for absolute certain that we had human settlement at that time in Scotland."

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1 comment:

  1. That is really good to know. I have a facsination with British paleolithic, mesolithic and neolithic history in particular. I've often heard it said that Scotland doesn't seem to have been settled during this period. I get a little bit excited whenever new archeological evidence about anything is over-turned, but particularly this sort of thing. Thanks for keeping me in touch just through signing into my blog!

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