During the Last Glacial Maximum (27-19 kya) the islands, except for some mountain tops and parts of St Kilda, were covered by ice. In the warming period that followed, the melting ice and rising seas flooded the low-lying areas and created the islands as they are today.
Any traces of animal life would have been destroyed by the glaciation. During the Mesolithic the tundra gave way to forest and hunter-gatherers entered the islands to become the earliest people known to have lived on the islands. As a nomadic people they moved between encampments (skin tents, caves and rock shelters) exploiting seasonally available foods and so did not build permanent buildings. Of the little evidence of their presence that has survived, important are the middens (refuse heaps that included shells, bones and occasionally stone or flint fragments) found at coastal sites.
The earliest evidence of Mesolithic human activity in Shetland is from a midden dating 4320-4030 BC on the coast of West Voe, the southernmost bay of Mainland. About 400 metres to the north the earliest remains of humans (3500-3000 BC) to be found in Shetland were from a cist uncovered during construction at Sumburgh Airport.
During the Neolithic (4500-2000 BC) when migrants were bringing wheat, barley, sheep, cattle and possibly red deer to the islands, the people were already clearing woodland and encouraging the growth of plants such as hazel trees; though while this new way of living was developing, the people continued to catch fish, hunt birds, small mammals and red deer, and gather leaves, nuts and wild fruit.
Trees draw up of water through their roots and release it through their leaves and so the clearing of woodland and the grazing the open areas stifled the regeneration of trees and encouraged the gradual spread of peat, a spongy material formed by the partial decomposition of the remains of plants (moss and heather) growing in waterlogged conditions (bogs). On the coastal fringes, peat soil combined with wind-blown shell-sand to form the fertile grassland known as machair.
With the introduction of farming, people became more sedentary and built longer-term settlements of small, one-roomed, oval houses. In addition to the flaked tools that had been used for many thousands of years, stone was polished and ground to make axes and broad, flat knives. Large amounts of pottery were produced, probably made at home and fired in the domestic hearth. Neolithic farmers also built chambered tombs, cairns, standing stones and stone circles.
Crannogs, dwellings constructed partially or entirely on artificial islands, had large timber piles with stone placed to create a building platform. Their purpose is unknown but they may have been for defence against passing raiders.
In the Bronze Age (2500-800 BC) conditions became colder and significantly wetter causing the formation and spread of peat across the fertile inland hill sites pushing emigration to the more attractive machair along the coasts. During this period the Bell Beaker culture spread rapidly northwards from Spain to Scandinavia. In addition to their pottery, the Beaker people introduced cist burial for a single individual and ended the construction of communal Neolithic chambered tombs.
As bronze is an alloy of copper and tin it is possible that seaway trade brought copper from Wales, Ireland or mainland Scotland, and tin from Cornwall, southwest England.
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