Palaeolithic Period (14-11.7 kya)
The adverse climate conditions in the north meant that human settlement in Scotland began much later than in southern Europe where the weather was less severe. So far the earliest evidence of humans in Scotland is from Howburn Farm, Lanarkshire, near Biggar, east of the River Clyde and southwest of Edinburgh, where field-walkers discovered more than 5000 flint tools dating to 14 kya.
At Islay, the southernmost island of the Inner Hebrides, a chain of islands off the west coast of Scotland, a flint arrowhead found in a field near Bridgend, Argyllshire, dates from 12.8 kya. Stone tools of the Ahrensburg culture found at Rubha Port an t-Seilich near Port Askaig were probably dropped by hunters travelling round the coast in boats.
Mesolithic Period (9700-4000 BC)
Excavations at Cramond at the mouth of the River Almond, West Lothian, revealed a campsite occupied by nomadic hunter-gatherers from c.8500 BC. About six kilometres west along the coast in a field outside the village of Echline, South Queensferry, Midlothian, are the remains of an oval house with a series of holes suggesting upright wooden posts, dated 8240 BC from the more than a thousand flint artefacts present.
At Warren Field near Crathes Castle, Aberdeenshire, north of the River Dee and west of Aberdeen, there are twelve pits dated to about 8000 BC that are believed to correlate with phases of the Moon and used as a lunar calendar.
At a rock shelter and shell midden at Sand on the west coast of the Applecross peninsula, Ross & Cromarty, excavations have shown that 7500 BC people had tools of antler, bone, and stone, and were living off deer, fish and shellfish. They used heated stones to heat water (pot-boiler stones) to cook their food, made beads from seashells and used ochre (clay) pigment and shellfish purple dye.
At Oronsay, a small island in the Inner Hebrides connected by a tidal causeway at its northern end to the larger island of Colonsay, excavations of the shell middens which stand on raised beaches on the island have bone dated to 4600 BC and an oyster shell to 3065 BC. Evidence provided from the bones of saithe (a marine fish) suggests that people lived there all year round and were heavily reliant on marine protein.
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