alt Hacker NewsIn Northern Scotland, the Neolithic Age Never Ended
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I read George Mackay Brown in high school - Greenvoe and An Orkney Tapestry were the set texts in 2nd year and 3rd year respectively - and I was struck by the immense sense of depth of history from a living poet. It's difficult to explain what reading An Orkney Tapestry was like for the first time. It's like seeing Saturn's rings through a telescope with your own eyes for the first time except it's a telescope that's letting you see in crisp sharp focus all the way through 5000 years of time, instead of 750 million miles. From where I was standing aged 14 in a fairly small town on the Isle of Skye, 5000 years seemed a hell of a lot further.
I've been to Orkney several times, and it's an incredible place. The people who built Skara Brae had more advanced architecture than the Romans did (at least, they had better drains, and understood things like septic tanks and keeping drainage away from water supplies).
You know I wondered who those guys throwing spears at the busses were. Thought they’d just come doon the watter.
I know a few people born in, or on the edge of the "neolithic", inuit from far up north, and idiginous peoples a bit further south, and more than a few scotts, including a clan of blacksmiths, but allas this space isn't quite suited to the raising of ghosts but as a fact, there is no invention or practice that is not bieng conducted nativly, astounding continuity, though essentialy invisible, as there are no signs, labels, certificates, or verifications, completly unplanned, though closed source in that most essential of ways
Not true. They definitely didn't have deep fried Mars bars in the Stone Age.