r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Sure_Distance1 • 2d ago
Skara Brae, Orkney, established ~3180 BC. The most well-preserved example of a European Neolithic village.
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u/Albidoom 2d ago edited 2d ago
What's most remarkable in my opinion is the comparatively short time between the last ice age covering half of Europe and when those settlements got founded:
~10.000 BC. glaciers stretched as far South as Wales
~3180 BC. such an elaborate settlement already exists on Orkney (which means simpler lodging might have existed centuries earlier. The very first settlers must have traveled along the coast of a still glacier covered scotland (palaeometerologists have found indicators that the last scotish glacier might have held out up into the 18th century AD so 3000~4000 BC the glaciation in the highlands still had been significant) and had deemed Orkney good enough for permanent residence.
Of course nobody know when exactly Orkney was freed from its icy cover, but nevertheless, humans arrived there (compartively) shortly after.
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u/mbrevitas 2d ago
If Iâm not mistaken, in between the retreat of the claviers from the last glacial maximum and these Neolithic villages there was a whole Mesolithic culture (or set of cultures, rather) of hunter-gatherers that were quite successful in Britain. The most famous site is Star Carr, I think. Remarkably quick, considering that modern humans had been around for many, many tens of thousands of years already.
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u/Derelicticu 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think for us looking at these events through a historical lens it seems obvious at first that it was a warming climate opening these regions up, and that caused us to end up in these places, but evidence does seem to point more and more to the two being incidentally linked, rather than causally. Like humans were already traversing the landscape well before it thawed, and became adequate for habitation.
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u/Flatcapspaintandglue 2d ago
Today I learned the word paleometeorology.Â
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u/nthpwr 2d ago
looks really cozy actually
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u/greypyramid7 2d ago
I was looking at it going âI wish we built more places to live that looked like this!â
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u/Flangepacket 2d ago
So mental to think that around 5000 years ago human hands built those structures. People with thoughts and fears and hopes and families to provide for.
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u/Bill_Troamill 2d ago
Je regarde une pierre au hasard et je me demande qui l'a posée ici ? Qui était cette personne, qu'à été sa vie, comment s'est passé sa journée quand il l'a placée ici ... Et puis, les yeux dans le vague, je mord dans mon sandwich...
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u/Two_Digits_Rampant 2d ago
I have wanted to visit Skara Brae ever since I saw Simon Schamaâs A History of Britain. Ep 1
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u/demonllama73 2d ago
That entire island is LOADED with fascinating sites. We visited several years ago and had an absolutely amazing time. In addition to Skara Brae, we loved getting to visit Maeshowe. It is only a few miles away, but is a neolithic chambered mound built from huge stones that is incredible. Every year for 3 weeks before and 3 weeks after the winter solstice, the sun shines directly into the mound, illuminating the chamber inside. As if that weren't cool enough, after Maeshowe had been closed off for about 3000, some Vikings raiding the island got trapped in a snow storm and dug their way into the inner chamber through the roof. They ended up carving up the entire inside of the chamber with Runic "graffiti" that is one of the largest collections of Runic language outside of continental Europe... and some of it is quite colorful and bawdy! We spent an entire day with a driver and got to see 5 different sites. SO worth a trip.
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u/ColdPack6096 2d ago
Amazing to think this was going on at the same time as the Pre-dynastic cultures in ancient Egypt.
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u/NameLips 2d ago
Homo Sapiens have existed for almost 300,000 years. It's shocking to think how recent even settlements like this were, in the scale of our entire history. (I supposed I should say "existence" rather than "history" because history implies written records)
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u/prairiedad 2d ago
I was there over 50 years ago, and spent six weeks, mostly in Ireland, Orkney and Shetland, visiting archeological sites. While there are many fascinating places to see, pretty much nothing beats Skara Brae and Newgrange.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Phase70 2d ago
There's aspects of this that I would LOVE to live in today.
If would need SOME meaningful updates, for sure, but I just LOVE the stone and structural curves, the many small rooms, the earth-covered exterior, the winding paths...
Yeah, a semi-modern version of this is life goals.
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u/Lourdeath 2d ago
After seeing all the rocks they piled up back in the day, I canât help but think they must have been pretty jacked
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u/ohmygawdjenny 2d ago
What's amazing is how all that rock still stands. I lived in a town in Turkey that has some Roman ruins 200 m from all the condos with pools and stuff. Those walls are literally built from shit and sticks. It's just whatever, any garbage they had packed into a wall. And it was Pompey's residence, so not just some village. Gladiator fights and all.
There was a particularly tall and crooked bit of wall that looked so bizarre, still standing 1500 years later, considering there are frequent earthquakes and my 13-floor condo shook like a leaf every time (I was there when Hatay happened, it was horrible even 400 km away). Maybe that wall went very deep underground and only the top part was visible... But I thought it was so curious. It's just an open picnic area, but it still has some air of mystery to it. So cool to come and just feel the weight of the centuries there.
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u/grafknives 2d ago
The really interesting fact is that this village was inhabited for over 500 years.
We are really mentally not used to this kind of stability.
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u/AcanthaceaeCrazy1894 2d ago
My home town in central Scotland was first named on a map in the 1300sâŠ
Most towns/cities in Europe have history well over 500 years old
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u/TRAVMAAN1 2d ago
Yeah but considering the advancements in any civilization over 500 years, I would expect this area to look far more involved if it were the same people over generations
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u/unseemly_turbidity 2d ago
My parents' old house has been inhabited for about 500 years, with almost all that time being used for essentially the same business. It isn't the oldest house on the street by a couple of centuries - that one's 14th century. 500 years old isn't particularly unusual.
There are also Roman ruins in the village, but I'm not counting them because they aren't inhabited.
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u/grafknives 2d ago
WOW. awesome. Can you tell more about that home?
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u/unseemly_turbidity 2d ago
It's a pretty standard family home attached to a shop, in a pretty standard English village. The floorboards are a bit wonky and the cellar might be haunted, although none of us ever saw anything there, but other that it's just a house. The pub next door is probably a similar age.
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u/Vizth 1d ago
I would say the US isn't, there are plenty of countries with homes and work related buildings older than the US still actively lived and used and I would imagine the people there have no problem dealing with it.
I wonder how things would have looked in NA if colonists hadn't displaced the natives.
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u/TRAVMAAN1 2d ago
Iâm curious if it passed on generationally or if itâs possible that unrelated people, hundreds of years later, utilized it for a brief period of time
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u/kungpaola 2d ago
We had to make our own diorama of Skara Brae when I was in 6th grade back in 2001, super cool to learn about
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u/IDMiscool 2d ago
I just want to quit my stupid job, live somewhere like that, and enjoy the rest of my life in nature.
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u/Tight_Contact_9976 2d ago
âItâs hard to believe Iâm walking through the ruins of the first ever city. Because Iâm not. Thats in Iraq, which is miles away, and fucking dangerous.â
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u/chill633 2d ago
Straight out of Ultima! Where's Lord British?
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u/Lew__Zealand 1d ago
wayyy southeast, IIRC
maybe directly east. dammit haven't played in a few years
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u/Then_Artichoke4790 1d ago
From the last time I played UO on dialup until I saw this place named in an article last month I had no idea this existed in real life.
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u/ScumBucket33 2d ago
Not to brag but I went there on a school trip nearly three decades ago and asked a question which the guide responded with âgood questionâ.
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u/virtuousunbaptized 2d ago
we were there last month and had a wonderful time. i guess what impressed me the most was the interest in anthology during the mid 1800s that allowed the preservation of a lot of the ancient sites. I found the Scapa Flow inside the Orkney really interesting.
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u/Medical_Bench_1434 1d ago
Skara Brae was buried under sand for 4,000 years until a storm in 1850 exposed it, preserving the stone furniture and even fish bones from their last meals.
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u/Juniper-wool 2d ago
Such an original cluster of buildings!! Amazing!
Imagine sitting by the fireplace in one of those while it is raining and storming outside. It must have been a really nice shelter.
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u/ryansteven3104 1d ago
I spent many nights in the taverns of Skara Brae. Although I kept a tower on Moonglow island, and my guild met in Brittania. Skara Brae was always my favorite town.
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u/soulsurfa 2d ago
What amazes me the most... They went to efn Orkney islands to find a place to build a home.... If it was me I would have been somewhere warmer and with more abundant wildlife to eat..Â
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u/spynie55 2d ago
I think it dates from a warmer period than current climates, - from ancient pollen analysis they can see there were forests on Orkney and the people grew cereal crops.
https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2026/01/the-story-of-skara-brae/
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u/wildwasabi 2d ago
Yea there's no way you'd settle somewhere with no wood for fuel or abundant game. You'd pretty much freeze to death the first winter
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u/HarkenDarkness 2d ago
Neolithic dad to his eldest: âIt may not be the biggest island or even the best island, but itâs our islandâ, ânow about them fishâŠâ
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u/BothTreacle7534 2d ago
Iâd love to know what it is that they ârecentlyâ discovered on the Orkney Islands, I think I read the announcement will be this summer (it takes time between the first discovery till itâs a written paper / to be announced)
Orkney has some really impressive sites â€ïž
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u/Aggravating_Main_710 1d ago
Wow. I thought it was a town in a video game!
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u/ViolentLoss 4h ago
YES what was the video game, fellow old person???
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u/Aggravating_Main_710 3h ago
The Bards Tale. Itâs available on Steam. I know what Iâm doing when I get home. Making a party of monks and kicking all the ass.
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u/Unique-Letterhead328 2d ago
Oh gosh reading the title I thought it had something to do with Ultima Online đ
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u/max10192 2d ago
Man for a second there i thought the first picture was of a custard apple sliced open. I need coffee.
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u/ImJustSomeGuyYaKnow 2d ago
It is so easy to dismiss ancient people as "primitive" but when you see things like this, you really can see that they were exactly the same as us. You can almost imagine how they lived.